July's manga / #Shoujo(113)

The female lead isekai'd to the world of a strategy game, where she's the leader of a nation of spider monsters. This manga reminds me of another isekai fantasy strategy manga called "Isekai Apocalypse MYNOGHRA ~The conquest of the world starts with the civilization of ruin~" except the other one has a male lead. I enjoy this one more since I love strong female leads, and she's pretty promising so far. Besides it's only a strategy game when you have lots of units, which is what she has (the other manga he only has one unit). She's slowly becoming more cruel and vicious, but you still want to root for her, so that's good writing. The art was not so good, but the recent chapters look better and better. Hoping for it to pick up some more, and I may change the star rating.

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.

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!

Wow, this looks promising. Even as a child, the female lead is intelligent and mature, which is rare to see in lots of other webtoons that feature small children as leads... "Pomegranate Blooms in Spring" comes to mind, where they tried but failed to make the child character appealing in any way at all. Although the female lead character in Yue Chen Yin hasn't really talked much yet, she's very outspoken in her thoughts, and she's very cool-headed and analytical, which I greatly appreciate. The art is good, but the people look a little weird due to the overly pale color palate, everyone looks anemic. But it's still quite nice to look at overall because of the darker palate of the backgrounds and objects. I'm hoping for more good things to come. By the way, I'm super happy that the translation is much better in the second chapter, compared to the previous chapters. The first translator kept too many Chinese terms and it doesn't read fluently in English, sometimes you need to have creative license when adapting into English for the reader's sake! Update: Sadly, the clever female protagonist has been reduced to a constantly blushing clumsy girl who keeps tripping in front of her crush, Garam. I preferred the crown prince of Qing more between the two male leads, but it's already pretty clear who she likes. I don't like the Korean names and terms, because it's not easy to remember, but it can't be helped as the translator is working off the Korean version. Wish it could have kept the Chinese names...

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.

I think this webtoon is very promising. The female lead has good character and strong resolve to avenge herself in her past life do-over this time around. I can completely sympathize with her, just from the prologue. This is good storytelling at work. The panelling is amazing, it efficiently uses the webtoon format to convey sense of movement in time and space, I'm very impressed. The art is up there, although I feel sometimes it's slightly inconsistent in quality a bit, but not too noticeable. I'm hoping for good things for this to come.

I like this female lead, she tries hard to improve herself and is very smart. She's even aware of her shortcomings and lack of power to influence events as she is now, which is so refreshing to see. The only off-putting thing is she keeps wanting to be a villainess, which is somewhat childish of an aspiration. Although characters in otome games are divided into heroine and villainess, once you're living out your life as a character, you've become the hero of your own story. So there's no need to stick to a certain path. But maybe it's for comedic effect. The art is good and the pacing is great so far. I really like this manga, I hope it continues to be of this quality in storytelling.

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.