The Spring 2024 Manga Guide

Tied to You

What's It About? 

Wooseo Shin was never one to believe in fate...until a ring of red thread appears around his finger, that is! This ring marks a person's meeting of their soulmate, and with it, neither can fall asleep if the other is absent. This development is not a welcome one for Wooseo, who decides to keep it from his close friend and crush Jiseok Kang at all costs. Because as fate would have it, the person with Wooseo's matching set is Jigeon Kang—Jiseok's older brother! When Jigeon proposes that they start sharing a bed, if only to combat their joint insomnia, Wooseo reluctantly accepts...but as the two spend more and more time together, feelings start to get messy. Will Wooseo be able to survive his new life tangled up in between these two brothers?!

Tied to You is a manga with a story by Chelliace and art illustrated by WHAT. English translation by Treece. This volume is lettered by Chi Bui and published by Ize Press (May 21, 2024).

Is It Worth Reading?

Unrequited love is a difficult thing to deal with. What do you do when you have overwhelming feelings for somebody you know for an absolute fact will never feel the same way about you? It doesn't matter what the reason is. It could be circumstances or differing sexualities, but we can't always control who it is that we fall for. Sometimes, we find ourselves tied to people who make us feel more hurt than loved. This might be the underlying foundation of Tied to You.

The book's title references a phenomenon in the story where you explicitly meet your soulmate and find yourself bound to them. Once you two are bound, a red ring appears on your hand like a wedding ring, and you are more or less cursed with being unable to get a good night's sleep unless you're holding hands with them. It's a very specific and convenient curse that the book doesn't establish as a phenomenon. The book seems to flip back and forth between it being a legitimate medical condition and an urban legend, but that's not the point. The point is that the condition forces our protagonist, Wooseo, into a circumstance where he is bound to the brother of his straight male friend that he is attracted to.

You could argue this is a love triangle, but this feels more like two unsuspecting people being forced to bond over the fact that they have eyes for people who may never look their way. The more Wooseo struggles with his feelings for his friend, the more his friend's brother begins to understand his feelings for Wooseo. There's much tension and sneaking around while trying to circumvent such a unique situation. While much could be resolved if everyone just sat down and talked like adults, complicated emotions clouding everyone's judgment also play a part. I was surprised at how invested I was in everything towards the end, and I could see things going in a couple of different avenues.

I do wish the presentation was a bit stronger. The panel layouts don't always do a good job of properly conveying the passage of time or how scenes transition. There are also a lot of nonlinear moments where we will get a flashback, but the story won't always properly convey when we are in a flashback versus when we are in the present. Plus, two out of the three main characters look almost identical, and while that may be the point, when you consider that they are brothers, it becomes very distracting. Still, the writing is interesting enough to carry me through some of those issues, so if you want a more melancholy boys love romance, this might be worth a passing glance.

I always appreciate it when a creator tries to do something even just a little bit different with their story. In Tied to You, rather than the ubiquitous red string of fate, there's something called “the ring,” which serves a very similar purpose. If you have a destined partner out there, legend says, touching them after you've both reached the age of majority will cause rings to appear on your ring fingers. No one else can see them, but the affected people can, and from that moment on, being away from them means, at the very least, being unable to sleep and, at worst, death. If one partner dies, the ring vanishes, but that's the only way out. And unfortunately for Wooseo and Jigeon, the ring turns out to be real.

It only seems to be an issue for Wooseo, and that's because he's been in love with Jigeon's younger brother, Jiseok, for years. Jigeon, on the other hand, has had a crush on Wooseo ever since Jiseok brought him home when they were in high school. Not only was Jigeon aware of Wooseo's crush, but he also thought hitting on your younger brother's friend was kind of creepy. But now Wooseo's hit legal adulthood, and wouldn't you know it, when the two bump against each other, it turns out that Jigeon's dreams are coming true: the rings appear. And if you think it will stay that simple, you haven't read many manhwa (or manga) romances yet.

This is, in the simplest terms, compulsively readable. Sharing the narration between Jigeon and Woonseo helps to ground the story and ensure that no one comes across as too creepy (though Jigeon has his moments, such as when he sits in his car outside the bar Jiseok and Wooseo go to with their friends). It also means we can track the characters' evolving relationship from two angles. Jiseok is the biggest hurdle for them to overcome, and neither ring bearer wants to tell him yet what's happened to them, although why isn't entirely clear. Very likely, it has to do with not wanting to make him uncomfortable that his older brother and best friend are now sleeping together in (as of this volume) the most innocent sense of the term. Still, as the book goes on, it looks like Jinseok may not be as romantically indifferent to Wooseo as everyone assumes. Or it could just be the real fear that his brother will become better friends with his best friend than he is, and either issue would give the story some appealing drama. Jinseok may be just a little too insistent that he's straight, or maybe the BL genre primes us to read him that way – there's enough wiggle room to ensure things stay interesting.

Although the art is very brown (possibly to give the book a more grounded, realistic look) and a bit stiff, it works for the story, if only because it's smooth and easy to read. The small cast of characters is also a plus, as it keeps the drama close and tight. I'm curious where this one is heading.