July's manga / #Shoujo(113)

Ahhhh this isekai manga about cooking is hilarious, I really enjoyed all the chapters that are out so far. She was summoned to another world, but it turns out she isn't the saint, and instead was mocked for her chubbiness. She quickly learns to use her cooking skills to win over everyone in this new world, because the food they eat sucks. The personalities of the three royal brothers are distinct and complement each other. Art is good for shoujo manga, although not the most detailed.

It tries too hard to be funny, but it really isn't funny at all. The girl lead character is untalented and gullible, basically a poorly written character. There's no real plot as of this point, besides that she got married to a weak guy who died and she runs away. The art is alright though. After the random timeskip, this webtoon starts to make zero sense, and I can't even tell who the main characters are supposed to be. There's no plot at all.

I dislike this webtoon because the female lead is so weak and passive. She's to blame for accepting this terrible job, despite getting warned about how awful it is. And then she whines about it all the time, when honestly, her job isn't that big of a deal, since her assignment can protect himself far better than she can protect him. She's so useless and not professional at all. I can see why her employer dislikes her, although it doesn't excuse him from acting like a total asshole. He's too cold and abusive, going so far as to strangle her and push her into a pool for no reason, as well as smashing her phone instead of turning it off like a normal person. This webtoon is promoting unhealthy relationships instead of showing how to productively approach them and fix them, and it's sure going to romanticize it too, judging from the cover, although it hasn't gone that route yet in the actual story. I don't think it's a good idea to tell people that bad men are cool or attractive. Also, why is he completely Caucasian-looking, if he's supposed to be mixed Arab? He should have more Arabic features since those traits are dominant and Caucasian traits are recessive, that's basic genetics. If anything, he should not be able to have fair skin, blond hair, or blue eyes, but he happens to have all three of these, what the heck? It would make more sense if it turned out he was adopted or something instead. I am not a fan of how the art looks. The author chose to color all the Arab people a weird shade of orange, and it's really off-putting. I also don't like how the author tells the story in a weird non-linear fashion, with a lot of constant flashbacks without any context, which makes it very disjointed.

A girl from Japan is isekai'd to a fantasy world where the men of the royal family can marry multiple women, and to avoid becoming Crown Princess, she decides to lose her virginity at a masquerade ball, only to discover that the man who took her virginity was the Crown Prince himself. Ugh, what a contrived plot line. The characters are all bland and one-note. The girl is an idiot, and many characters have commented on how stupid her plan was. I disliked the fall in love at first sight trope with the prince because it's unoriginal and wasn't even executed in a compelling way to freshen it up. Art is alright by manga standards, but not impressive in any way.

Sigh, an unoriginal and bland villainess isekai with zero villainy. The female lead is a complete idiot who inexplicably, everyone loves for no reason, except for maybe the female professor. I have no idea why everyone is in love with her, because she's shown no remarkable traits or personal qualities that would justify why two royal princes are heads over heels for her. She's oblivious to it all, despite the author repeatedly reminding us that she's the top student of the year, blah. It's not even remotely possible that she can be the top student because she never does any schoolwork from what I've seen, and she's never attended classes, and she's only a freaking freshman who just started going to school, like what the hell. If you're going to make it believable, maybe you should have her be a sophomore at least. Or not call her the top student, because she's so obviously stupid. Also, why the hell does everyone call her by her full name? It's the like author is constantly patting themselves on the back for coming up with the gem of a name that is Louise Sweeney. No one else is addressed by their full name like she is. She even calls herself by her full name. It's disconcerting. I also think it's weird that the author made her a flower expert, because her family is known for growing flowers, but how can she be engaged to the crown prince if her family is from such a mundane and unaristocratic business? You can't expect me to believe that flower growing is highly respected profession in this world with no build-up about it. I'm sure the crown prince has his fair share of available maidens with nobler backgrounds. And then they try to have you believe that the original heroine is from a poor aristocratic family, but her lineage is much more pure and powerful than that of the female lead. Please. You can't have it both ways. It sort of feels like the author got mixed up with the details and tried to sort it out, but the damage had already been done. The art is completely average and doesn't warrant any additional comments about, because the panelling is also crap.

The art for this webtoon is awful, it's so lazily drawn with complete lack of details and over usage of chibis and thick lines with solid coloring. Yechhh. I don't know if the author is doing this on purpose to make the characters seem cuter, because they seem to do a good enough job drawing the serious character, which is the father, better than the rest. But then again, looking at the prologue, it seems most characters are drawn rather poorly, so I don't have high expectations for this in terms of art. Now, in terms of the story so far, it deviates from isekai genre by having the girl lead character read a book in her father's library, and she finds out she will die in 5 years. So she decides she'll live life to the fullest and enjoy whatever time she will have left. This is an uninteresting premise, since she lacks strong motivation, and I don't care that she will die, from how this was executed. Honestly, maybe in this case, isekai would work better, because the point of isekai is that your past life also influences how you live your current life. But here, it's an empty slate, because all she knows is that she's a kid who will die, and her father doesn't love her. There's no strong emotional attachment nor desire to live, because she doesn't even know what living is all about. She's only 5, for heaven's sakes. Honestly, she shouldn't even know what dying means, because she's far too young and sheltered as a duke's daughter to even know of death. And that's where this webtoon's story quickly unravels. She's too knowledgeable to be only 5, but acts too childish to be mature enough to know the concept of death. Heck, she even refers to herself constantly in third person, and acts all cute and stupid most of the time, with the most mundane thoughts running through her head 95% of the time. I don't even know how a 5 year old can read so well, and understand the concept of foster children... And don't bother explaining she's so smart because she has non-human lineage, because it never showed so far that being part demon or whatever increases your intelligence, since she's clearly not smart, and her father isn't known for being smart either. Nope nope nope. This is just bad across the board.

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.

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.

Promotional chapter only for now, to announce new series. Translation is awful, not very interested in the presented plot currently, since it doesn't seem to be special. It also doesn't offer any real set-up, besides that there will be drama and isekai. The art is not too bad. Hopefully, the translation will be better when the series starts. Update: The chapters released so far are interesting. It looks like modern China with some sort of magic system that has diplomatic relations with the West. Hoping the worldbuilding is expanded upon properly. Update #2: I'm really starting to like this series. It reminds me a bit of "Your Throne" with two strong female leads who have different personalities. Hopefully, it keeps up with the good work.

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.