July's manga / #Historical(88)

It's basically an isekai Cinderella type story, except Cinderella isn't so innocent, and she has more than one Prince Charming as possible suitors, I'm guessing from the cover and the first chapter. I can't really place why, but the female lead is very off-putting to me. It might have to do with how blasé she is about her situation, and she's manipulating people in an unsympathetic manner. Her stepfamily doesn't really treat her that badly, so I am not completely on board with how she wants to ruin their chances of living comfortable lives, just because her own character had been killed off early on. She's not likeable and she's not intelligent, coming off as brash and reckless. Her motivations are weak, all she wants is to be a golden spoon for the rest of her life, with no other real goals in mind. That's really unrealistic. Even rich people have lots of problems, happiness can't be bought, after all. The art is decent for this webtoon, on par with most shoujo isekai webtoons, but I personally don't like the designs of the characters myself.

I don't really like this webtoon. I had pretty high expectations, and this just fell flat as I was reading. The art is pretty decent, so that's a plus. Problem is, most of the characters look the same, since so far, there are only men introduced. Basically, you have to rely on the clothes to tell who is who. The plot is dumb. There's too many names being thrown around, and as you know, Chinese names are so hard to differentiate because you can't tell what is a place, person, or thing, if there's no background explanation, let alone remember it later, when it's brought up again. All I got was these two male characters were friends, but the white clothes guy forgot about their promise, and the black clothes guy went to war to bring him back to his country. The white clothes guy hates the black clothes guy, because he's a complete jerk. They're both royalty from different countries/kingdoms. The white clothes guy is the most inefficient and stupid ruler I've ever seen, but that's probably just to advance the ridiculous plot faster. He also acts super weak and girly, letting the black clothes guy pull him this way and that like a puppet. It's a bit disgusting to watch happen, because it's all so undignified. Although the art was fine, the paneling is somewhat poor, so it doesn't help the story progress smoothly either.

A pianist gets transported to the past after getting yelled at by his father for not being good enough, only to meet a young violinist who's being scolded by his father for lack of emotion in his playing. Only then does the pianist realize he's in the presence of the legendary genius musician that his father had wanted him to emulate. The art is good, the panelling is great, especially in the prologue. The two male characters aren't that annoying but not too distinctive yet, and I think it's a realistic type of reaction after such a strange encounter. Looking forward to more.

The art for this is really good, it reminds me of Eastern Palace Prisoner, which I just read before reading this one, because of the character designs. The passive lead wears white, while the dominant lead wears black. The art is much better in this than in Eastern Palace Prisoner, and it's slightly easier to tell who is who, but still not that much. Unfortunately, the paneling and pacing of the story is crazy bad, so it's difficult to tell what is going on. Chinese names are thrown left and right, without much explanation, making it super difficult to follow. Sigh, yet another poorly written historical ancient China BL. Still haven't found a good one yet... Maybe it'll get better later. The author needs to slow down so readers can breathe. I don't really care for either of the male lead characters. This is better than Eastern Palace Prisoner in every way though.

Ahhhh this isekai manga about cooking is hilarious, I really enjoyed all the chapters that are out so far. She was summoned to another world, but it turns out she isn't the saint, and instead was mocked for her chubbiness. She quickly learns to use her cooking skills to win over everyone in this new world, because the food they eat sucks. The personalities of the three royal brothers are distinct and complement each other. Art is good for shoujo manga, although not the most detailed.

Oh my god, this manhua is so funny. I love all the Chinese cultural references too, like the scholar placing ranks and the picture of the two of them in ideal fantasyland which was from Romance of the Red Chamber. That made me laugh so hard! I like how it doesn't take itself seriously, and it just runs with it. I only wish there were more chapters! The art is really good, and panelling is great. Really love this!

This is probably one of the better historical Chinese BLs, although I won't label it as such, since it hasn't obviously headed for that direction quite yet, but it's clear that there's an implication the two male main characters are going to be more than friends. But I'm not complaining, since the more obvious BLs which are focused in ancient China are basically awful except for the art. There's a strong mystery element going on as they try to solve the case of the murdered princess, but I find it hard to follow, personally. It may have to do with how quickly the clues are explained, and the line of logic isn't clearly illustrated in an easy to understand way. The art is alright, not the best, but it's easy to read through. There's too many Chinese names being thrown around so that's not too good. Hopefully, it will get better in terms of pacing.

It tries too hard to be funny, but it really isn't funny at all. The girl lead character is untalented and gullible, basically a poorly written character. There's no real plot as of this point, besides that she got married to a weak guy who died and she runs away. The art is alright though. After the random timeskip, this webtoon starts to make zero sense, and I can't even tell who the main characters are supposed to be. There's no plot at all.

A girl from Japan is isekai'd to a fantasy world where the men of the royal family can marry multiple women, and to avoid becoming Crown Princess, she decides to lose her virginity at a masquerade ball, only to discover that the man who took her virginity was the Crown Prince himself. Ugh, what a contrived plot line. The characters are all bland and one-note. The girl is an idiot, and many characters have commented on how stupid her plan was. I disliked the fall in love at first sight trope with the prince because it's unoriginal and wasn't even executed in a compelling way to freshen it up. Art is alright by manga standards, but not impressive in any way.

Wow, this webtoon is a classic example of wasting space. Literally, there is more white space between the panels than the amount of panels per chapter. If you add up the total area of white space, it would be probably 2-3x more than the area of the panels combined. It makes it really annoying to look at, with so much emptiness separating each panel. The panels are tiny as hell, and even the art is somewhat mediocre, it just smushes everything in cramped, small windows that don't fully bring the story to life. I'm not even sure why this webtoon was drawn in webtoon format, because it doesn't take advantage of the flowing nature of webtoons, where the movement is from top to bottom. This could have easily been drawn as a comic style with direction of reading going from left to right. The coloring and lines are super bold and dark, like Western style coloring, which I'm not a fan of at all. The girl in the cover image gets killed off in the third chapter, how misleading to put her on a cover like a feature character. The lore of this world is terribly explained, even though it spends a good chunk of the first chapter trying to explain it. Why is this magic tower is important and cool, and how come the royal family can't go in, but librarians like the plain male character can work there and read the books? Why is the library there like a regular library, with normal fiction on the shelves, instead of precious magical texts and ancient tomes? Magic Tower is the most lazy name I've seen so far. Also, I think the author shot themselves on the foot because they can't even get their characters straight. When the princess is introducing herself, she says she's the fourth daughter, but when the guards say she died, they called her the second princess. When I read that, I rubbed my eyes and scrolled all the way back up to make sure that they were talking about the same character. How can the fourth daughter be the second princess? She should be the fourth princess, if my math is correct. Well, it seems like this story might go for a Groundhog Day type plot, where if the main character fails his mission, he needs to redo the day over and over. If so, I'd be interested in reading how this goes. But so far, it's a meh webtoon. Update: The size of the panels get better with newer chapters, thankfully. It's no longer a Groundhog Day plot, which is a bit disappointing, since I'd love to see it in a webtoon or a manga, other than Re:Zero. I'm adding a star since this seems to be improving as it goes along, but I'll still have to wait and see if the plot will become more original from here. Update #2: Well, thank you for proving me wrong, author. It doesn't happen a lot, but I'm finding this more and more enjoyable with each new chapter. Kudos to you, here's another star from me. Give me more Groundhog Day shenanigans, and I'm a happy reader. Update #3: Finished. Seems like this was cancelled, as the ending was extremely rushed and didn't address any of the major plot lines.