See You in My 19th Life Volume 1 Review

After being a hit on the digital webcomic platform Webtoon with over 93 million views, See You in My 19th Life has been picked up by Ize Press for a print release.

Juwon Yun is a special kid. She’s 12, but she behaves like an adult so much that it’s easy to forget that she’s just a child. She can be apathetic, but that’s not surprising…after all she has already lived 17 lives, and she remembers all of them! The only person who starts to make her feel something is 9-year-old Seoha Mun. The son of a company’s CEO who is never home and a mother who’s sick, Seoha is quite spoiled, but when he meets Juwon, his attitude changes. It seems like the start of a love story until a car accident claims Juwon’s life and parts of Seoha’s hearing.

Jieum Ban is living her 19th life. After dying young in her previous life, she decides to find the boy who made her feel something when she was Juwon Yun. The only problem is that Seoha, now an adult, is abroad and there is no way for Jieum to meet him…until he comes back to South Korea and takes over his late mother’s hotel business. Jieum cannot lose this opportunity. It’s her only chance to see him and to make him remember her. Too bad she cannot go up to him and tell him who she really is…she needs a plan first to make him fall head over heels for her.

See You in My 19th Life is a contemporary romance story. It’s not a romantic comedy per se as it misses the humour that the genre requires, but it verges on the theme thanks to Jieum’s behaviour. The storyline has a magical connotation due to Jieum’s memory of past lives, but that seems to be the only paranormal element. Having lived so many lives, it’s hard for her to show emotions as she has already lived through many circumstances. She definitely didn’t expect Seoha to make her smile, nor to make her heart beat  faster. When she thinks she might finally give love another try, her life is cut short. While Jieum usually avoids seeing people from her past lives, she knows she has to meet Seoha again. Her emotions and behaviour are hard to understand for the people around her, so they find her strange. It’s the same for Seoha, as he cannot believe how direct she’s being in her pursue of him.

Seoha suffers from trauma from the car accident. He lost Juwun but also part of his hearing. His family considers him broken goods, so as soon as he was old enough, he left the country. Now, to help his late mother’s hotel, he’s back, but things aren’t easy. The people around him don’t really understand the long-term effects of the car accident . The only one who might is his secretary and friend, Ha Doyoon.

The story is told in chronological order, so we know right away what happened to Seoha and Juwon as kids and who Jieum is once she appears. There are no secrets for the readers, and in this case the one who doesn’t know anything is Seoha. Things turn quite interesting for Jieum as well. Other than finally meeting Seoha, she has a brief encounter with her sister from her 18th life. It’s too early to say what the meeting of the two will entail as the story progresses, but hopefully it will bring more people in Jieum’s life. Unfortunately, she was reborn into an abusive family, so she’s been alone most of the time in this new life.

The cover showcases Jieum, and it already gives the idea of an office romance due to the company pass she’s wearing and her attire. Thanks to the Volume 2 cover reveal, we know that the illustration for the current volume is half of an image, which continues over onto the cover of the next volume. It would be interesting to see if the cover illustration will continue to span multiple volumes as the story progresses. Moreover, the cover image is also the illustration that introduces each chapter in the story. I found the colour palette darker and duller compared to A Business Proposal, a manhwa that gives a similar office romance vibe. However, the use of whitespaces in the pages helps to offset the darker colour palette. The translation by Webtoon reads quite nicely.

See You in My 19th Life is written by Lee Hey. The completed web comic is available on Webtoon, while Netflix released the K-drama. The English print edition is published by Ize Press, and Volume 2 is slated for release in April 2024.

Our review copy from Ize Press was supplied by Diamond Book Distributors UK.