Although Dong Hwa Kim’s protagonist in The Color of Earth, the first book of a nostalgic Korean manhwa trilogy,is a sweet-faced young girl, it’s emphatically not for children. Behind the timeless provincialism of its rural Korean setting and the subtly allusive illustrations is a Freudian-laced tale of a young woman’s coming of age and sexual awakening. So while the chapter about Ehwa’s first menstruation is a common theme in children’s literature, her discovery that all women have a secret “persimmon” between their legs might make even some adult readers vaguely uncomfortable.

Oddly, a short essay at the end of the volume calls this work “feminist.” Alas, the essayist seems to have an impoverished notion of the word. A female protagonist alone does not make it feminist, and it seems doubtful that anyone in the West would consider, for example, a beautiful widowed mother and proprietress of a tavern who just smiles like a benevolent angel whenever her regulars make vulgar, sexist remarks about her a particularly liberating turn.

Fortunately, none of it is to be taken literally. Make no mistake: The Color of Earth is a folktale in sequential art form, resonating with the cross-cultural power of myth. This explains why Ehwa’s maturation is so stereotyped, her romantic (but platonic) relationships with the young monk and later on with the rich kid seems so stilted and ritualistic. The painter’s courtship of her mother is even more ritualized still, the strengthening bonds between them symbolized by the growing number of paintbrushes he leaves behind to be hung up with pride of place on Ehwa and her mother’s wall. The characters are more archetypes than three-dimensional constructions and meant to be so.

This deliberate flatness goes for Kim’s artwork as well. The style is at once nearly his own and evocative of the Korean peninsula’s long artistic tradition, particularly in the use of simple but deliberate lines and expansive empty space when drawing panels with people as subjects, while conversely devoting tremendous effort and detail to panels with plant life or scenery. Intriguingly, some of the angles of the characters in their beautiful hanbok are strongly reminiscent of Goguryeo tomb paintings.

If there is any unequivocal criticism to level at First Second’s maiden voyage into the realm of Korean manhwa, it is that, from the standpoint of production values, the publisher has gotten off to a bit of a rocky start. Although the book itself is a lovely, high-quality trade paperback featuring French flaps and rough-cut pages, the monochrome image reproduction of the interior pages ranges from troublingly pixilated to unacceptably blurry. Lines ought to be totally crisp to the naked eye, the gray tones exquisite, and they are not. The degree to which these issues will bother readers will certainly vary depending upon the person, but it may be enough to discourage some graphic novel connoisseurs from purchasing altogether. Fortunately, these problems are all resolvable, and I hold out hope that First Second will soon do so for subsequent releases. In the meantime, though, I recommend giving the first installment of Kim’s trilogy a chance regardless: The story itself can be magical, even if the image reproduction occasionally breaks the spell.