Ariest's manga / #Fantasy(25)

The story is messed up, but at the same time really interesting. The author does a good job writing suspense and political intrigue. It's fairly accurate to the mythology, but with some very unexpected and highly dramatic twists that put the legend into a completely different light. And it's nice to see a story that focuses on plot and character development first, instead of romance. A lot of the characters are super interesting, flawed, but also really likeable. Overall one of the best webtoons I've ever read in terms of character design, world building and plot development. I only have two complaints: 1. there's too much rape and it feels fetichized 2. the story sometimes has a tonal issue, where the characters' reactions and tone of the story goes directly from something traumatic to something cute or funny. This is especially the case after rape scenes. And I don't like it, it feels uncomfortable and almost offensive how light the author and characters take something as traumatic as rape.

Decided to drop at ch 26. The art is pretty, the worldbuilding somewhat interesting and the main characters all cute or funny enough, but it feels like the story isn't going anywhere. Not story-wisely and not romance wisely. Like there's no real plot, it's just the characters doing random things.

Character art is gorgeous, some of the best I've seen yet. For the most part the story is ok, although a little lacking. It gets pretty cliché and silly at times to push romantic moments, and most conflicts are solved way too easily (especially romantic ones) making any and all build-up feel pointless. The ending however is terrible. It makes the MC look awful, just truly disgusting, the biggest evil in the whole story.