Tender Violence

As a teenager I was absolutely certain I was going to be a mangaka. The plan was detailed and sincere and completely unhinged. What kept derailing it was the unavoidable truth that my comics, without fail, veered into bloody orgies featuring well-endowed insect aliens by page three. I could not help myself. Every story I tried to tell ended with the Beetlans conquering Earth and doing unspeakable things to the cast. It was a problem.

South Korean illustrator Yang Se Eun—better known online as Zipcy—takes a somewhat different approach. Her work is a collection of quiet intimate moments: two people in the same space, touching or almost touching, the small negotiations of closeness rendered in color that feels warm without being saccharine. There’s a specific kind of romantic illustration that collapses immediately under the weight of its own sweetness, and Zipcy somehow avoids that. The scenes feel specific. A hand on a shoulder. A shared screen. The geometry of two people who know each other’s weight.

Clicking through her portfolio I kept stopping at individual images, sitting with them. Not because they made me nostalgic for anything I’ve actually experienced, but because they made me want to be the kind of person who has. That’s the particular ache of good romantic art—it doesn’t remind you of what you had, it reminds you of what you’ve missed. Meanwhile, somewhere in a drawer, Haruka is still on page three, and the Beetlans are coming.