Khang Zhipa lives deep in the mountains of 18th century Tibet where he spends his days working as a doctor’s apprentice and being easily distracted by medicinal herbs. His life has changed slightly in recent days however as a young woman, Moshi Rati, has come to live with him and his family as his fiancee! As the two get to know each other, Khang shows Moshi around the village and lands that he calls home.
Looking at this summary, I’m sure that many other folks thought “hey this sounds a little like Kaoru Mori’s A Bride’s Story” and, while a little rude, it wouldn’t be inaccurate per-say to call Blissful Land a “Kaoru Mori-lite” story. Beyond the easily spottable similarities, such as the dynamic between a new couple and Ichimon Izumi’s art style (which is nicely detailed but nowhere close to Mori’s insane levels of detail), the overall vibe of these two stories is quite similar — both are slice-of-life, everyday tales of a relatively obscure country in a time no longer with us. In A Bride’s Story it seems like every chapter is devoted to showing the reader how something new is done (from baking to wood carving) and Blissful Land is much the same way but with a more narrow focus with most of the “events” relating to Khang’s doctoring duties (if anyone knows how accurate/inaccurate the traditional medical treatments Khang uses please let me know in a comment!). While the story feels exceptionally similar in many many ways, I do think that fans of A Bride’s Story would enjoy this digital-only, five volume manga as well.
I’ve always been a fan of quiet, pastoral stories, like A Bride’s Story or the works of English author James Herriot, so Blissful Land‘s setting and premise was up my alley from the get-go. I also enjoyed the couple of Khang and Moshi, who are within a few years of each other which is one dissimilarity to A Bride’s Story and I hope that the next few volumes flesh out their relationship a bit more. In some ways there’s too little conflict between the two of them but that could easily be explained as their families having made a genuinely good match personality-wise between the two of them; Moshi’s interest in weaving and dyeing (and her combined excitement/apprehension about how her interest comes off to others) made me think “oh I think I see what Izumi is doing with the characters here” and there is some chafing between the two of them and other side characters so it’s not as if the story is drama-free, it’s just drama-lite.
As mentioned earlier, Blissful Land doesn’t have the most lavish art ever on every single page, or the most distinctive, but doesn’t change that it’s all in a lovely style and it feels like Izumi was at least partially drawn to this setting based on what they could depict with the art. While the images look perfectly fine on a screen, with the art this is the kind of series that I would really prefer to have a print release for and I hope that Kodansha USA announces one in the near future.