Gudatema: Love for the Lazy [Wook-Jin Clark]

I really have to admit, I just don’t get Gudetama. And I get Gudetama: Love for the Lazy by Wook-Jin Clark even less. Up to this graphic novel, my only knowledge and understanding of this egg-creature of sorts came from the stickers it has available on FaceBook. Which, I’ll give it this, those stickers are actually very cool and, interpretively, offer a wide range of emotions to portray when talking with friends.

In general, though, I found this story mostly just odd.

At this point, I don’t know if it’s a situation where I can say that the story was bad or if it’s just something where I have to recognize that it’s not my cup of tea. I feel like, mostly, I just didn’t understand the purpose of Gudetama’s existence. Other than, perhaps, to exist as the consciousness of the author, Gudetama was just really…strange.

I found that I just couldn’t get past the awkward feeling having Gudetama offer up advice and narrate the events going on throughout the stories. And in that sense, Gudetama actually kind of ruined all of this for me? What I’m left at the end of the book with is more feeling uncertain how to take the character and barely even recalling all the events that the various characters in search of love went through.

I don’t know what to think.

This book was hard to rate. I didn’t really get the point and, overall, everything just felt awkward. Maybe it’s well enough for me to chock it all up to the fact that I’m a bad audience for this kind of storytelling. As for the artwork, it wasn’t exactly bad. But it definitely added to the awkward atmosphere I got from most of the book. Thus, even the art wasn’t enough to really make any of this better for me.

I just…didn’t like it.

I was provided a free copy of this book via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

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