Annarasumanara is a Korean webcomic by Ha Ilkwon. It is a Coming of Age Story of high school student Yun Ai note who, due to her unfortunate living situation, must work part-time jobs to scrape by for herself and her younger sister while maintaining exceptional grades in hopes of a better future. She wishes to grow up quickly and put the hardships of her youth behind her.
One day, she encounters the rumoured magician that wanders the shut down amusement park. Sensing his trustworthiness, she quickly becomes drawn to him in spite of his shortcomings, like his childish outlook on life, and rumours of his sketchy past. Yun Ai comes to realize with the magician's help that she has bigger dreams than merely living a typical life and that she must follow her own path if she ever wants to find true happiness.
This comic is hosted on Naver in its original Korean
and translated into English.
A drama adaptation, titled The Sound of Magic in English, was released on May 6th, 2022 on Netflix.
This works contains examples of:
- Always Someone Better:
- Na Il-deung is in South Korea's 0.01% top students, however in school, Ai still manages to best him in Math.
- Additionally for Na Il-deung, the magician managed to catch Ai's attention first, leaving him behind to scheme of ways to impress her.
- Be Yourself: One of the overall messages is to be this, even if society doesn't always encourage you.
- Dirty Old Man: Yun Ai's boss in the beginning makes unwelcome advances on her.
- Disappeared Dad: Yun Ai and her sister's father ran out on them due to his debt.
- Eye-Obscuring Hat: The Magician's hat constantly obscures his eyes.
- Gonk: Na Il-deung isn't even drawn like a human. After his Character Development, he's drawn how he actually appears, and it turns out he doesn't look strange at all.
- Gossipy Hens: The girls at Yun Ai's school leap to the chance at gossiping about her and The Magician.
- Hate Sink: Kim Doo-Sik, big time. Despite initially being introduced as a reasonable convenience store owner, he turns out to be a unforgivably nasty piece of work once is true nature's revealed. He takes advantage of Ah Yi's Parental Abandonment to try and sexually harass her, and he only gets worse from there as it's later revealed he was annoyed with Seo Ha-Yoon filming him, and pretends to forgive her, and then lures her to the abandoned amusement park late night, where he'd brutally kill her with a knife, while at the same time deliberately framing Ri-Eul/Ryu Min Hyuk for the murder (down to stealing an identical magician's outfit, and getting Ri-Eul's fingerprints) as petty revenge for the latter coming to Ah Yi's defense against him. He'd get the police on Ah Yi and Ri-Eul's tail and cause the latter to get arrested, refusing to take ownership or responsibility for anything he did. And when the police eventually discover Doo-Sik was the criminal behind everything, he's reduced to a unstable, sobbing mess.
- I Just Want to Be Normal: Yun Ai just wants to have her money woes disappear and live life like everyone else does.
- Lazy Bum: The Magician is suspected as being this. This is especially convincing given his carefree attitude.
- Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane: The driving question of the entire story is whether the magician is genuinely magical or not. Although it comes down mostly on the side of 'mundane' later on, there's still a few things, like the talking bird and Yun Ai's last trick, which aren't explained.
- Mysterious Past: The Magician, of course; his past is a mystery for large parts of the story. It turns out he has an extremely mundane background, one that heavily mirrors Na Il-deung's story.
- Paper People:
- Na Il-deung is drawn this way - that is to say, as if made of paper - in chapter 1 when he's craning his neck to catch a glimpse of Ai.
- The Magician is drawn this way - that is to say, as if made of paper - in chapter 6 after he gets beaten up by the debt collector's cronies. He's on the ground crumpled up like paper.
- Parental Abandonment: Yun Ai and her sister's father abandoned them because he fell into debt. It's revealed that their mom left them too.
- Polly Wants a Microphone: The Magician's parrot. Unlike most examples of this trope, the parrot's intelligence and ability to say relevant things is treated as unnatural and deeply unsettling.
- Sharp-Dressed Man: The Magician is constantly sharp-dressed; how else should a magician dress?
- The Not-Love Interest: The Magician serves this role to Yun Ai; their interactions have many of the dynamics of a love story without actually being one.
- WcDonald's: There is a burger joint that Ai works at called "MucgiBURGERwoon Burger".
