The Fall 2024 K-Comics Guide

High Society

What's It About? 

Sell me! I'll be the most expensive lady to obtain.

While scheming to get out of an arranged marriage, Cesare runs into Adele, a shoeshine girl from the slums. The two make a 3-month deal to help Cesare elude marriage. However, Adele is so different from the women he's met before that he can't help but be drawn to her.

High Society has a story by Gyeonu, with line art by Nong and coloring by Jiyeong and SuJin P. English translation by Manta Comics with adaptation by Proud. Published by Manta Comics.

Is It Worth Reading?

Everyone in this story sucks. You'll have to pardon me for being blunt, but that's the sad truth of the matter – High Society is a story with maybe one-and-a-half likable characters, and I'm not entirely sold on them either. Fortunately, one is our protagonist, Adele Vivi. Orphaned young enough that she doesn't remember anything else, Adele has disguised herself as an unattractive boy, working as a shoeshine boy to support herself. But it's a losing prospect, and not just because she has to pay protection money to the…shoeshine cartel? I'm not sure who they are, but the bigger issue is that if/when they figure out she's a beautiful woman, it's off to the brothels with her. And Adele wants more than that out of her life.

Enter Cesare Buonaparte, one of the least subtle indications that this story takes place in Fantasy Corsica. Cesare is unhappy with his forced engagement to Lucrezia Della Valle, and he's looking for an out. Adele offers him one: she'll pretend to be his sister and marry into the Della Valle family so that he doesn't have to! It would be perfect if only, as I mentioned before, everyone didn't suck. Granted, Cesare and Lucrezia are two very loaded names, most often associated with the Borgia siblings and ruthlessness in general. That Cesare's last name is the original of Napolean Bonaparte's certainly doesn't help with the symbolism, and he is truly a singularly unpleasant man. Adele, renamed Adelaide, is trying her best because she desperately wants to survive, and being married off to a random nobleman is better than being forced into sex work. But alongside Cesare, who can't seem to decide if he wants to kill her, marry her off, or sleep with her, there's also Madam Flavia, the vile and abusive etiquette tutor, and Lucrezia herself, who is, to put it mildly, a pill. It's not hard to see why Cesare doesn't want to marry her, even if he's awful himself.

All of this makes High Society a very fraught story. The stakes are high, Adele is surrounded by enemies and is attacked by groups of men and threatened with sexual violence at least twice, and she has no one to turn to for help. There's a very good chance that she actually is a noble, and the old malicious historical gossip about Cesare Borgia and his sister could still come into play – Adele does look an awful lot like Cesare, and given the range of character designs in this title, that's not a coincidence or a fault of the artwork. It's beautifully illustrated, too, and that makes it doubly frustrating that I didn't enjoy it. But I spent all fifteen chapters I read being angry, and since I don't enjoy that, I'm out.

Out of the frying pan and into the fire. Adele escapes her impoverished life as a shoeshine girl only to land in the even more cutthroat world of high society, where the gilded traps are simply harder to detect. Against the cartoonishly evil milieu of the upper class, Adele has an uphill battle to fight with only her wits to rely on. Not one person in this story is nice to Adele, which makes the narrative forgivable, even welcome, for opting to portray Adele as superhuman in every way—I don't see how she could avoid being crushed under these fancy nobles' shiny shoes otherwise. There's nary a crumb of realism in this comic, giving it the freedom to become as outrageous as it wants.

Adele knows nobody is going to help her escape from her dog-eat-dog life but herself. So when she finds herself shining the shoes of the duke by chance, she takes the initiative and offers up herself to solve a problem. He needs a girl, any girl really, to pose as his long lost sister—all so he can escape an arranged marriage and free up time for philandering. (If you haven't guessed, he's not a good guy.) Adele steps into the role My Fair Lady style, taking etiquette lessons from a cruel governess who pretty much wants her dead. For example: the governess commands Adele to walk everywhere in high heels—at least two sizes too small. Adele simply marvels at receiving brand new shoes for herself and walks everywhere with bloody feet until the duke finds out and gets the governess in trouble. Yes, there are many, many examples of people who are cruel to Adele (aka everyone she meets) getting their well-deserved comeuppance. There is not a single good person in this story, and it's fun to watch Adele topple one villain after another through sheer grit.

High Society is a completely over-the-top, drama about high class people chewing the scenery and behaving badly. It's easy to cheer for Adele because she is flawless, but her wit does not feel effortless—she's clearly a fighter. You'd think that Adele's “reward” for surviving in this world is the affection of Duke Cesare, but it's refreshing that she sees him as the jerk that he is. (For every other character, Cesare is so powerful and handsome that either nobody notices he's a sociopath, or their jobs depend on them not noticing.) When he comes onto Adele, pressing her down on his bed, our scrappy girl points a pair of scissors at his throat. I was hooting and hollering. This is simple genre fiction and there's no higher message, but it certainly is entertaining to the basest part of my brain.