Finding Camellia
Writer: Jin Soye
Artist: Manta Comics
Lettering: Rebecca Sze
Publisher: Manta (Webcomic), Ize Press (Print)
Genre: Romantic Fantasy
From the slums of Louver, there is a golden-haired child with emerald-green eyes. One night, she’s kidnapped by her stepmother and swept away to a new life as the second son of the Bale household. Why? Well, because her son, Kieran, is gravely ill and should he die, then the House of Bale’s reputation would be in danger. With the promise of finding her mother once more, Camellia embraces her new identity as Camellius Bale in the hopes that she may reclaim what was once stolen from her.
Without a little more of the world-building and context, I found it a little unrealistic for the House of Bale to seemingly rely on their son to bolster their reputation. A child to have that much power to either topple or uphold a family’s standing? Isn’t that just a little too far-fetched?
Aside from that, Vol. 1 does a pretty good job at setting the tone and the art is certainly beautiful to look at. I especially loved how the artist drew each character’s expression. It felt like they were wearing their hearts on their sleeves with just how open they were about what they felt, like how innocent and young Camellia is, how much Kieran openly doted on her, the small cracks in Claude’s expression when he gets surprised by Camellia. The artwork made me feel like the webcomic was an adaptation of an animated work just because of how dynamic and lifelike the characters were.
As for the gender-bending plot, it’s not a huge factor in the first volume although it certainly plants the seeds for it. Much of the beginning of Finding Camellia is focused on setting up the scene of the House of Bale and Camellia’s relationship with her brother and stepmother. What kind of confused me was that it seemed like no one else except for Camellia’s immediate family and maybe one maid knew she was a girl, and yet none of the other servants in the past four years ever questioned why the second Bale son was so secretive.
The romance element isn’t prevalent in the first volume which makes sense since Camellia meets Claude once when she’s twelve and is reunited when she’s sixteen. Instead, her relationship with her stepmother, her brother, and her father are at the forefront. There’s nothing much to say about her relationship with her stepmother other than it follows the trope of the evil stepmother where Anastasia Bale constantly berates and hits her when Camellia does anything wrong and she hates her because Camellia’s mother is to blame for Kieran’s weak condition. On the other hand, Camellia’s relationship with her father and especially her stepbrother are quite sweet. Kieran seems to be genuinely excited to meet Camellia, and has tried to protect her from his mother’s wrath.
I did a double take near the end of the volume when the chapter “brought back” Prince Wade Von Weiz and acted like the readers should know who he was. I had to rifle back to the earlier chapters to see if I accidentally missed a page when he was introduced for the first time, but I hadn’t. The prince had appeared (sort of) twice. Once was in the background when Claude first appeared but he didn’t have any facial features so I assumed he was simply a background character. And the other time was when Camellia was being punished by her stepmother for “gaining” the prince’s interest.
The first volume of Finding Camellia bundles up the first 15 chapters of the webcomic into three in the physical copy. The way Ize Press organized the webcomic chapters felt quite fluid and natural. There were some panels that were cut short a little due to it being adapted into a physical volume but you wouldn’t be able to tell unless you compared the two. Some of the longer panels had to be split into two side by side panels which can mean that some of the background coloring gets lost when it transitions into square panels with borders. Another instance of the split into side by side panels is when Kieran makes his first appearance. In Manta’s version, the speech bubble was beside the smaller version of Kieran while Ize Press placed it at the blown-up version of his face. Either way, it didn’t make a huge difference, although I felt like it fit a tiny bit better in Ize Press’s version.
There are some slight differences in the English translation between Ize Press’s version from the webcomic, but it doesn’t detract from the overall experience. Both Manta’s version and Ize Press’s version read quite smoothly.
The first volume of Finding Camellia released on September 17. Those who want to read the scrolling, vertical version can find it on Manta Comics.
