November media log

[halfcactus]

Comics/Manga

青春18x2：重返最初的悸動
Hello, I'm a Witch and My Crush Wants Me to Make a Love Potion! (+ LNs)
I'm the Villainess, So I'm Taming the Final Boss
Matcha Made in Heaven (DNF)
Namidaame to Serenade (ongoing)
Snow White with the Red Hair (DNF)
Wake Up, Sleeping Beauty

TV

Arcane S2
萌妻食神 Cinderella Chef donghua (DNF)
7th Time Loop anime (+ LNs)

-

CURRENT/RECENTS:

Link Click cdrama
Halfway through now! The show stops adapting donghua cases after the second arc, and the "original" cases have been mid to... awful. The fourth case is basically an episode that's built on MRA talking points, taking "false accusations ruin men's lives" (of public transport molestation) to its extreme. It's almost a parody of sexual harassment storylines, wherein women are portrayed to be caricatures and their safety concerns trivialized in the face of a man facing unrealistic levels of violence (to give him Maximum Trauma, someone had left a brutalized animal in a box on his doorstep) because of unproven accusations, as if human rights issues are a zero-sum game.

Not to mention Qiao Ling's behavior is atrocious: she does nothing when her girl friend cries to her about being harassed on the train, but springs into action when her guy friend is wrongfully accused. She is so determined on clearing his name that she approaches a previous victim at school and pressures her to come forward about her experience...?

Other issues with the drama adaptation is that the time travel/transmigration aspect is somewhat removed... Cheng Xiaoshi can enter a picture and possess the body of a character, but he doesn't absorb their memories. In turn, the person whose body he enters basically just blacks out for the duration he's in there. This deeply changes the emotional impact of the second case (basketball case)—in the donghua the client gets to change the memories associated with the photos, but in the live action the client doesn't even remember those precious moments with his friends and mother because Cheng Xiaoshi had taken over his consciousness.


Changes of Heart (Honnou Switch) by Kujira
A sweet and fluffy childhood-friends-to-lovers slice-of-life manga with adult characters: When the FL, fresh off a painful breakup, complains about the lack of sex in her relationships, the ML suggests that she sleep with him, and she drunkenly acquiesces. Worried about ruining their friendship, she begs the ML to pretend it never happened the following day, but he asks her out on a proper date instead.

There are some stupid misunderstandings and weird cartoon-villain-y tropiness at the beginning where the main characters' exes conspire to break them up and the main characters retaliate by showing them the Power of Love, but the rest of the manga proceeds in a much more sedate way as we watch them navigate relationship milestones and conflict. The ML in himself isn't too interesting, but he's very sweet and chill, and the FL has distinct enough issues and personality traits to keep the plot moving.

It does get kinda rushed at the end, where a major conflict is created and resolved quickly with most of its repercussions happening offscreen, but I can forgive it. XD My friends-to-lovers itch has been scratched, and it was really nice having an FL who's figured out that sexual compatibility is important to her. (The bonus chapters are about a side couple who got married without talking about anything, and that one was more alarming than sweet.)

I also really liked how the mangaka draws the stations they're in and shows them walking down the underground corridors and tapping in and out haha. Romanticizing functional mass public transportation, as they should.

CW: NSFW (this is tagged as smut, so the leads are pretty much having onscreen sex every other chapter)