Angel Diary: Volume 13

by YunHee Lee (story) and Kara (a.k.a. Yoon-Gyeong Kim and Eun-Sook Jeong, art), 156 pages

Chapters focusing on the stories of three side characters fill up this final volume of the series. We learn how Bi-Wal's right-hand-man came into his service, how Dong-Young met two of her Guardians, and about a classmate's experience with one of those Guardians.

Apparently, this series almost didn't get to finish in Korea, with the creators having to find a new publisher partway through. I'm glad they were able to finish their story. The telling is complicated and a little disjointed at times, and the large cast of characters (and their job titles) can be hard to keep straight, but if you can read the series without too much of a lag between volumes, it makes more sense. :)

Angel Diary: Volume 12

by YunHee Lee (story) and Kara (a.k.a. Yoon-Gyeong Kim and Eun-Sook Jeong, art), 181 pages

Dong-Young runs away from home (that would be Heaven) and falls in love with a boy, Bi-Wal, at the school she orders her minions to hide her in. It's only after-the-fact that she realizes he is the arranged fiancé she'd been running away from in the first place and not so awful as her imagination had made him out to be. Just because he's the next King of Hell doesn't mean he's a monster. She decides that the only way to make everything right that long-held misconceptions and misunderstandings have made wrong is to become the next Queen of Heaven and change some laws. So she asks Bi-Wal to go home to Hell and wait for her while she returns to Heaven and works toward her goal.

This series is a little hard to follow, politics-wise, and there are lots and lots of characters to keep straight, but it's fun and fluffy and even made me a little sniffley once a few volumes back. The main story mostly wraps up in this penultimate volume along with two extended side stories on the pasts and futures of a number of the characters.