ReviewRaptor's manga / #SHOUJO(200)

The writing paired with the art in the start is VERY shitty. With something as heavy as this happening in the start os the story, you have ZERO business drawing cutesy chibi faces unless the mood was supposed to be comedic; which it clearly was NOT. Both the art and writing are low tier. Something teens can enjoy for sure, but noone with any sort of quality standards. Art is just as low effort and below mid tier as the writing. So there is really nothing of interest to me here.

I'm really TRYING to like this but the further I read, the more this comic seems like swiss cheese, riddled with holes which are either plotholes, MacGuyver moments, Mary Sue moments, amateur-ish writing or a combo of them. The art cannot carry this. The clothes are the typical uggo 'I have no idea what people wore back then except for Barbie dresses I saw' types of clothing. The anatomy is wonky and the heads all have the same shape which make the eyes, mouth , etc. look like they have been glued onto a copy-pasta mask (which is really unpleasant). And the plot gets distracted by itself and ignores itself just to rinse and repeat all the time. This can be a nice read for kids and people who have no idea about good writing or the capability of ignoring it all, but not for anyone else. It's giving 100% "I was 14 when I wrote this, for my 14 year old friend group" vibes and I grew outta that target group long ago. :'D I think I'll be dropping this. The base plot WAS interesting, but not enough to drag it out and keep dealing with side-track type quests the MC encounters literally every other step. Not my thing but for younger readers this could be a good option to start reading these types of shoujo stories that go for longer than 5 chapters and have a more mature-type story focus. Definitely not recommended for mid to experiences readers tho. Sad to leave, the core story was really interesting, but I'll go look for something more up my alley.

So far I really like this! The characters are interesting and appealing for what they are respectively, the plot is VERY much my thing and the art is good. The only noticable flaw I find is that there are multiple moments in which a time skip of more than a brief moment is not really well established, so you can get confused wtf is going on since it can feel the scene is still in the same moment instead of minutes or hours passing between the two pannels. That could be done a little better. Other than that I can't find anything to critique so far. Hopefully this'll turn out to be one of the great ones. It has lots of potentially, as long as the revenge doesn't drag too much and the next 'arc' for the plot can carry well enough just like the revenge arc.

Very shoujo, schoolgirl romance type of story/writing, which I personally do not like since I grew out of that phase ages ago. XD Likely a nice, easy read for newcomers or younger readers. But people looking for top level art, grand story and writing will likely be disappointed if they have quite some experience with it all. Not my thing, would potentially recommend for newbies that don't like the shortness of a 15 chapter shoujo manga and want to read something longer for a change. Pretty sure that's the best target audience for this type of story.

I was really hyped the first time I saw a glimpse of this, but anyone but the sister is REALLY dislikable. The MC, the duke's personality (he has outstanding good looks tho, so I could deal with the shitty personality maybe). Not sure why they would use greek names and even take further reference to the characters but not go with the greek gods setting in any way. That's weird to me. I had high expectations but I think this isn't gonna be a as good as I'd hoped. The sister had more personality than the MC, so that's already a red flag in terms of writing. Shame. ;-;

EDIT: Dropping this at ch 78. It got even more time skippish and everything is just rushed and focusing on random sudden things without finishing one aspect from before and it keeps adding thos OBNOXIOUS timeline skips even in the middle of conversations. This is just shitty writing now. It was alright till the first 'arc' final, which wasn't even an arc, it was just random tbh. I hope the novel is better because this comic is honestly very badly done. Wouldn't recommend other than looking at art and even that is lower mid-tier tbh. :/ I now reached chapter 75 and I really have to ask: Is the romance part in the original source ALSO this badly done as in the comic? Their relationship went from failed flirting attempts or just badly portrayed emotions to 'suddenly Imma confess and we both have bad reactions to it all'. This felt WAY out of order, too random and confusing to see unfold all of a sudden. If at least a few chapters beforehand she was constantly reminding us that she had deep emotions, then sure, but there was barely anything at all in those 75 chapters. I think you can count them on one hand even. And I mean where the emotions actually got portrayed well and visually and per context of the situation made a clear step forward in the romance aspect of things. Is the novel the same? Is there just as much of a lack of emotions being conveyed in their romance scenes? Because if not then I really have to wonder what the comic creators were doing. They put so much effort into literally every other little fart that's going on, but the basically second-place focus (the romance) isn't being done even mid-tier well. It's quite the disappointment considering the writing otherwise seems to be decent or great even. So this feels really strange to me. As if the author (novel OR comic, I dunno) just didn't give a shit about the romance part being portrayed well or at all even. The romance up to this point is SO badly done in the comic, it's as if it was shoehorned in so it's not only a slice of life/political drama story. Which I could totally see being a thing tbh, it has the plot for it anyway.