The Daughter of the Elemental King
This story is not meant to be taken seriously, but wants to incorporate extremely traumatic and serious elements and do nothing with them. I don't even know when the last time was that I disliked a story so much. I'm fine with unlikable villains, but this is... horrendous.
A woman and her summoned spirit king form a contract, fall in love, and then have a kid. The woman "makes" a child without telling the father-to-be anything, and she makes this child knowing she will give birth and instantly die and never have a chance to raise the child. The father doesn't know shit right up till the end. She drives him off with a misunderstanding and when she dies, he senses it and comes by and finds the baby, which he promptly abandons in another world. The woman left a letter explaining some things, but not anything about why she was such a selfish bitch to bring a life into the world without the consent of her lover and with certain knowledge she wouldn't be around to bear the responsibility of raising the child. Absolutely hate it! Irresponsible, selfish, horrible woman.
Next we have the would be father who doesn't notice this letter the woman left for him. The letter goes unnoticed for 17 goddamn years, during which the now abandoned child grows up in another world, in a loving adoptive family, perfectly content with their life. In the letter, woman says she leaves the raising of the child to man who didn't even have the chance to consent to being a father. I will not let this consent thing go. Elemental spirits in this story don't have genitals. They don't procreate through sex and generally are unable to have children. There's no chance for accidents of this kind, happy or otherwise! The selfish horrible woman asked for the elemental spirit King's aura and didn't tell him what she was going to use it for, or even ask if he'd want the child. She just did that shit and left it as his problem. I *hate* it.
Anyway, so the child's all happy in this other world, would be father finally reads the goddamn letter after 17 fucking years and suddenly decides to drag the child back, without any preamble. Because in the letter the woman says she leaves the raising of the child to him. FUCKING BULLSHIT!!!
He then proceeds to reveal to said child that he is the one that abandoned her, and she can't go back to her loving family (and HAPPY life) because now that he's dragged her ass back they don't remember she ever existed and all records of her have disappeared. This poor kid got told she was straight up unwanted *and* lost her family in the space of second and the author thought this should be something to put in her dumbass comedy webtoon where they play this whole thing off as a joke. I can't! I am SO angry!! The kid barely cares. She doesn't like this kidnapper of hers and wants to get away, but it's with the intensity and urgency of getting out of a light spring rain. This all should be extremely shocking and traumatizing and she basically doesn't even cry. Oh sorry, she does cry for a second when she thinks she's dead, but as soon as she figures out she isn't, it's fine. She's trapped with this asshole who insists she needs to be in his life, and I'm over here like this is wrong! This shouldn't be a comedy! This is a fucking horror story! A psychological horror! HATE IT!
If the child actually said shit back to the spirit king and properly hated him or actually properly angry with him I wouldn't hate it so much, but no, a teenager who gets their nintendo switch temporarily confiscated would be angrier than this kid. They barely care and are just all happy go lucky, when there is NO earthly justification for them to be in this situation. Hate it!
My fucking god! If authors want to include heavy serious backstories or events, fucking treat them as such, don't put this shit in a light comedy and then treat it as nothing! If you don't want angst in your fucking comedy story, don't fucking include trauma, tragedy and domestic abuse in this way you dumb fucks! The tone doesn't match even a little and it's just shit. It's way too fucking out of place and it isn't funny.
The art is pretty good, and the translation seems good. But I do not recommend this story even a little bit. It's terribly thought out. It could improve, I wouldn't know since I couldn't get passed chapter 7, but I highly doubt it. Just no. Skip this shit and read something else!
God Of Blackfield
An amazing mercenary is betrayed and killed during a mission. He reincarnates as a high school kid who'd attempted suicide and finds himself with a loving family and new ordinary life in south korea. He wants revenge and goes about trying to figure out how to make that happen.
This was interesting and fun at first, but unfortunately there's one thing that's a pretty big part of the story that I can't stand. It's harem-ish for one thing, and I hate that, but more than that, is the one love interest that's a high school girl that he doesn't immediately and outright reject. He strings her along, even though he clearly thinks to himself that he's 29 and implies the girl is way too young for him. Secondly there's a french 26 year old woman that kind of gets obsessed with him and her response to him proclaiming he's in high school is "well I'm french." Bitch what? How dare! Don't like this author's idea that all french women are pedophiles, or that the protag is stringing along a high school girl he's at least 10 years older. The rest of the premise was really interesting, but can't stand to idiotic romance in this. Just no.
I Became the Tyrant of a Defense Game
I dunno if it's the translation, the writer or both, but this story has problems. The art is pretty good, and lends itself well to the action, but my goodness it get frustrating to read this. There's some mistakes in the translation which are really goddamn obvious from the context of the rest of the dialogue and art alone. And the setting is really badly explained. I appreciate trying to keep the exposition dumps to a minimum, but the solution shouldn't be omitting the information entirely.
So the story is, dude plays and streams a retro game that no-one has apparently been able to beat in 10 years. He manages to beat it and is subsequently kidnapped into the game world to once again clear it, but better.
SO, our MC has played the shit out of this game and knows a lot about it. And yet sometimes it feels like he knows too much because the story doesn't bother to establish that he's a huge fucking nerd for this game and has extensively and exhaustively researched every aspect and thing, enough to know even the most obscure and weird little design and lore details. Because this isn't properly established or shown, it looks like he's pulling strategies and knowledge about characters and equipment straight out of his ass. Also, despite it being one of the first things I'd go over my mind, he doesn't go over how he beat the tutorial or the stages after that, but seems to approach it all like it's his first time, despite knowing basically everything about all the characters and weapons. It's weird and constantly takes you out of the story 'cause you're confused and wondering what the fuck is going on. There's even confusion as to whether the world MC is in is actually game-like or not. Because no-one else has stat windows or things, except MC, and look, it's just weird on confusing and to me at least feels like the author hasn't decided on which it is and is attempting to write it as both until they've decided.
Also I was under the impression that the game had a plot, so there was a story the MC was following, but I guess not? Cause the original plot isn't really referenced at all except for the ending we got to see when MC beat the game before. Like MC hates the tutorial stage cause it's hard as balls, but to the point where you get the feeling it was either a "meant to lose" scenario or he just... somehow never beat it? Cause he never thinks back to how he did it, just thinks about how all the characters he talks to died in his original run and how the tutorial is impossible to beat. But then if he never got passed the tutorial how'd he beat the game???? What?? Was it one of those opt out tutorials you didn't need to complete to start the game? What? I mean I guess he was more desperate cause he wanted to survive, but still. It's weird and confusing and I'm not here for it.
Life of a Magic Academy Mage
Apparently, according to this webtoon, grad students in korea get turned into slaves by their professors and aren't allowed food or rest. >_> Yeah... ok.
This is the story of a poor grad student who just managed to graduate and immediate gets run over and reincarnates into a fantasy world. He grows up and attends a magic academy.
He's OP, but not in a fun way. He's just naturally really talented, mature cause he already had the mentality of an adult and good at everything because of him being used to things thanks to being a grad student. Except that's bullshit. He's spent at least 16 years growing up in this world and not doing grad student things. He may have recollections, but because he wasn't actively practicing those things his skills and instincts will have deteriorated during those 16 years. Or however old he's supposed to be when he enters the academy. We're never told what he's a graduate student of, so that further muddies the waters. He barely struggles before getting the hang of things and it gets less and less fun to follow. He's also pretty bland. Merely "nice" and driven to get himself a career. But there's barely much else to him. The rest of the character's aren't that much better either. At the beginning he's supposed to struggle more than the average student because of a certain attribute he has, but it literally causes no issues for him. He's still the top of the class and learning things faster and better than others. I usually like OP protags, but because this is basically slice of life it makes it much less compelling and after a while it gets boring.
The art is alright, though there is a bit too much reliance on exposition narration rather than showing things with art. The translation is alright, but as said the art could be used show more rather than leaning so much on exposition. It's middle of the road, and therefore in the end, quite boring.
Villain initialization
A villain ends up time traveling back to when he was a kid, and all his loved ones are still alive, and his reasons for becoming a villain don't really exist. You laugh, you cry and you get giddy over the friendships that are the core to this story. It's so much fun, the art is amazing, and I'm sad it ended. Absolutely recommend! The complicated relationship between these two arch enemies is complicated but SO well written!
I wish the translation was better, it's passable for the most part, but I can't help knowing that I'm probably missing some of the deeper meaning because it's not great. BUT even so, I still recommend reading this. It's so fucking good.
The Archmage's Daughter