TachibanaChiharu's Topics (176)

Oh great, another 5 month hiatus (╯°Д °)╯╧╧

Jaehyun - pink haired, main character who has a crush on Woojin
Woojin - orange haired, charismatic oblivious dingus
Seungha - black haired, Woojin's roommate who Woojin is sleeping with
Seungtae - black haired, the guy that's been msging with Jaehyun for 7 years and who is in Woojin's class that Woojin keeps trying to hookup with and failing
Woon-myung - white haired, waste of space later in the comic

At no point does Woojin hookup with either Jaehyun or Seungtae. During the story he's hooking up with Seungha (his roommate) and trying to hookup with Seungtae, but failing. Woojin even tells Jaehyun a hilariously misinterpreted story about the two of them (Woojin and Seungtae) ending up in a hotel room together.

This story is pretty average. It does some things well, and some things badly. Overall it's an okay way to spend your time for a middling amount of chapters. The main place it does well with is the pacing; I never found the story to drag or be so boring I was constantly looking at the clock wishing I was doing something else. But not everything in the story makes sense, and some of the character motivations are convoluted or unexplained, which really detracts from the plot/story.

(spoilers)
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Woojin is really the confluence of all issues in this comic. His relationship with Jaehyun is written to be unique among the male people Woojin knows, and this implies it should've been a story about how Woojin realized he was in love with Jaehyun, and them getting together eventually, but it wasn't written this way. Woojin ended up deciding he liked Jaehyun way too late in the story, after Jaehyun had already hooked up with Seungtae, which didn't even move the needle. This makes Woojin liking Jaehyun pointless since it can't affect the story, and only serves to apply stress to Woojin's relationship with Seungha, placing that relationship in limbo, and now you're not sure if Woojin likes Jaehyun or Seungha or Seungtae, or what exactly.

Woojin also doesn't really grow out of his childish lifestyle within the story (yet), and so it feels like his character arc is incomplete.

Jaehyun and Woojin also never really have a frank conversation where Jaehyun tells Woojin that he (Jaehyun)'s gay, and that Jaehyun's known he himself was gay since HS, and has had a crush on Woojin since HS. These two are basically best friends and Woojin is literally the last one to know that Jaehyun is also gay.

Also, I'm not even entirely sure that Woojin like-likes Jaehyun. It's implied in a few places at the end of the story, but we never get anything from Woojin's perspective to clear any of this confusion up. He may've just had an intense bout of jealousy come over him since Jaehyun's never dated anyone before and has always been emotionally available to Woojin up to this point, but now, maybe no longer. We really did need 2+ chapters of perspective from Woojin to understand him better considering how critical he is to the plot.

Not really related to Woojin, but.... Woon-myung, the white-haired guy, was introduced way too late in the story and was just a total waste of space. Jaehyun/Seungtae already had their adhesion before WM could even make a case for himself to Jaehyun. He then ends up pinging around with the other main cast throughout the rest of the story but contributes nothing to the plot. He doesn't even get a love interest of his own. He's just some albatross the author now has to deal with because they put him in the story and now have nothing for him to do, no role to fulfill. The author could've placed him as Seungha's new bf, to cause a little more drama in Woojin and Seungha getting back together, but nope. Nope nope nope. It's also never really clarified how Seungtae and Woon-myung seem to know each other... the author makes it a big deal that they've re-met at the end of one chapter and then the next chapter is a different scene, and it's never really clarified. The author just had no idea what to do with this guy.

As for Jaehyun's sins, why did he delay hooking up with Seungtae for so long when it had been implied for quite a while before Seungtae confessed that Jaehyun had developed feelings for Seungtae? It just feels like more time-wasting. This is really the biggest Jaehyun-related issue (aside from him never having 'a talk' with Woojin).

Honestly, this isn't the best story, but it's nowhere near the worst. I think it's a pretty ok way to spend the time needed to read it. Ymmv ofc.

This story is a good example of why you should ignore the rating and just give a story a chance to prove itself. This is probably this author's best work to date, of the stuff on mggo at least. The writing in it is top-notch. And yes, there's a death in the story, but it occurred before any of the events in present-day so it's not like you don't see it coming. I find this a silly reason to give a comic a low rating, especially given how much it adds to this story. Anyway, the point of this story is to explore closure and how to move on from events in your life that shatter you. It does a great job at accomplishing this. Ignore the rating and give it a chance.

Some spoilers ig --
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Suk/Kiwoon are 3/5 for me - problematic, lack of grounding in reality, and no reasonable engagement with their sexualities.

Suk being interested in Kiwoon immediately feels like it came out of nowhere and he had no thoughts about being gay or not, just rolled with it, which I never find very realistic in any comic. Kiwoon, you think is straight at first because he seems to hate the attention he's getting from Suk, then when Jaeha appears, you think ok, maybe he did have gay leanings after all with Jaeha, but then later Kiwoon flat-out says he was not interested in Jaeha like that at all, so then you're left wondering if he really can ever be interested in Suk -- is he gay/bi/etc or not?

Meanwhile Suk goes after Kiwoon hardcore and Kiwoon legit seems to hate it for the first half to 2/3 of their story (season 1, ch1-38), and at some point you have to wonder, when should Suk have to accept that Kiwoon is not gay and not interested? At some point, right? Otherwise he's just a creepy stalker who needs a restraining order. But then Suk successfully badgers Kiwoon into a relationship which doesn't feel very good at all. It didn't feel like Kiwoon really chose it, more like he just gave up trying to get away from Suk.

I also really don't like Kiwoon's treatment of Jaeha. Yeah, I realize they got into a fight and Kiwoon was hospitalized. But the actual fight, how it started, escalated, and came to blows was never really shown in the comic, so we're left guessing about the specifics of it. It felt like Kiwoon probably started the fight with his misinterpretation of the situation, thinking Jaeha killed one of the cats. Jaeha was not there to get into a fight at all, but to get help for the cat. So if Kiwoon started the fight and or escalated it into a physical situation, then really, Jaeha was just defending himself? Because of the lack of clarity in this situation all the way to the end of the story, I can only help but think that Kiwoon started a fight he couldn't finish and then cut Jaeha off later in the story while never owning up to the fact that he, Kiwoon, started/escalated the situation due to a misinterpretation. Feels kinda crappy.

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Hyun/Jaeha are 5/5 for me - working through trauma and past failures to engage in order to slowly resolve their issues and come to a place where they can meet in the middle and grow a bit.

Their part of the story is chapters 39-96 which is way longer, but it's much easier to read than the first part because you can tell from the beginning that the two really do want to be accepted by each other but that certain things keep getting in the way. These two go through proper character arcs, unlike Suk and Kiwoon, which is largely why this section of the story works so much better. Hyun needs to learn to express himself more clearly and frequently and honestly, and Jaeha needs to stop letting his pride get in the way of trying to connect with Hyun and accept the help that he so desperately needs. And to be fair, the help that Hyun is providing to Jaeha isn't even really Hyun's -- it's his parents' money, apartment, etc. He's just sharing what help he's been given by someone else with Jaeha.

I don't have a lot to say about these two because I think the author wrote this relationship much much much better than the first couple. On the one hand, it does feel like maybe their part of the story is too long; on the other hand, it does take a while to work through the kind of trauma Jaeha has had in his life, so it feels more realistic that it takes so long for them to finally meet in the middle. I'm fine with it, and I hope the author is able to finish the story someday ("to be continued" at the end of ch96).

After reading today's chapter (86), I have to seriously wonder about the idea of....
(barely a spoiler)
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pairing Cirrus up with Skylar. Like, Cirrus is legit crazy. I'm not sure Skylar really deserves the duty of having to put up with this unstable person or to bring Cirrus back from the brink, or back to reality, or to help him learn to behave like a normal human. A bit much to ask of a teenager. I want to see Skylar happy, not saddled with the duty of having to recover someone he isn't even interested in at this point.

I don't even know what Cirrus needs. Maybe a dad who gives a crap and actually tries, and/or a psych. I am not sure if finding someone who genuinely loves him will be enough. *scratches head*

wish i could've seen a little more wrap-up for all of the characters.

Note: I did read the whole thing

The writing's a mess here, but the author does have some few capabilities with it anyway.

Aside from the art being pretty good and visibly improving over the course of the series, the author is at least able to maintain a brisk pace throughout the entire run, all the way up until the very abrupt ending. The main character Kang Junho is generally likeable even if his character bears the cross of some of the most egregious writing problems.

I guess, since I do this so frequently, I may as well discuss some of the problems in this story. Although I probably don't have too many outside of what others have already said in the comments/topics/etc.
(spoilers; long)
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General:

- Lack of establishment of scenes. Some scenes occur in places you have no idea about, or where they are, for example, that basement-y warehouse-y place where the chairman is holding Jihoon at the end. Is it the basement of his mansion? Is it an unused warehouse on the school grounds? Who knows! And I'd also like to know how crazy-blue-hair happens to know.

- Jarringly weird flashback-flashforwards in many, many of the chapters. For example, a chapter will end on a cliffhanger, then the next chapter will show a character flashed forward a few hours regretting something they did, then it will flash back to what happened in the interim.

- Overuse of tropey/cliche things. Lee Kang is that typical high-octane top, and everyone he bones falls immediately in love with him (apparently including Junho). Parents killed by car crash. Evil aunt/uncle who take him in then blame him when they can't make it work. Don't-have-an-umbrella trope and getting-sick-in-the-rain trope. As an aside, it is so irritating when a comic leans so hard on a trope that is total superstition to make things happen in the plot, such as getting sick in the rain, which pretty much never happens in real life. How do these people take showers?

- Junho being a beefcake is all aesthetics, and was put in this story to satisfy a fetish, rather than for him to actually be strong/powerful. He should've been able to throw at least a couple of punches against Lee Kang before getting grappled and raped any of the many times he was determined to fight back.

- BL crazyworld stuff. Everyone's gay, like apparently Junho's friend from the baseball team is suddenly in love with the TA and is ok with boning him without any prior hints of this? Lee Kang thinking that no one will love him at the end of the comic despite everyone he boned being totally in love with him as stated in the story. Having sex everywhere in public and only getting caught when it's convenient for the plot. People knowing other peoples' phone numbers without them ever exchanging numbers. Lee Kang always noticing Kang Junho spying on him, but never vice-versa (I guess he has a Junho detector). And many, many more.

- Characters do things that make no sense. At the end, the chairman threatens to ruin Junho's life in front of Lee Kang, and then Lee Kang's strategy is to go to school and ignore Junho rather than tell him, and help him to protect himself. A beefcake (Lee Kang) being at all threatened by an old man with twiggy arms (the chairman) when the chairman seems to be threatening Jihoon by himself at the end of the story. Also, Junho going to help Lee Kang by himself at the end when he knows what happened to Jihoon's leg back in the day, getting attacked by a group of toughs. How about instead make Junho assemble all the beefcakes on the entire baseball and swim teams, give them all baseball bats, and take them with you? I think there's a pretty compelling argument to get some support out of them in this situation, even if there's some personal risk.

- This is an addendum to the above two, but: Do police not exist in this world? How about we call the police when Lee Kang rapes Junho, or when the chairman beats up Lee Kang, etc. How exactly did the chairman have Lee Kang's parent's killed anyway? I can't imagine the police are so inept as to not be able to tell the difference between intentional sabotage and a drunk driver (??)


Story specific problems:

- Lee Kang needs to be redeemed before Junho decides he's in love with him. Doing this out of order turns this from a redemption plot into a stockholm syndrome plot, which is no good.

- Kang Junho is both ineffective and inept throughout the entirety of his own story. All he can do is get mad, look like he's about the beat the stuffing out of Lee Kang, and then ... not do that at all and get raped instead. This happens repeatedly, and it's so aggravating. But it's not just the rapes, either. Junho's inept at coming up with any kind of revenge to ensnare Lee Kang in, or in otherwise improving his situation. He has no plan and can't think of one, and so his character just has to sit there and be at the mercy of everyone else in the story. The entire ending was orchestrated by swimming #2 crazy blue hair and Jihoon. We don't even get the satisfaction of Junho putting his foot down with Lee Kang and refusing his rapist-summons and telling him enough is enough. In fact, no one has a moment of putting their foot down and saying enough is enough in this story full of bad actors, other than maybe Jihoon (who is also ineffective throughout). This item in particular sucks so much worse because Junho is the main character, and throughout the story we desperately want to see him make any progress at all in getting out of his horrible situation. But he just can't seem to muster it.

- The author trying to pretend a sad backstory is any excuse for the bad behavior of an adult (namely, Lee Kang). It isn't. Lee Kang should've had some glimmers of resistance and made some attempts at breaking free from the cycle before or threaded in with all the sad backstory stuff that was shoved in to try and make the audience feel bad for him.

- No explanation as to why Lee Kang likes Kang Junho in particular, in any way that is different from all the other sex friends Lee Kang has that are all so in love with him. It seems like it's solely because Junho is the main character, and that is the only reason why. This isn't good enough for a character like Lee Kang who is way beyond the norm in terms of things that make him desirable/a good catch.

- There was no reason to make the TA a vindictive baby, taking out his anger at Lee Kang on Junho, when Junho was a victim the entire time. And keep in mind that the TA knew this because he had the video footage of at least two of the rapes, including the original/first one that incepted it all.

- Why is this story about a high-skill baseball player and swimmer, yet we almost never see either of them doing either of these things? We didn't even find out that Junho was a pitcher (I think??) until all the way into the middle of the story. At least we see Junho working out regular intervals. I was actually hoping early on that we'd have Junho play in an important game, and see Lee Kang in the stands smirking at him to set him off balance, but we never got any kind of scene like that.

- The conflict between the baseball club and the swimming club is made to be a big deal at the beginning and on into the middle of the story, but this is never resolved. I was awaiting that moment where Junho and crazy blue hair aka swimmer #2 would lead both teams to storm the chairman's place, but we never got any kind of unity between the two clubs, or resolution to their conflict.

- The story had an abrupt ending with no real wrap-up of the main romance plot other than the fact that the two admitted they loved each other in completely separate scenes (but whyyyyy). The story just suddenly stops right after Lee Kang confesses. The redemption of Lee Kang was probably the most important part of the story but it was cut off before it could really get underway. Jiwon in BJ Alex had an entire second season solely devoted to his redemption arc, and Lee Kang was way worse of an ahole than Jiwon ever was, and needed at least as long to clean up all the messes he made.

- Why did the author use the same name for their two protagonists? Lee Kang and Kang Junho. This is confusing, and nothing in the story is ever done with it, so change one of their names to be some thing different so it's easier to understand who is being talked about.

- Why is Kang Junho's character design almost exactly the same as the #2 swimmer / crazy blue hair? There is no reason to make them look that similar unless the story was gonna go for an "Lee Kang's in love with #2, but its unrequited and #2's got a girlfriend, so he jumps on Kang Junho instead because he looks similar" type plot. Doing this for no purpose is confusing. Give #2 pink hair or w/e to distinguish him some.

- Raping w/o lube via buttsecks is ridiculous. I'm sorry, but you generally are going to have to have lube if you're not going to show major injuries resulting from a buttsecks rape or attempted rape. And even then, given the size of most of these BL tops/semes, you're just plain not going to get it in without lube.

Well, I think this is more than enough. I do want to say most of the general topics have many more examples, such as the "doing things that don't make sense" or things happening that have no setup for them. In fact these things happened so often I was frequently shaking my head at it. I really should've kept a list as I read so I could post the entire thing at the end. Oh well.

Anyway. While the problems were incredibly numberous here, I did actually find the story to be very well-paced, which is something a lot of other authors fail at. So kudos there. I also liked the art, especially towards the end of the series. These are the only things which saved this story from a 1-star rating from me. Peace, out!

This story lacked a final character growth moment for Yoon, and the place where this would occur was out-of-order with the climax of the story, which is why it felt incomplete and a little bit unsatisfying at the end. Allow me to explain...
(spoilers)
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The story was building up to a moment where Yoon would care more about doing what's right than his own life. In other words, he should've finally verbally stood up to Kaminsky and told him that if he didn't back off, Yoon would leave him, and if Kaminsky was going to kill him (Yoon) for it, then so be it. And since chris was the obvious choice for most undeniably "good person" of the people Yoon knew, it had to be on behalf of chris.

Instead Yoon hits himself in the face with a rock during the scene where kaminsky is threatening to kill chris, which 1) sends mixed signals, because part of the issue in their relationship is that Yoon never clearly communicates his real feelings, and 2) puts Yoon in a position where he can no longer help chris; Kaminsky could just kill chris after that while Yoon is unconscious and then just abscond with Yoon to get him treated. This is why at the end of the scene we don't know what state chris is in and Yoon has to ask, and kaminsky doesn't really give him a real answer. Anyway, this rock-to-the-head thing was just a terrible plan for protecting chris, which is what Yoon should've been doing during that scene.

In addition, this scene with chris was supposed to happen at or just after the climax of the story, but instead it was too early, before the encounter with Kay. Chris, being a local cop, could've been involved with kay's attempted capture of Kaminsky (also: the fbi would not've just sent one dude to capture kaminsky; this is silly), and while just doing his job, gets hurt in a similar way, where Yoon then has to finally step in and put a stop to everything going on by telling kaminsky 'no'. But chris was off in an unknown state during this kay scene and Yoon didn't really stand up to kaminsky during this scene either.

This scene was stupid for other reasons unrelated to Yoon's character growth, namely: 1) kay didn't just shoot kaminsky when he had yoon, so what was the point?, and 2) kaminsky was supposed to be such an ice cold badazz that it seemed like he should've just shot kay without regards to him holding Yoon, but he didn't really seem to struggle with this at all. This whole scene was pretty dumb because it lacked tension and meaning because none of the characters were really at risk, and they never completed their character arcs (kay trying to be an fbi vigilante, kaminsky not ever considering what Yoon wants, and Yoon not standing up to kaminsky despite the risk), which they should've been doing in this scene.

Of course this is all in addition to other issues like kaminsky going after yoon's azz just because someone else tells him Yoon's gay, and kaminsky's general toxicity, and character backstory moments coming suddenly and too late. Here's an example of the last one: Yoon being gay -> ok -> cousin shows up and now we suddenly have backstory of yoon being raped by his cousin -> so now we expect yoon to be gun-shy of buttsecks -> kaminsky goes hard after yoon's azz -> yoon rebuffs him because trauma(??) -> but we find out later he's a boyfriend-hopping ho -> so now he doesn't have trauma about buttsecks but doesn't want to do it with kaminsky who he's been attracted to since day 1 because...? because he'll turn into a raging slut??? is that the reason the author is giving here?

Anyway, because the setup and setting was more interesting than many other stories, I still gave it a 4, even though it's probably more of a 3.5-star. I liked it alright, but it does clearly have some issues.

This is now available on english Lezhin (Tuesdays); thru ch21 is posted now. Please purchase a few chapters if you can, if you liked it.

I ended up liking this one after all, and I didn't think I would. It did have a few issues, but what comic doesn't? Anyway, I did have to stop in the 30s and wait until it was complete before reading any more. It's one of those series you just have to binge or you'll get too frustrated.

Seth had the better personality, Sam had the better character design, and Henry is more stubborn than he needs to be. This didn't need to be 70-something chapters long. ;P

I did my best to try and finish this story but the most I could manage to complete was up through chapter 11. This entire thing can be summed up by a combination of these two idioms: spinning your wheels, and empty calories.

The biggest problem is that this story has atrocious pacing. There are so many pointless filler scenes, and so many unrelated and unneeded dialog bubbles just loaded with text all over every panel that it takes 4 times longer to read this story than other much "longer" stories. Comics are a visual medium; use art and character expressions to convey meaning rather than giant blocks of text. Anyway, point is, it drags so badly because of all this filler that I just couldn't force my way through it and gave up after completing chapter 11.

The unfortunate part is that I didn't really dislike the story or the characters and their dynamics (well, Azuma wasn't great, but he's better than some I've read), as well as the world the author was trying to build. It just wasn't really woven together in a satisfying/engaging way, and my eyes were constantly straying to the scrollbar to see how close I was to the end of the chapter. Not good.

Some suggestions on how this could be improved. Cut some of the side characters, reduce the random side-vignettes, make side characters more compelling with budding romances of their own, cut down on the dialog and find a way to condense it into shorter sentences and fewer bubbles, drop the random dialog from background characters, use art to convey meaning instead of text, cut down on the old shoujo cliches, give Azuma real problems instead of made-up-in-his-own-head problems, have the two leads circle each other more rather than making it seem totally one-sided from Takayama's perspective.

I may try to come back and finish this someday. I really did want to finish it. Ah well; we'll see.