Meet Me Halfway
Written and illustrated by Heemaeng, adapting a novel by Mangogom
Manta’s marketing team was kind enough to share with me a sneak preview of the first two episodes of the new sports-themed BL webtoon Meet Me Halfway by Heemaeng, adapting a novel by Mangogom. And I had a great time reading them!
When I opened the first episode, I said, out loud, “Ooh, sports!” I am a known sports story enthusiast: my favorite manga is Haikyu!!, and don’t even get me started on Medalist or Chihayafuru. But I haven’t read a lot of sports-themed BL, unless you count doujinshi for romance-free shonen sports stories or the American comic Fence! (which annoys me every time I think about it but I digress.) So I was excited to dive into this soccer-themed BL!
The story opens with Moogyum Kim, a rascally kind of alpha-male-type soccer superstar, suddenly leaving the English Premier League to return to Korea and repay a debt to his mentor. There he encounters rookie physical trainer/coach Hajoon Lee, a former soccer player himself who had to quit due to mysterious reasons I’m sure will be elaborated upon in later episodes. But Hajoon, for some reason, is determined to avoid spending any time with Moogyum, and especially determined never to touch Moogyum even for ostensibly-professional reasons. Moogyum can’t stop thinking about how weird this is, and is determined to figure out what’s going on. The official synopsis mentioned a “strange secret” and the tags on Manta include “obsessive” and “contract,” so I’m assuming this is going to get at least a little kinky. Fun!
So far, I do like the art style. The characters are appealingly drawn and, crucially, easy to tell apart. I like the softness of the lines and rendering, it reminds me of the Semantic Error vertical scroll comic also available on Manta. I don’t understand why Hajoon is so ghostly pale, though: sure, he’s not playing soccer anymore, but he was playing it fairly recently, and even now he still has to go out on the field to help train people? Does he just have really good sunscreen? Or maybe the twist is that he’s a vampire, that would be interesting. Unlikely, but interesting.
Anyway, the story so far is almost entirely from Moogyum’s point of view. He’s… well, the character I was most immediately reminded of was Jamie Tartt from soccer TV show Ted Lasso. Arrogant, messy, and resolutely heterosexual… as far as he knows, at least. He and Hajoon had been on the national team together before, but Moogyum barely remembers him, and now Hajoon seems to be avoiding him for some reason. It’s kind of funny how little actual soccer is played in these first two episodes relative to the amount of professional physiotherapeutic massaging and stretching Hajoon has to do to Moogyum and his teammates. I guess that’s the difference between a sports story with homoerotic undertones and an 18+ sports themed BL for you. I still find myself wishing the sports part was a little more important to the story than the celebrity and the physical training. I like soccer comics! I wanna see some actual soccer!
It’s hard to tell from the first two episodes alone how their relationship is going to unfold. Maybe Hajoon’s evasiveness is hiding a sadistic streak, or maybe Moogyum is going to be the obsessive one in this dynamic. Lots of possibilities! But if you like your guys in soccer uniforms and don’t mind the sport taking a backseat to the steam, maybe check out Meet Me Halfway and see where it’s going to go.
The full version is now available to read here, and the clean version can be found here.
