somnia's manga / #Shoujo(204)

Mel Sloppy (PFFF) is taken to the Heaven Dukedom because the demented family head mistook her for his long lost daughter. She makes a deal with her "brother" Damian - or more like is threatened - to play the part of Bleria Heaven, the lost daughter, to preserve the Heaven family reputation. And so begins a chain of what you can already imagine is a whole lot of angst for FL over her position. Her new fiance (aka ML) is taking advantage of her insecurities, using the truth of her identity as leverage to make her his obedient "doll". SPOILERS: Just like the title says the "real" Bleria is gonna show up at some point. But turns out she's just another fake who was prepared by an enemy of ML, to mess with his succession plans. Bleria is basically the key to inheriting ML's family's duke title of Allnight (l cannot with these names). And while ML &co are kinda aware and sus of the new fake Bleria (while becoming colder towards Mel - woops I rolled my eyes on accident there), Mel is left in the dark and convinced that she's gonna be exposed/disposed of. She fakes the suicide with, I think, Damian's help? Not sure about the details there, sorry, but she doesn't actually die. ML seems to be very hated by novel readers, he certainly earns it because in the first half of the story he's gonna be exploiting FL. He's gonna be more in love with how useful she is at first and have a more twisted-ish affection for how he made her the "real thing". After she fake-dies he'll realize he really loved her though and it gonna be begging at her feet for foregiveness when he finds her alive and well. He's recycled garbage, basically. There's a lot of tropes here that if you can't write and portray them well it's gonna start feeling cheap. BUT WE SHALL SEE!

5/ With this one you read first before looking at the rating. There isn't much, but it looks very promising already to me. The theme is theming.

A simple cute story, 10/10. Alexei lives with 'Pie' for 3 years during his childhood, a green skinned frog-like young woman with a heart of gold, and came to love her only to see her be killed by the knights who came to rescue him from the supposed cursed forest. He returns to his position as prince and then Emperor, heartbroken by what happened and gets a cruel reputation as "the demon Emperor". 20 years later he meets Pie again as Eleonora, daughter of a Marquis and recognizes her thanks to her affinity for beasts and her destinct accent. The plot is simple and doesn't beat around the bush, which is increasingly rare within the shoujo genre. You're here to see Pie & Ham reunite and be cute together and that's what you get. Every plot point or point of interest gets closure like Pie's reincarnation, her green skin, the forest, and Eleanora's family. I wouldn't mind more chapters with ML and FL being cute together or more lore about the forest, but I appreciate how concise it all is none the less. You can read the whole thing in an hour and walk away with a wholesome, warm feeling your empty heart.

A predictable and easy read. Caution, hot take incoming. I personally didn't feel the angst and was just rolling my eyes and skipping over panels every time FL and ML have some sort of misunderstanding - or act shy and have angst. Feel free to call me out here (I know I'm jaded af) but if it weren't for the art there'd be a lot more people complaining. The story is ok. I read through it without hating it and that's it. FL and ML's relationship, as well as 2nd ML, are the main draw here and >I< just don't see anything interesting in their dynamic. As I said I'm jaded af, I need either more lore or more politics, more comedy, or magic shenanigans. To specify more: FL is constantly getting piggyback rides from 1st and 2nd ML. They mostly do all the heavy lifting and serious politicing/fighting/revenge while FL sits there pretty. Sure she gets to kill a dude here and fight there but it's always these 2 who stand up for her and do the serious shit while she is conviniently left out. She wants romance, flirts a bunch with ML, but can't draw boundaries with 2nd ML and doesn't recognize his obviously romantic approaches. How conviniently naive of her. I didn't mind all this at first but it's turned into a pattern over 50 or so chapters and I find that so boring. There's not even good comedy in here despite how on the nose the plot and characters are. With that said, if you still enjoy life and like romance shoujo you'll like this just fine. Easy read means easy read at the end of the day (but I still read all this like: 1-50ish chapters with lil gaps, skip, skip, end of season one, skip, read more recent chapter, done).