July's manga / #Fantasy(145)

The daughter of one of the great seven heroes was abandoned by her father, but she survives with her ability to control dragons with her flute. She meets a vengeful warrior named Arjuna who wants to kill all of the seven heroes, including their offspring. They enter an uneasy alliance to team up and get revenge on the people who betrayed them. It's pretty interesting so far, and I have high expectations of this manga. I hope it doesn't go into romance quickly, if at all. The tense relationship the two main characters have is quite unique, and it'd be a shame to dive into standard tropes. The art is nice and flows well in the action sequences.

Female lead falls into the role of a villainess in a novel she wrote when she was young. It's cool to see an isekai into a world created by the person who died, instead of someone who is just a reader or player. I hope it comes into play more during the story, when she reflects on her own creation, that would add extra depth to her and her characters. The art is nice. I don't have any real complaints, but I'm keeping my rating average till more chapters are released. Update: This story is bland as heck. Nothing happens between each chapter, and it's just piling on random shit for the female lead to worry about without her actually accomplishing anything.

Eh. Mediocre BL that's thankfully really short, so even if you read it, it's not a huge waste of time. There's literally no plot. It's a vampire who rapes his assassin after breaking some weird curse, but then they both fall in love after sex that one time. I'm glad that's over with. I can't even imagine how crappy it would have been if it was longer. Characters have zero dimension because they just have sex and stuff. The art is alright, about average for a webtoon. It's nothing special though. The assassin's body proportions especially are out of whack to satisfy fujoshis who love men with huge chests that are physically impossible, I personally hate it. Skip.

No real sex scenes yet, but it's probably getting there. Still, it escalated really fast. The male lead gets lost in a mountain, and is rescued by the same wolf demon who saved him when he was a child, and they start feeling each other up. Weird as hell. The art is drawn in a very simplistic style, and while it's relatively easy to read through, I feel it's somewhat lacking. Perhaps it's the panelling and color palettes that make it feel a little subpar.

The art for the female lead is really good most of the time, but the art for all the other characters is kind of ehhhhh. Seems they put extra effort in polishing her up. Unfortunately, it doesn't really make her any more likeable. She's stupid, thinking it will be easy to find her lover immediately after entering a new realm (I don't know how the realms work, but there's no way she can find him that easily, like come on, use your brain a bit) and promptly is captured by a rival sect leader while also getting almost all her own sect disciples killed. Wow. Worst protagonist ever. She seems really shallow and weak too, even though there was lots of fluff to pretend that she's stronger than she actually is. The lore and backstory isn't explained well, so I don't know exactly why she's doing all this. Execution is poor overall.

I so, so, so wanted to like this manga. In fact, I was in love with it from the first chapter, but it went downhill pretty quickly after that. But, wow, that first chapter was beautifully done, with some of the best art and panelling I've seen recently. There were a series of panels without any words, just action and wide shots, so amazing. It really captured the beauty and dangers of the new world the protagonists find themselves in very effectively. The only problem is that the pacing is too goddamned fast. Like we were introduced to 4-5 main characters in a short span of three chapters. Slow down! How do you expect readers to keep up? Not to mention, this is based on the Water Margin, where there are 108 main characters or heroes, who will all probably appear in this manga too. I think this could have been good, but maybe it will find the right pace later on. By the way, I love how the girl character doesn't fight, instead, she commands the guys around her like a general, but I wish it was more believable, since there wasn't too much explanation to why they'd stoop to serve her if they're more powerful than she is. And her being the supposed savior isn't enough for me, since she doesn't have the kind of charisma to pull that off.

A collection of stories that are unrelated to each other, but do have cameos of characters from other chapters appearing, suggesting it all takes place in the same universe. Some of the twists are fun, but they're also too vague and not easily understood by readers, such as the first story of Bian Lian and the story of Xenogenesis. I'm guessing in Bian Lian, the weasel killed the actor to replace him/her, so it can take care of its savior, but the hints are too few and far in between to conclusively think that. I have no idea what happened at the end of Xenogenesis. It was set up to make it seem like a happy ending, but then it looped back to the beginning of the story, so now I'm confused. Did the guy and his chameleon capture other chameleons or is he abusing his chameleon? It's totally ok for an ending to be ambiguous, but this was a little too vague for me. I think the problem lies in the amount of breadcrumbs (details) so readers can pick up on the clues. The art is about average, but it suits this genre well.

Promotional one shot with some typical story about a girl who marries for political reasons, but then decides to go off on her own path. Nothing particularly distinguishing about her story, she seems like a basic shoujo fantasy webtoon female lead. She has some magic vision but since it's just a promo, it doesn't really go into how she'll use this power. Art is below average.

Female lead isekai'd to the world of a novel, where she's a villainess, and she wants to avoid her fate by becoming close to the male protagonist of the novel. The male protagonist thinks she's under his dark magic spell, so that's why she stays with him, when everyone else avoids him. Art is about average for shoujo webtoon. It does get better with the new chapters when it's revealed that the male love interest/male lead of the novel is actually a villain, and she befriended someone she should have avoided completely. It was refreshing to see.

This webtoon takes place in ancient China, where the royal palace residents are slowly being corrupted by an evil demonic being who is masquerading as the royal advisor. The only one who knows the truth is the crown prince, but people think he's crazy and he's on the verge of dying. He finds an unlikely ally in a female general and they join forces to take the evil in the palace down. So far, it's pretty cool and everyone seems to be pulling their weight and no one is a pushover. The art is good and it combines magic with martial arts well.