Posted in: Comics, Digital, Manga, Review | Tagged: beauty and the beast, Emily Bronte, jane eyre, manhwa, Manta Comics, romantasy, The Beast Within

The Beast Within – Business as Usual in Manta Romantic Serial

The Beast Within is a romantasy variant of the original romantasy story "Beauty and the Beast" with that extra spice you expect from manhwa.

Manta Comics has launched The Beast Within, one of a line of new romantic comic serials on their website and app. It's the kind of romantic manhwa you would like if this is the type of thing you like, and is a sign of the times. Romance is big. It's always been big, and Manta is one of the comics publishers that has the stories and tropes down to a T. Let's discuss.

In The Beast Within, Ray and her abusive older brother Hayes are driven out of their home as their household falls apart. Hoping to find shelter, they arrive at an ominous castle covered in bloody red roses located in the middle of nowhere. This is where Ray meets the castle's mysterious host Clodan—a dark, beasty man possessing dangerous charm and even more deadly secrets. Within the enclosed walls of a remote castle, there is no reason or logic left as Clodan desires innocent Ray. Things get hot and heavy very quickly, more than the romance series on other manhwa sites, and if you're a romance addict, this is the kind of thing you're here for.

If this sounds familiar, that's a feature, not a bug. Every romance or romantasy follows a set of tropes slavishly because they're exactly what the audience expects and demands. It's common for Manta comics to feature a downtrodden and initially submissive heroine from a disgraced aristocratic family who's underestimated and forced to be with a brooding, distant, smoldering aristocratic man. It's a direct copy of Emily Brontë's Jane Eyre (though her heroine wasn't submissive but extremely self-possessed). The male lead is always a variation of Mr. Rochester – brooding, emotionally distant, misunderstood, with hidden depths, who is attracted to the heroine and accepts her for what she really is. Modern romantasies like The Beast Within also pull from other stories, in this case, Beauty and the Beast. The arc of these romantasies are always the same as established by decades of romantic fiction: the heroine gradually discovers her strength and also softens the brooding hero after many instances of questionable consent that are the rocket fuel of the genre.

The Beast Within doesn't reinvent the wheel. It meticulously remakes the same wheel with variants, and vertical comics are now the home of romance comics, filling a huge readership that mainstream Western comics and graphic novels have ignored for decades. And it's Manta, so it's full of that extra dose of melodrama you always expect from manhwa.

The Beast Within is serialised on Manta.

The Beast Within

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Review by Adi Tantimedh

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7/10

A romantasy comic series that's a variant on "Beauty and the Beast" that does exactly what's expected to cater to fans of the genre, downtrodden heroine, brooding, mysterious hero and how their romance makes them better after lots of melodrama and hot and heavy scenes of questionable consent makes this another instance of Manta Comics being the home of romance comics with a global readership of tens of millions who can't get enough of this stuff.

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