July's manga / #Romance(117)

I really like this twist on the isekai genre where the main character is not the one who was reborn, but her male love interest is the protagonist, and he's observing her as she grows. As first, the prince treats her as an amusing plaything, but he comes to realize that it is more than that. I like the slow buildup since it's realistic, instead of insta-love you see in most romance isekai stories. Hoping for more great chapters~

Eh? Ehhhhhhh? I was expecting the webtoon to follow the drama storyline for Season 1 of Well-Intended Love, but it's already veered off course. I actually liked the way Xia Lin and Ling Yizhou met in Season 1, despite it being completely stalkerish. He's kind of a stalker here in this webtoon too, but it seems overly forceful to me. We'll see how this unfolds, I guess. So far, not impressed with the new storyline and with the art.

I'm not that invested in the female lead. It feels like the author is attempting a strong female lead character, but she's so unappealing, besides just her appearance. Her motivations and personality are rather unconvincing to me as a reader to make me sympathize with her situation. If maybe the rumor which ruined her career previously was false, I could like her a little more than what was presented. Or if they showed that she's a changed woman. But she's still using underhanded means to get what she wants, so I can't feel bad for her when things don't quite go her way, and can't cheer for her when she succeeds. Art is just average, and I don't like the look of the female lead, since they purposely made her look ugly, but at some angles, she doesn't look ugly at all. Make up your mind on how she looks, that's just cheating. Update: The female lead went on a diet and now is restored to her former glory. Wow, that was fast. She doesn't even need to face any challenges, and things pretty much fall in her lap. That's just lazy storytelling. Also, her manager Eric is really annoying me. He's supposed to be a transgender (?) person that is typical in Chinese entertainment media as comedic relief but it comes off very insulting and does not add anything to the story. Yuck.

The art is quite good, especially close-ups of the female lead, very stunning work on the details of her face. The art in the prologue is awful though, I guess they hired another artist, or the artist improved drastically from the prologue to the actual first chapter. The female lead is quite bland. She's supposed to be a strong heroine type, but I find her boring. She doesn't have any strong motivations and is very passive. She's laden with guilt, but we don't actually see any scenes of her killing someone or such to understand why she feels so strongly about avoiding happiness. The male leads who are chasing after her have no distinction in their characters, so I don't care about them. Perhaps this will get better with later chapters, but so far, it's quite average. Update: Each new chapter is useless, with lots of things happening, but it also feels meaningless at the same time. None of the events cause the characters to grow or realize something new about each other, and it's just a waste of nice art. There's practically no story, and the female lead is still as passive as ever. She just sits around, and men flock to her, but they don't confesss their love, and then they leave, only for the next guy to come along.

Art is poor, most people are drawn in lazy chibi style with little detail. Protagonist and male love interest are rather ugly, despite attempts to make them look pretty or handsome, they're not, due to lack of skill in art. Plot is bland and not compelling, she's reading a book about her future and she dies, then has a do-over like other villainess isekai, but she doesn't seem to have a strong goal in mind. She treats her step-family like trash with the excuse that they treated her like trash, but doesn't do so in way that is sympathetic to the reader, nor witty nor brutal enough to be memorable. It's all quite petty. Since the set-up is weak, I won't hold my breath thinking this will get better as time goes on.

I'm actually giving this a bonus star because of how much I love the Mystic Messenger game, otherwise this webtoon would only get 3 stars. The art is not that great, it's average fare for most webtoons (like you must at least be able to draw like this for a webtoon). The new female protagonist is not that likeable, in my opinion. She doesn't really stand out in terms of all the other female main characters out there -- someone bright and bubbly and cheerful. It's been done to the death. Honestly, the female lead in the game had more character despite having limited lines, you knew she was a strong person who will stand her ground even when it's dangerous, but is also there to lend a hand to her friends. I don't think there's a need to feminize her character so much into the new Hana character. I did like how they strayed away from her being stuck in the apartment since I think that would be difficult and boring in a webtoon format. The only reason why it worked in the game was for suspense so you can reach that aha moment when you finally see your online friends face-to-face, but it's not the same in a comic. I'm not really feeling the same connection with the cast of characters in the webtoons, since interacting with someone on the phone is always different from in person, and it just doesn't really cut it for me. The author is also trying to split everyone's time evenly, so that also limits the depth of the relationships that are being built. Update: I'm so done with this webtoon's pacing. It just takes bits and pieces of everyone's routes, except Jumin's, who's entirely forgotten, and then plunges into a sudden romance with Seven. Now don't get me wrong, Seven is a cool character, and supposedly the "True Route" in the original game, but I don't care for the webtoon following it, because there's so much more potential for other characters to get the limelight. But nope, it's Seven all over again. Bleh.

A collection of short stories, with one main story about a girl with hypnosis powers, and two side stories that are largely irrelevant. The main story is rather dull, and I'm annoyed that the girl calls herself a psychiatrist. You know you need training and a license to practice psychiatry, right? Just because your father is a psychiatrist and you have hypnosis powers, doesn't qualify you as a psychiatrist too. That really bugged me since that just makes light of a serious life profession. Not to mention she only uses her hypnosis powers a total of three times only, and not well either. The other two side stories were so bad, I have no idea what happened after I read it. I don't know who any of the characters are, or why they like each other, or what. It was just a bad collection of bad stories. Shame, since the art was quite good for the first main story. The last side story had the worst art, and I can tell it was one of the author's earlier works.

It's a pretty light-hearted isekai, the OL female lead is transported to another world, and to earn a living, she must cook lunchboxes. She meets some important figures in the palace and learns that she is capable of magic. Everyone is now trying to figure out who summoned her in the first place. I'm sure the romance will be between her and the wizard, but it's progressing slowly so far, and I like it. The female lead is a little ditzy and super cheerful, but she's not annoying to me, like some other similar female leads are.

A young runaway feudal noble almost dies while being pursued by a rebellious faction, and is left for dead in a forest when an immortal wolf god finds him. He's saved and they start to fall for each other because the young lord resembles the wolf god's former lover from three hundred years ago, when he used to be human. I think the pacing is the story is too fast, but it's also not interesting enough to want to read the next chapter. I don't care for any of these characters, nor their backstory. They're just not compelling enough to make readers want to know them. There's no real plot and the art is not that great, compared to most manga out there.

The cafe owner who makes the worst coffee in the world is harassed everyday by a handsome Arabian prince who wants to make her his wife. It's an episodic comedy manga that doesn't try to be serious. Although, the limited cast of characters and lack of variety in scenarios makes this dull after a while. It hasn't been updated for many years, so this will probably remain unfinished.