July's manga / #Webtoon(264)

Oh, this is so cool. The set up was great, with the chat room boxes, which remind me of all those mystery horror text chat games you can download on mobile these days, since it ends the same way. I hope someone picks this up in the future, I'd love to read more. The art is probably below average, but it doesn't need to be stunning for this genre of story, in my opinion. Update: While the suspense of the story was well done, the ending seemed rushed and there was a bit of a disconnect linking the past and the present. There were convenient plot fixes for large plot holes in the form of a singular person, and I didn't like that idea. However, it's a decent read.

This webtoon has some weird medical magic going on, but I'll suspend my disbelief for a bit. I don't believe an A.I. can be better than a doctor at diagnosing diseases, unless it's a simple condition. Even in the example given, the A.I. had incorrectly diagnosed pneumonia instead of tuberculosis, which can be a deadly mistake. The professor who explained it waved it away as human input error, but this diagnosis could have just been determined by humans instead of inputting so much material for a computer to process. It takes far too much time and effort to file the various lab results and symptoms, when as a doctor, you can reach a diagnosis more quickly by observing, questioning, and touching the patient. It would be helpful if A.I. was used in conjunction with doctors to further speed up the diagnostic process, but it's impossible to just rely on A.I. alone for this. The doctors here all act extremely questionably and should not have even been able to practice as doctors, because of their complete lack of empathy. Even the main character is not likeable, because he instantly brags about how smart he is when he's introduced, saying how he's the top doctor in his school, when he's only in the first year of residency. They go about doing very strange things, such as putting him on a ventilator and taking him off of it when his lungs hadn't been damaged in the first place, they forcefully wake him up to question him before he's fully recovered by cutting off the pain medication, and they don't run tests on him when he's awake to see if his mental and physical capacities are normal. Also, did the A.I. just make him have permanent hallucinations, because it's a floating chibi figure that only he can see and hear, and that's rather disturbing. At least the art is quite decent. Hopefully it gets better from here.

I guess it's near the end. Overall, it's a rather decent BL story, with some dark elements like rape and murder. I'm only saying this because most BL I've read are terrible, with zero plot and just straight smut in every chapter, so I tend to favor BL that are dark and have elements that aren't right for everyone. The art is really good, it was fine in the beginning, but gets better and better as the artist worked more on this. I thought some of the psychopath talk was heavy-handed, it doesn't seem completely legit and is more fluffy than it is in reality. I read the author's note at 60.5 and it confirms that they don't really have a firm grasp on the medical or psychological side of their story, besides what you learn in popular media. The whole psychopaths have no emotions thing is a myth. Actually, they do feel certain things, they're not robots, but it's very muted, and they feel no empathy for others. I didn't really care for either of the main characters at the end, so that's why I docked stars. The male lead Kirin is used as a prop for the second half of the story, and it just focuses on the psychopath lover, who pretends to hate the male lead so he can turn the tables on another crazy guy. So starting in the last half, the male lead becomes less and less relevant, while the psychopath is revealed as the true main character of the story. This is again confirmed in the author's note, since they stated no one would want to read a story where the main character is a psychopath from the get-go, and they had to ease readers into the perspective of the psychopath after conditioning us to like him from the perspective of Kirin. That's very sly, and I don't appreciate that at all. It becomes even more problematic because the psychopath is protected by plot armor, and not a single character here is even close to wrecking any havoc on his supposedly perfect plans of killing everyone in his path to protect his lover. And then, even more unbelievably, no one is punished for their actions in the end. I don't feel a happy ending is correct in this scenario, but that's what the author wanted. They were extremely adamant about it, too. I think the episode of Criminal Minds with Frank and Jane was far more believable than what was presented here. I will be reading the side stories that will come in the future, but I don't have high hopes for them. Besides, an author who can't even communicate everything they want to through their story alone is doing a poor job as an author, in my opinion. You shouldn't need such a lengthy author's note to explain yourself, and you shouldn't need padding chapters to finish off what you started. But I appreciate the effort to bring some quality into the BL genre, at the very least. Update: Well, thank goodness it's over. The side stories sucked and lowered my overall rating. Honestly, this is just the author shooting themselves in the foot with extra unnecessary junk.

There's a lot of villainess isekai out there, but this one is probably the most insane one that I've read. You forget that she's an isekai'd character because she's completely into her role, playing the evil woman she is supposed to be. It's very unnerving to see, as I can't imagine someone who is not part of the original world acting so in tune with a person that was not them. Sure, you can say that she's experienced everything the original Roxanna experienced, which warped her, but I don't think it's possible to fall so completely in line with the entirety of it all. Yes, the whole Agriche family is batshit crazy, but she doesn't need to be, since she knows how it will end for them. Yet she follows their terrible ways almost entirely, the only exception being that she's saving the prince of the other family to avoid a disastrous demise. The webtoon tries to paint her as intelligent, but seeing that she reincarnated into this body from when she was a baby, I don't think she is all that smart. She didn't figure out any ways to thwart the schemes in her own family, and she let her brother die, knowing it was going to happen, and not doing anything about it. If she had isekai'd into this body more recently, I'd commend her, but as such, she seems like she didn't take full advantage of her precognition about future events. Her attempts to twist the actions of people around her are half-hearted, and more emphasis is placed on her poisoning herself and controlling poisoned butterflies. Granted, she has some great moments here and there, but I don't think she's a strong female protagonist, at least from what I've seen from her so far. There's a lot of missed opportunities, and she lacks agency, which is why the pacing of the story is slow. She wanders from place to place and often passes out from poisoning herself, but she doesn't let anyone else into her plans. She also hasn't shown any real ability to manipulate people, other the stupid half-sister, which was actually done by proxy by her half-brother. The father and older brother are puppet villains who do nothing except to act scary and serve as menacing fake obstacles, since they're only around to conveniently appear to hinder her plans. The art quality was rather inconsistent in the beginning, but got better and better with new chapters. Character designs are striking and memorable, it's pretty easy to distinguish who is who. The artist makes great use of the webtoon format to make very flowy panels, and the execution is just spot-on. Overall, there's too much dichotomy with the evil family vs. the good family, and it's just unoriginal. The female lead is not a sympathetic character, despite the author trying to make us give her pity points whenever she faints. The reason is that she doesn't have someone she cares about in this world that humanizes her (not counting the prince, because that's plot-related), and she does everything of her own accord, she's not actually forced to do all these bad things. This is also not the story in which an evil character slowly comes to change themselves by being shown love either...and if that was indeed the goal, that wasn't a real attempt on the author's part since the focus just isn't there. There are some good ideas here, but also plenty of flaws. However, this is one of the better isekai webtoons that I have read with a decent female lead who isn't head-over-heels in love all the time.

This is a wannabe Killing Stalking. It's very obvious from the character design and the way the art style tries to imitate its predecessor. However, it is in no way comparable. The characters may look like the protagonists they were copied from, but the personalities are completely different and for the worse. The main character is a male prostitute who follows all the stereotypes of the typical prostitute character -- he's horny, selfish, depressed, and melodramatic. He has no brains outside of trying to get into his kidnapper's pants, which is beyond disgusting in the manner it is portrayed. The kidnapper who is supposed to be the sadistic killer in here is just as weak, he plays along with the main character's whims almost 90% of the time, just stopping short of having penetrative sex with him, because he is in debt to a third character, a shady woman who also used to be a prostitute. The set up had potential but it just didn't deliver. The introduction of all these characters are a mess, they're all abhorrent people, and I don't care if they just all dropped dead, much less develop feelings for one another, which it is bound to lead to, since it's a BL. But hey, what can you expect from the creator of Behind the Desks, which was equally shitty, but in the complete opposite direction? Yeah, here we have an edgy pretend-psychological piece, while the former was a fluffy puppy-love with zero conflict that made my brains melt. Well, let's see if the author has any new tricks this time around.

Trash BL with an abundance of weird fetishes. Bara, inverted nipples, egg laying, breast pumps, humongous boobs for a guy. I don't see anything attractive about any of these characters, they're both annoying assholes. Just have sex already and let the webtoon end. Terrible.

This webtoon is full of overused tropes to create drama, but it does it well enough to make people want to continue reading it. It's like a Kdrama but slightly worse. The premise is that the main character, Jugyeong, is an extremely ugly girl who can change her appearance to look very beautiful after makeup. She goes around in her new life thinking that her new appearance will bring her happiness, but it doesn't. She meets a bunch of hot guys who are all too good for her, but they all miraculously love her despite all her flaws and shortcomings. There's breakups, car accidents, drinking, stalkers, etc. The art is fantastic when it wants to be, but very lazy at other times. Just grab your popcorn and read along, I guess.

It's a Daily Pass Original on Webtoon. The story is good, following a girl who manipulates people to get what she wants. The art style goes very well with the genre of this webtoon. I'm eager to read more. It really reminds me of this Japanese novel called "Journey Under the Midnight Sun," which is similar in premise. I believe A Jin is a psychopath, and not a sociopath, as it was stated in the second chapter. She shows no remorse, manipulates people easily, and is cold-hearted, which is not like a sociopath, who is prone to bursts of rage and inability to control their emotions.

A girl gets isekai'd to the life of a poor girl named Juvelian, in which she was never loved by her father and in her last moments, told her to die. When she wakes up in this new body, it seems that her cold father now loves her to pieces, although he's very awkward about showing it, and the prince who was supposed to torture her to death is now falling slowly for her. Typical isekai shoujo webtoon with nothing much happening, but lots of waffling here and there. Everyone is stupid, and the side characters are all catty gossiping assholes. Art is ok, but nothing special. I actually preferred the art in the promo more than in the serialized webtoon.

This is just an average mediocre BL. Starts off with abusive relationships, doesn't really get much better, no conflicts, lack of communication, and then boom, happy ending. Smut scenes were horrible, but got better near the very end with different frame angles. It's really nothing special, and I don't recommend it.