July's manga / #Yaoi(113)

Dark guro about a psychopath angel of death type killer who was saved by the man with epilepsy when they were children. The nurse character already displayed psychopathic tendencies when he was young, and nobody knew that by saving him, he'd be able to carry out his torture on his savior. Lots of blood and gore, including severed everything! I didn't care for this since it was jumbled and didn't make coherent sense to me when I was reading it, not sure if the panels were out of order, or it was drawn that way on purpose to be confusing. I didn't really like the characters, and even the man who was tortured was not portrayed in a sympathetic light. There's no one to root for, and you just read to see if it can get any crazier.

Pretty dark fare, which is to be expected from the mangaka who also wrote Feeding Lamb. I liked this one better, but it still had issues with pacing and plot development. There's a lot going on and it's difficult to get to know the characters. I didn't really like any of them, like Manuel was supposed to be the sympathetic one, yet I felt he was too passive. It didn't follow him entirely either, it also followed Patrick, whose story was really weird and complicated. In the end, no one was really punished for their actions, in terms of the main four characters... Everyone else died horrible deaths though. It's a lot of gore and rape and all kinds of horrible things, but it was mostly shock value and didn't add much to the overall story, so ultimately, this gets 1 star from me.

It's really trashy smut, which is typical of Coolmic webtoons. No plot, flat characters, meaningless sex. The art is not that good, since it's in black and white but lacks the detail of manga. It's basically a poor man's yaoi manga. Yep. Skip.

It's short, and not great. It has lots of taboo content, but the art is atrocious, so it doesn't really do anything to help this already controversial manga. Story is basically non-existent. Seems more like a shock-factor manga than anything. It's not even the most disturbing thing I've read. Skip!

It's the male Master x Caster Gilgamesh in Fate:Grand Order. I thought this short doujinshi was cute. I've always preferred Caster Gilgamesh over Archer Gilgamesh anyway. The other two chapters that have been uploaded are not related, must be an incorrect upload.

Uhhhhhh. This is really bad. The art is poor -- the coloring and heavy solid lines are extremely unappealing to look at. The body proportions are off. People walk around half-naked or naked like it's normal, for fan service purposes, even when the drawings are atrocious and no one wants to see such abnormally drawn muscular bodies (except the rabid fangirls/boys). Anatomically speaking, more is not always better. There's a limit on how muscular a guy's body should be. Also, it's not realistic that every guy is that muscular. Unless I guess this is bara. Does it even make sense that a mage is that muscular, even more muscular than the knights and the kings? You do know that mages fight with magic and not with physical strength right? Anyway, the male lead is a passive idiot and he just goes along with everything. Not to mention he's acting completely out of character for his supposedly evil king persona, yet no one questions it. People seem to forget that he's a king sometimes, including himself. He doesn't even speak like royalty, he uses informal language. You know he's doing a bad job when his daughter sounds more like royalty than him. Even the young prince of the other kingdom sounds more formal. Also, I don't know which country would just call the King by his first name, people would always address royalty without names, since it's a title. You don't say King Kenneth directly to his face. Ugh. Also Kenneth is a terrible name. Vicar is not a name, it's a position in the church. Sigh. So awful.

Yeah, I'm not a fan of this webtoon. The art is not my taste, although I can see that it might appeal other people. It's overly simple and uses a faded palate of colors, that are pretty limited in scope. Lines are opened like they're leaking onto other objects. It's almost like a watercolor style but it's not drawn with the details of good watercolor style drawings, and lacks the bolder lines to complete the figures and objects. The plot is non-existent. A really strong prince is cursed to feel sexual pleasures every night, but he can be helped by having sex with a divine beast man. Sigh. The characters are not likeable and lack depth. The divine beast man is like a child so it bothers me to see them doing adult things, even if they're aware of what they're doing. He's also really stupid and it gets on my nerves. It's not "cute" or "adorable" to not know things and fail at learning them quickly. That's just being stupid and not adapting easily to the human world. I've read stories where non-human adapt and learn much quicker than this. The prince is supposed to be a badass but he's really not, he's so passive and weak and being a tsundere for no reason. Also I hate how they always don't communicate and that leads to "plot" or lack thereof. It's bad story writing to use forced misunderstandings constantly to advance. Like nothing else can happen? Such as external forces or internal struggles? Hating oneself for something like "Oh, I killed a bunch of people, so I don't deserve happiness" is not a valid point, especially the way it's done here. That's the same plot line that the webtoon "Truthfully, They Only Remembered Her" uses and it sucks there too. It's one thing to actually show the killing and follow the emotional turmoil after in detail, but it's another to just skip the killing and tell the readers about it. What happened to show, don't tell? It also bothers me how the prince looks so feminine with his clothes on and so masculine with his clothes off. I think that's poor drawing skills at play here, since if you know any anatomy, that's not remotely possible. That's just stupid fanservice at work. Yeah, skip this if you like good stories. If you just like sex, it sucks too since it's doubly censored with light sabers and occlusion, which makes no sense to me.

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.

Blackmail x Stockholm Syndrome BL. It's utter crap, both the plot and the smut. The male lead is pathetic and weak, and falls for the abusive male love interest, despite the latter not showing any form of affection towards him. There's a weird livestream angle about this to make this kinky or something, but it just doesn't work. They're underage (still in school) and they film everything without censoring their faces. Basically, in real life, these two people would probably get kidnapped and sold to sexual slavery or something, since it's easy to identify someone based on facial recognition. Plus, their viewers know their names. Also, I have no idea why they talk so much while streaming, since everything they say can be heard by the viewers, obviously. And they talk A LOT. Saying things probably no one wants to know or should hear if they're keeping up the pretense that it's consensual. I'm surprised the police haven't busted them down. Another thing, the laptop camera is only pointed in one direction and there's no freaking way that it can capture everything they're doing from such perfect angles. It's a little insulting that the artist thinks their readers are so dumb that they wouldn't notice that inconsistency and impossibility of what is happening. Honestly, they shouldn't even have used a livestream plot since it's not possible in the way they're using it, and it brings nothing to the table to make it interesting. The art is average, but the smut is so boring, I was just skimming to finish reading. Avoid.

This BL webtoon was only good for maybe the first 20ish chapters. After that, it went downhill really quickly. It was more of a pure boy's love and then degraded into shameless smut starting from Season 3. But even before that, the main problem of this webtoon is that the male lead and his love interest have barely any issues or conflicts at all. Nothing much happens once the two of them get together. Everyone is miraculously supportive of them and they don't ever get challenged or encounter obstacles. It's so boring. Also, a lot of the pretend obstacles that were set up get quickly knocked down in the most unsatisfying and anticlimactic manner, which made it so pointless to read. An absolute waste of panels. I don't come to care for any of the characters because they have no growth at all. The male lead is whiny and always worrying, while his love interest is super perfect and rich. They completely lack depth, and the story could have gone in a better direction to demonstrate growth and maturity. Instead, they're basically the same from Season 1, except now they're together and not avoiding each other (as much). I had a higher rating for this until Season 3 hit, when the author just went with sex every chapter. The only reason why I liked this initially was that I appreciated it taking its time with their somewhat boring romance instead of jumping straight to shameless smut like all the other BLs out there, but nope. It appears the author was simply on a leash for the first two seasons and now she's raging hard without restraints anymore. Basically, this devolved into the generic mass of BL webtoons that are plentiful and un-unique out there. Shame. Additionally, the art is lackluster and dull. It's not offensive, but it's very plain Jane in terms of art style and presence. Not memorable in any way.