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.
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.
Doctor’s Rebirth
A young Korean man who's dedicated his whole life to his job as a doctor goes to a war torn country as part of a doctors-without-boarders program. The war gets to their ramshackle clinic, and our MC gets gunned down. He wakes up in the body of a young child in um... murim Korea times. He's among a bunch of dead and injured people, and goes right back to doctoring despite being in the body of a small child. From there he meets people, figures out he's in the novel he was reading, meets a medicine master and learns the ways of this strange world he's now in. Really liked the beginning where martial arts magic was partially explained with modern medicine. Was really interesting and I liked that aspect a lot. As MC learns more martial arts however, that aspect kind of stops, as martial arts magic starts to take over and is no longer viewed through the lens of someone steeped in modern era science. There's occasional bits, but it's rare. It's a bit sad. Also, the passage of time is at first is kept track of very well, but in the later chapters I completely lost track of how old MC's body is now supposed to be and how long it's been since he reincarnated. I thought it had only been 2 years but at some point there was dialogue talking about him learning martial arts for "several years". This seems to happen a lot in this kind of webtoon, and for the life of me I can't figure out why. It always breaks immersion for me when they do that. =/ Translation ranges from Asura-scans, which is mostly good, to something that continually confuses pronouns for characters previously established to have other pronouns. Also bad grammar, but mostly understandable, so it doesn't ruin the reading experience. I really like MC, he's shown to more clearly struggle with learning and getting stronger, especially when he fights foes. Dude is always panting lol. There is some potential with side characters that feels mostly wasted as they aren't used. Like why didn't Mr. Archer who swore loyalty to MC go travel with him as a body guard? Dude is super strong and then the medicine master wouldn't have to worry as much? But no, friend can't go with him, but the fucking dog (that doesn't belong to him, why is he with MC still??) and the birds are fine. <_<;; I thought they were gonna do something with archer dude, so it's a shame the author wasted him like that. We don't even see him much anymore, what was the point of keeping him in the story? And that's kind of the problem, MC has his quests and goals, which were compelling enough to keep me engaged, but after thinking about it, MC is the only character I care about. Everyone else is kind of one note and just there (except for the master and possibly the fox guy). No-one else has any character, and you don't really end up caring about any of them because you don't get to know anyone. MC has people he cares about and who care about him but it all feels very superficial somehow. Anyway I do recommend giving this a read and seeing what you think for yourself, it's good fun if nothing else! =)
Delivery Man From Murim
A powerful martial arts master ends up in a modern day alternate universe. He finds things strange, wonders around, saves a child and eventually gets a job as a delivery man in exchange for food and board. Dude wants to live a quite life, so he doesn't show off his powers in society. This was an interesting premise and I wanted to see where it'd go. It... it turned into slice of life, which wouldn't be bad though perhaps misleading, but the story is just... boring. What kind of slice of life skips over character development and interactions??? It's inconceivable! Issues arise and are dealt with easily and I was going along with it cause MC is an absolute master and I figured he'd need much more notoriety before any real challenges come find him. But then the story just skips from one scenario to the next and you've got nothing to interest you, because none of the introduced characters are then fleshed out in any way. There's a guy MC offers to train and then some chapters later he reappears again and I didn't know who he was! I completely forgot him, he left zero impression AND none of the "training" was ever shown. Did MC even start training him? Did they already have a session? I have no idea, but it certainly wasn't shown if it already did happen. ( ⚆ _ ⚆ ) I thought we'd get interesting adventures happening while MC was out making deliveries, but no, it's skipped over, never see him making a hand off, he just goes and comes back. What is even the point?! This is so weird. I recommend finding something more stimulating to read. It doesn't even need to be better than this, hell something worse would still make you feel something. This is just.... nothing, from plot, to characters, to art. Meh to the bone. ఠ _ ఠ
My Dad Is Too Strong
I dunno I thought this was going to be cute, but it seems to be leaning towards harem. The daughter doesn't see herself as a daughter and the co.worker also caught feelings rather quickly, though would be believable to me in a way. I guess. Anyway, the translation is fine, the art is average, and I do like the mc so far, but the harem vibes I get from this are off-putting so I'm just gonna drop this at ch22 and find something more my speed.
The Protagonist Only Thinks About Falling In Love