Zihvuda's Manga

An orphan girl dies and is reincarnated into the novel she was reading before death. She reincarnates into a girl who has to pretend to be her twin brother and enlist in the army because, said twin brother decided to elope with his lover the day before enlistment. In a country where the whole family is in trouble if enlistee doesn't show up for enlistment, and the family already has debt and a sick father. MC joins the army and gets immediately entangled with the villain of the novel and the protagonist.
This kind of sucks. MC tries her fucking best and pretty much everyone except her sick father is an asshole of the highest order. She wants to be happy with her family, well her dad since the brother up and abandoned her, and she's immediately being targeted by two guys who are pretty awful. I can't see this having a satisfactory ending where the love interest is redeemed enough for it to be ok for the romance to actually romance. The art isn't that great, and everyone takes stupid pills on the regular. MC can see the story is deviating and the people aren't who they seemed in novel she read ages ago, but she's unable to adapt to this knowledge. She's extremely strong, but doesn't really put her skills to use much at all and the art's not very good at depicting the action anyway, though it at least tries. I like the perspective switches they do in this, and the overall premise isn't totally bad, though pretty cliche, but it really really could have used a couple more drafts. The characters feel kind of childish rather than adults. The sick people are mostly props, and even if they eventually got cured I don't think they'd get any personality. Dad is just "kind man who has dementia and is mostly asleep 99.9% of the time". There's plenty of drama to be had from there without making the main couple have so many secrets and misunderstandings between them (all but one being the prince's). I hate the love triangle aspect of this too. Just all around unpleasant. I don't understand why the overall rating is so high, I don't recommend this, there's much better out there. Like Only Death Awaits the Villainess, etc.

School bullies as organized crime. A syndicate of bullies takes over the territory of a very strong guy through money and lawyers, the guy promises himself never to fight again and lives quietly while being beaten up by others at school. One day another guy, some big shot company president (around mc's age) shows up and throws a briefcase of money down. It basically gives mc permission to fight again and try to take down the syndicate that fucked him over. So he does, with the help of the company president and others along the way.

This story is super light on plot and heavy on the action. There's barely any character and you're just supposed to let all the action carry your interest. Unfortunately it isn't enough for me. The art is good, and the translation is alright, but the characterization is really light and the plot framing is very flimsily set up. The action held my interest for some chapters, but because the story is slow to give you anything else to hold on to, it gets old fast. As a result, I lost interest, so I'm dropping this and finding something more stimulating, which should be relatively easy with how little substance this story gives readers.
Also, yes, major bl vibes from the cover, and apparently very heavy bromance, though I dunno how good it could be with how bored I ended up after 17 chapters.

Honestly with a couple more drafts this story could have been really good. It's got everything on the surface level, but it's not got as much depth as I'd like. There's a bunch of things that could use more fleshing out. Like MC's friends, their personalities, watching MC properly deal or rather re-experience his losses one by one, rather then having most of them happen off panel. Having the love interest being all about control and then suddenly realize he's in love when he's been acting all psycho feels like a cop out and fake rather than a dark character actually legitimately falling in love. The plan and ambition was all there, but the execution could have used another couple drafts. I really like what this story could have been, how character driven it was. It's all rather a shame. This seems to be marked as yaoi, but it isn't. There's no smut, and the art is alright for action, but the kisses all felt pretty awkward. Especially when they were supposed to be passionate. The atmosphere was good in some of the more sexy scenes though. Also the way MC suddenly decides he wants to live after all also needed some work. Liked most of the characters, the villains were mostly one dimensional, but they didn't need to be complex when there was plenty of complexity from MC and ML. Would have been nice to know why MC was scouted. I don't find the story managed to adequately establish why or how MC was so indespensible that Mr. psycho had to have him on the team and went so far to recruit him. I also didn't end up understanding the big deal with MC getting recruited. Seemed like a really good deal for MC, so I really don't get why he was so hesitant. Like I can puzzle it out by making assumptions on my own, but it would have been fine to really show us that in story. Also I don't understand why ML was so flirty right from the get go. He's the type to do everything for a specific reason so I initially thought he was actively trying to seduce MC, but I don't think that was it. He didn't seem flirty with anyone else so ???
But yeah, wish is it was better. It's not, but I hope we get more stories like this but better. Either by the same writer improving their craft or by someone else.