Yan Vol 1 Review

 

Writer & Artist: Chang Sheng

Translator: Vanessa Liu

Letterer: Tom Williams

Editor: Louis Yamani

Designer: David Colderley

Publisher: Titan Manga

Price: $24.99

Release Date: June 24, 2025

 

What's happening now always grabs our attention, especially if it's new and different. As people go through their days in modern Taipei, a live broadcast gets people talking. They share it with their friends, coworkers, and fellow commuters. While they watch their phones, a woman dressed in traditional Peking Opera attire sings before a man strapped to a chair. Her beautiful voice and the poetic lyrics draw them in.

 

Then the woman pulls out a gun, shoots her captive, and introduces herself as Yan Tieh Hua. What prompted this trained opera performer to make a snuff film? And why is Yan Tieh Hua threatening to kill a Taiwanese Councillor? Let's leap into Yan Vol 1 and see!

 

Story

Chang Sheng’s story begins thirty years ago, as the Yan Opera Troupe performs for an outdoor audience. Despite the picturesque setting and the intricate artistry of their stage, only three men sit in the rows of chairs. Yet even this trio of aficionados sleeps as the two sisters discuss having reached their beautiful destination. Then Qingmei's sister asks where she was the previous evening. Breaking their well-rehearsed routine, the mother demands to know why her daughter stayed out so late. The men wake up as Tieh Hua combats her enraged mother in Yan Vol 1.

 

After this disastrous performance, Chang Sheng checks in on the sixteen-year-old after school. Her friends want her to join them, but Tieh Hua cannot. Her mother has put her foot down and grounded her indefinitely. But as the girls walk away, the teenager senses that something is wrong. Tieh Hua races through town toward home.

 

Thirty years have passed by the time the opera performer commits her livestream murder. As Chang Sheng interweaves past with present, he introduces a woman with impressive fighting skills in Yan Vol 1. She is the opera performer who introduced herself to Taiwan as Yan Tieh Hua. The surging popularity of her performance and her threat to kill a leading member of the government prompt the police to recall Lei Ming Zhi to active duty. The Senior Detective has not fared well since he retired a year ago. And the way that the government whisked Yan Tieh Hua away, before he could investigate her parents’ death, still haunts him.

 

Art

As the young teen in her school uniform speaks with her friends, she remembers her mother clad in her ornate headdress and decorated costume. Her mother's threat, accompanied by her maniacal laughter, haunts Yan Tieh Hua. When the schoolgirl begins to sweat, she races through town, bounding over obstacles and bridging chasms with impressive leaps.

 

Thirty years later, the young woman bent on revenge wears a cap, a leather jacket, a short skirt, and fishnet stockings. When the time comes to make good on her threat, she dons a leather fighting suit, adorned with a swath of ornamental fabric, and her ornate headdress. As she ventures out to storm the heavily protected tower office of the councillor, the young woman demonstrates a fluid combination of Parkour and martial arts vastly beyond Tieh Hua’s freerunning and onstage fighting.

 

Chang Sheng’s settings evoke an architect’s realism as Senior Detective Lei Ming Zhi sits in a restaurant studying Yan Tieh Hua's file, or investigating the secret government research center that mysteriously collapsed years ago. The exacting penciling reveals an incredible level of destruction. As the retired detective stands amid the broken concrete and bent steel in his old suit, straggly hair frames his bearded face. When Lei Ming Zhi receives a phone call, he idly picks up a small piece of rubble. As the retired Senior Detective tosses it away, a strange thing occurs in Yan Vol 1.

  

Physical Copy and Lettering

The glossy cover's French flap (or gatefold cover) evokes the dust jacket of a hardcover. The 7" x 10" size of the prestige edition enlarges the art and letters to a generous size. Direction lines never obscure the high-speed action and fraught battles. Characters speak into dialogue balloons that grow spiky amid the intense emotions and fighting. Narrative boxes relate off-camera dialogue, and translated sound effects amplify a young woman’s threat to avenge her family. Thanks to Titan Manga for providing a physical review copy.

 

Final Thoughts

When a young opera performer shoots a councillor's son on camera, she announces she is Yan Tieh Hua, a 16-year-old accused of murdering her family thirty years ago. Even though the imprisoned woman died ten years ago, the police detective who arrested her reopens her case. As retired Senior Detective Lei Ming Zhi struggles to meet this teenager with impressive martial arts prowess, a 15-year-old Go prodigy vanishes. Yan Vol 1 mingles mysteries and government conspiracies with Taiwanese folklore, magic, and mysticism to create a mesmerizing, fast-paced science fiction adventure.

 

Rating 10/10

 

 

To look inside see my preview of Yan Vol 1.