Milkyway Hitchhiking (manhwa, vol. 2) by Sirial, translated by HyeYoung Im

Milkyway Hitchhiking is an episodic manhwa (Korean graphic novel) that's hard to assign to any one genre, since it changes a bit from one story to the next.

Review:

I can't believe it's been over 10 years since I read volume 1. Anyway, like the first volume, this is a collection of short stories (episodic chapters?) loosely tied together by the presence of Milkway the cat, who seems to exist in multiple times and worlds.

In the first three stories, a trio of older ladies who are friends have their annual get-together and tell each other cat-related stories from their pasts. The next story is about a boy who misses his frequently traveling artist older brother. After a "convenience store" interlude that features cameo appearances of characters from earlier stories, there's the story of a tribe that has a marriage tradition of sending its young men out into the forest with a special cloth tied around their waists. The first person who finds them and removes the cloth becomes that young man's bride. The next couple chapters are about a cursed brother and sister. Next is the oddly sweet story of a fox being raising a chick...so that he'll eventually have chickens and therefore a steady supply of food. The volume wraps up with the story of a young prince raised to be little more than a weapon and the girl he saves from his father's cruelty.

As with the first volume, I absolutely loved the artwork but felt so-so about the stories themselves. There's even less about Milkway in this volume than there was in the first. At times it felt like Milkway was inserted solely because the author recalled that she was necessary in order to tie the stories together somehow.

For me, the best stories were the first one and the one about the tribe - so, basically, I preferred the sweet and/or silly stories to the darker or more somber ones. My least favorite of the bunch was probably the story about the cursed brother and sister. 

The final story, with the young prince, was interesting mostly because aspects of it felt familiar. I realized partway through that it was quite possibly a prequel to the story of the knight and cruel king in volume 1. When I dug out my copy of volume 1 and read through that story again, I actually found that I liked both of them a little less - volume 1's story was dark enough on its own, but when taken with the story in volume 2 that I think was a prequel, it was just depressing. If I'm right, the prince in volume 2 grew up to be the cruel king in volume 1, and the girl he saved in volume 2 grew up to be the knight. That, I think, would mean that the child the knight saved was the king's little brother.

I got a zing of satisfaction from being able to connect the two stories despite last having read the volume 1 story over a decade ago. That was, unfortunately, countered by disappointment at the realization that the prince basically grew up to be just like his horrible father. 

All in all, this was an odd series that didn't really hold together well. Still, the artwork was fabulous.