July's manga / #Romance(117)

Berta, the female lead, is a princess but not of aristocratic lineage, and she has been married off to the king, who already has a wife that is his cousin. He's been desperately trying to have a child, even with other women, but has failed. Of course, this new female he's had sex with magically gets pregnant, because she's ~special~. Ugh. The plot is contrived and the translation is not good. I don't understand what they're trying to say most of the time, especially when it comes to important things. I also don't know if she is from a clan or a conquered country or what, because it's clear she's not royalty or of noble blood, but she's still considered a princess in her tribe or family, not a clue what is going on about that. The art is alright, as expected of most manga that is published. I don't know why she thinks she can go home after she gets married, since that also makes no sense. Once you're part of his Majesty's harem, you basically serve him for life, unless he lets you go. There's no evidence that is what he promised her, so I don't know what she's thinking. Honestly, she seems like a naive idiot. Or maybe that's the poor translation talking. Also, you can't accidentally get pregnant, unless both of you are unaware or not in your right minds when you do the deed. But nope, you two willingly and mindfully spent three nights together, so you can't pull that crap, saying "Oops I never expected this to happen!". No matter how unlikely, if you have sex, you have a chance of getting pregnant, ok?

The translation is a little off sometimes, it needs a better proofreader. It's mostly understandable, but I feel the urge to fix the grammar in my head as I read. Sometimes it doesn't make too much sense, but the plot is a little weird right now. I don't know if her family is alive, she mentioned her grandmother is dead, but there's no other signs of her relatives. She's only 18 so is she living by herself? Who runs the incense shop when she's at school? This confuses me. Also bullying is not ok for any situation, especially at school. It's a common trope to bully the person you like, but that's just stupid to do in real life, and I wish people will stop accepting this as normal behavior. The art is alright, pretty acceptable on webtoon standards.

The sex randomly happens and the male lead is completely willing to go along with it, no questions asked. He's a little too chill for me to be realistic. But luckily, there's actual story development with the histories of both main characters, and less focus on the sex. The art is alright for a yaoi manga, and I enjoyed reading the released chapters. It doesn't blow me away though, and the characters are still somewhat lacking. I'm giving it a below average rating, since the ending is crappy.

A famous actor wakes up in the middle of the night and is attacked by a woman in black. Like basically most men, he uses his raging hormones instead of his brains, so he asks her for her phone number, which she doesn't give him. They're doing some kind of surveillance of his neighbor who's involved in drug smuggling. Not sure where this is going, since she seems to be a terrible spy or secret agent to have been discovered so quickly. He even uses "charismatic" to describe her... Dude, that's like one of the worst traits for you to have to be a successful spy slash secret agent slash thief since the whole point is to NOT get noticed. Also, it seems her physical strength is below his, even though he's not trained, because he easily pulls her towards him several times. By the way, this webtoon is from the perspective of the male actor, and not the female agent person, so ignore the tags for "Strong Female Lead" people are putting up, because she's not the lead. She's more like the female love interest, to be precise. The art is weird. The backgrounds and other inanimate objects are drawn beautifully, but the actual people are not drawn in an aesthetically pleasing way. There's too much use of thick solid lines and the faces are too angular to be considered beautiful. But overall, the art is quite good. Update: Completed at 60 chapters. Was awful.

I really enjoyed the art for this webtoon, it has clear, precisely drawn lines, beautiful shading and coloring, and easy to understand flow of panels. It's not the most beautiful art I've seen in a webtoon, but it's way above average. The plot is slightly different from most current popular webtoons involving reincarnation, instead of going to the past, it goes from past to present. Honestly, that's how most reincarnation stories used to be until isekai become popular. Anyway, it is great there's finally a new chapter, and I'm looking forward to more. The female lead isn't a pushover either, so I expect good things from her!

Honestly, this webtoon was only good until maybe the second or third chapter. It went super downhill from there, and now I think it's dug itself into a hole so deep it can't even get out of it. The author wrote themselves into a ditch, apparently. Then decided to go ultra magic! on this story, and now it barely makes any coherent sense. The art is alright, but if you look closely, the artist is lazy at drawing everyone except the female lead. Only the female lead is carefully drawn, with constantly changing hairstyles and clothing. Everyone else is just bleh and sometimes, the art quality can decrease a lot in a single chapter, if it doesn't feature the female lead. The artist is also not that great at establishing shots or backgrounds, and draws far too many headshots and characters from the waist up. What really irks me is the constant freaking gushing of how handsome the male love interest is in nearly every single chapter. It's like the author doesn't know what else to make the female lead say when she's thinking to herself. Shut up! I am a reader and I have eyes, so let me be the judge, thank you. By the way, with my very eyes, I don't see him as that handsome that you feel the need to remind me every single time you see him. It also makes the female lead sound stupid and shallow. Basically, this does nothing to advance anything and it's a waste of panels. The male lead also thinks to himself about how beautiful the female lead is quite often, but not to the irritating extent the female lead does. Honestly, a lot of the chapters are just spent with the two characters praising the hell out of each other in their heads. What happened to "Show, don't tell?" I really detest it when the authors think their readers are so stupid that everything unimportant needs to be spelled out for us, instead of focusing on plot and writing actual believable conflicts. You know what, this webtoon is basically Twilight. You heard me! Except instead of vampires, everyone's a god. She's a god, he's a god, the maid is a god, and there's another random god wandering around somewhere. Uhm but maybe at least Twilight had some conflict with the werewolves, I have no clue where this pile of steaming trash is trying to go. There's some weird plot line about how he's a supposedly evil god, and then absorbed the other gods, and the last god ran away, but then he reincarnated and ... Yeah no clue. Why is that even important, since obviously he's not a threat to the last god if he doesn't remember he killed the other gods? Or maybe the conflict is that all the other gods are going to kill him, but then they made a point somewhere back there that he's super OP, so it's not like that's a real concern. Yeah, just avoid this. It sucks.

Female lead gets hilariously stabbed to death by an Eiffel Tower decoration while she's eating cake. One of the most creative ways I've seen an author kill off the character for an isekai. She thinks she's in an otome game, until she learns her real name in French, which is Marie Antoinette, and then she's like "Oh Crap!". Also, her Prince Charming has dead fish eyes, and is completely uninterested in her. Nothing is going as she expected, and I'm curious how she will change the course of history, knowing that Marie Antoinette will die by guillotine during the French Revolution. The art is pretty good, basically in line the standard of manga. It's not the most spectacular manga art, but it's fine as it is, for a shoujo manga.

The female lead has lived through 18 lives, and when she died in her 18th life, she wanted to remember the little boy whose life she saved when she's reborn again, and she does. Now she wants to see him again as she lives her 19th life. I think the interaction between the characters is nice, although i feel she was killed off too quickly in the 18th life. It didn't show so much depth in the relationship so as to make such a huge impact on the boy when he is growing up, in my opinion. Basically, the pacing was too quick there since it's clear the author wanted to kill off the female to rush to the next life for the main story, which I think hurts it. I didn't feel any emotion when she died to protect the boy, since the relationship hadn't been properly developed. It's just not that sad. I also think having 18 lives is overkill, because she doesn't really mention the details of her past lives and why this boy is so special, compared to everyone else she had met in other lives. That's the main problem with exaggerating the amount of living someone has gone through (also with people who are immortal), because in these types of stories, it's just difficult to believe that someone has met their fated one when they've already experienced everything life has to offer. So I'm not a fan of making someone immortal or lived lots of lives and remembered everything, because it raises too many issues that will never be addressed, in my view. It would have been more realistic if she had remembered just two or three of her lives prior, since that's enough to make someone tired of living already. 18 is far too many, and more is not better. The art is decent, but nothing spectacular.

Oh my god, this manhua is so funny. I love all the Chinese cultural references too, like the scholar placing ranks and the picture of the two of them in ideal fantasyland which was from Romance of the Red Chamber. That made me laugh so hard! I like how it doesn't take itself seriously, and it just runs with it. I only wish there were more chapters! The art is really good, and panelling is great. Really love this!

A ditzy, high-energy girl has a one night stand with an introverted guy who works part time as a costumed mascot, but it turns out they're classmates. They fall in love too quickly, in my opinion. The girl gets on my nerves, she's so stupid but everyone says she's the top student, what? Also, she's from a privileged family, so she is of a different social class from the male love interest. I don't know how the two of them will get along for a long-term relationship. I like the artwork a lot, it's very pleasing to read through, even if it's not the best art for a webtoon. Update: It doesn't get better, I honestly didn't care for this couple after several chapters of them arguing and whatnot, and then they magically work out their differences. It's just unrealistic. This couple wouldn't work out in real life at all, since their backgrounds are way too dissimilar, and personalities are completely incompatible. The girl has no motivation outside of chasing the male lead everywhere, like she has no life of her own to live, while the male lead just works all the time to save money. I've seen my fair share of real married couples divorce over money issues, and it's obvious that the webtoon is just pretending like this isn't a serious problem here. Update 2: Thank god it's over. I read the overly long author's photo essay, and that just confirmed why Yuna is a failure of a character. It's obvious that not much thought was put into her, and she just came out of nowhere as the author let go of all their worries. She's not a breakthrough female archetype, because this bubbly, stupid happy-go-lucky little girl as the lead character is overdone in the shoujo genre. It's even more problematic when you know that the author initially wanted the main character of Yuna to be a male, because they're more comfortable making a false male character over a female one, where they'd face criticism. That just goes to show you that the gender of this character isn't important at it, it's the whole concept of it. That's why growth was completely impossible for Yuna, regardless of whether she had been male or female, since there was no intent to develop an organic, multi-dimensional person. And to have to explain that in so many words tells me this author doesn't know what they're doing. Hopefully, they can produce something better next time, but this particular one was a failure.