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A review by andlovetoowillruinus
Vicious Spirits by Kat Cho
3.0
I was willing to forgive the length of Wicked Fox bc although there wasn’t a lot of action there was at least some very satisfying inner turmoil, interpersonal conflicts, and gumiho folklore that kept me invested. The problem with Vicious Spirits is that it is also very long, but instead of having action or conflict to move it along, it is just pages and pages of the characters having therapy sessions with each other.
It’s become a recent trend, I think, to incorporate therapy lingo in dialogue between characters, where they’ll psychoanalyze themselves. This doesn’t really make sense once you consider that they are characters, not real people, so you can’t really pathologize their decisions. More importantly, it always sounds stilted, unnatural, and boring.
This isn’t to say the characters themselves are boring. Vicious Spirits is primarily centered on Somin and Junu, two side characters from Wicked Fox who have more than enough charm and depth to carry their own story. But sadly, this potential is spent on having them talk about their feelings like they’re in a school counselor’s office rather than having them act in ways that show their ideas, desires, and emotions.
It’s become a recent trend, I think, to incorporate therapy lingo in dialogue between characters, where they’ll psychoanalyze themselves. This doesn’t really make sense once you consider that they are characters, not real people, so you can’t really pathologize their decisions. More importantly, it always sounds stilted, unnatural, and boring.
This isn’t to say the characters themselves are boring. Vicious Spirits is primarily centered on Somin and Junu, two side characters from Wicked Fox who have more than enough charm and depth to carry their own story. But sadly, this potential is spent on having them talk about their feelings like they’re in a school counselor’s office rather than having them act in ways that show their ideas, desires, and emotions.