Recent webtoons
Jul. 29th, 2025 05:28 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
halfcactusBecause it was that sort of week.
错撩 Love by Mistake (ongoing, DNF)
Modern-day miscommunication romance between a financial journalist and the CEO that she thinks is her ex-boyfriend's girlfriend's uncle (...). I stopped after the get-together but right before the CEO finds out about the FL's initial ulterior motives because why subject myself to stress lol.
The art style is attractive, all aesthetic, sometimes empty, sometimes hot. I can't tell if it's disproportionate to how dumb the plot is, or appropriately superficial. I read the official translation that's on Webcomics App, where all the names are anglicized to an extent that I actually find them hard to remember! I only know the FL is named Sylvie Jaine... Everyone else has illogical and unmemorable names.
The pop culture callbacks were basic but fun—Pride and Prejudice 2005 and not!Nakashima Mika.
The Villainess Makes Amends (ongoing)
Shoujo fantasy comedy about a magical engineer who, with the help of her unhinged Saintess cousin, goes back one year in time to prevent her family's death. She leaves behind the corrupt system of academia and goes back to make amends with her estranged family with the goal of averting disaster and death. (In spite of its title, she's not really a villainess.)
The family stuff and the poking fun at isekai/regression tropes are super fun! Everyone in the family is a Character and in possession of the tsundere gene. The MC and her diva of a second brother have a believable sibling relationship in which their love language is bickering and insulting each other.
It gets a little less fun when the focus is on MC and the ML (especially when they're surrounded by one-bit villains), but still funny since the MC has nothing but derision over the ML's (the crown prince in disguise) shadiness in spite of all his effort to be as charming as possible. (The dynamic is somewhat similar to Maomao and Jinshi in Apothecary Diaries.)
I wish the running gag of the MC being a math-obsessed engineer were less elementary (as cute as it is that the MC loves wearing checkered print, I want her to discover more geometric patterns!) but, well, this is a shoujo. XD
Some great reaction images, like this one:
Couple Breaker (complete, ~80 chapters)
Modern-day petty revenge + breakup + fake dating romance about a couple who get revenge on their cheating exes by joining a reality/game show called Couple Breaker. I thought it sounded dumb... and then I binged the whole thing overnight. The MC, Taerin, is a popular and charismatic fashion design student whose goal is to set up a store where all the clothes are unisex/non-gendered. Her dream wedding fit for herself is a wedding suit. The ML is the neighbor who irrationally hates her.
I found the first half more fun because it was petty revenge and delightful mind games and breakup tension. Towards the later half, I kind of lost sight of the plot? The drama was brief but extraneous, the MC's "ploys" didn't make sense, and I was getting bored of the trash men. I wish we knew more about the ML's inner life—as amusing it is to have a ML who's defined solely by his relationships with women (his past GF, and his present one), it's not very satisfying. And I wish we had an extra chapter about the MC's shop because it felt so perfunctory for them to set her up to be this cool character with cool ambitions but to not give us any closure on it, as if all these interesting character things were written solely in service of the romance.
Overall: fun MC, fake dating, decent romantic chemistry, good breakup arc for the ML, great jealousy arc, but lacking in closure. The character writing is mostly simplistic, but with touches of complexity.
CW: dysmorphia + surgery, eating disorder + disordered eating—all of which are treated as insecurity and lack of confidence, though the manhwa is sympathetic to it
Till Debt Do Us Part (complete, ~80 chapters)
Modern-day contract marriage romance. WOULD NOT RECOMMEND. This manhwa doesn't live up to the drama of its English title! It's disappointingly generic and even worse, the FL's role is to fix the ML and his family. Dropped it when the FL got pregnant, which was at least pretty much near the end, but was still too much for me to deal with lol.
Plot: The FL owes the ML money. For nonsensical inheritance reasons, the ML needs to be married for a year, so he offers to write off her debt in exchange for a one-year contract marriage. The ML has abuse and abandonment issues which cause him to be a jerk to the FL (he cares for her, but goes hot and cold and is sometimes just mean); his stepfamily is equally dysfunctional and emotionally constipated. Naturally the FL fixes everything and becomes the heart of the family... long before the year is over.
The FL's own situation with her parents (loving and healthy but struggling with bills and medical issues) and a long-term past relationship that turned violent are only written as plot devices and left unexplored, as the focus is all on the ML and his family, because the FL is, idk, built different and overcomes everything with her light or something. An ironic line of messaging because the manhwa started with some sort of social commentary about patriarchal expectations.
错撩 Love by Mistake (ongoing, DNF)Modern-day miscommunication romance between a financial journalist and the CEO that she thinks is her ex-boyfriend's girlfriend's uncle (...). I stopped after the get-together but right before the CEO finds out about the FL's initial ulterior motives because why subject myself to stress lol.
The art style is attractive, all aesthetic, sometimes empty, sometimes hot. I can't tell if it's disproportionate to how dumb the plot is, or appropriately superficial. I read the official translation that's on Webcomics App, where all the names are anglicized to an extent that I actually find them hard to remember! I only know the FL is named Sylvie Jaine... Everyone else has illogical and unmemorable names.
The pop culture callbacks were basic but fun—Pride and Prejudice 2005 and not!Nakashima Mika.
The Villainess Makes Amends (ongoing)Shoujo fantasy comedy about a magical engineer who, with the help of her unhinged Saintess cousin, goes back one year in time to prevent her family's death. She leaves behind the corrupt system of academia and goes back to make amends with her estranged family with the goal of averting disaster and death. (In spite of its title, she's not really a villainess.)
The family stuff and the poking fun at isekai/regression tropes are super fun! Everyone in the family is a Character and in possession of the tsundere gene. The MC and her diva of a second brother have a believable sibling relationship in which their love language is bickering and insulting each other.
It gets a little less fun when the focus is on MC and the ML (especially when they're surrounded by one-bit villains), but still funny since the MC has nothing but derision over the ML's (the crown prince in disguise) shadiness in spite of all his effort to be as charming as possible. (The dynamic is somewhat similar to Maomao and Jinshi in Apothecary Diaries.)
I wish the running gag of the MC being a math-obsessed engineer were less elementary (as cute as it is that the MC loves wearing checkered print, I want her to discover more geometric patterns!) but, well, this is a shoujo. XD
Some great reaction images, like this one:
Couple Breaker (complete, ~80 chapters)Modern-day petty revenge + breakup + fake dating romance about a couple who get revenge on their cheating exes by joining a reality/game show called Couple Breaker. I thought it sounded dumb... and then I binged the whole thing overnight. The MC, Taerin, is a popular and charismatic fashion design student whose goal is to set up a store where all the clothes are unisex/non-gendered. Her dream wedding fit for herself is a wedding suit. The ML is the neighbor who irrationally hates her.
I found the first half more fun because it was petty revenge and delightful mind games and breakup tension. Towards the later half, I kind of lost sight of the plot? The drama was brief but extraneous, the MC's "ploys" didn't make sense, and I was getting bored of the trash men. I wish we knew more about the ML's inner life—as amusing it is to have a ML who's defined solely by his relationships with women (his past GF, and his present one), it's not very satisfying. And I wish we had an extra chapter about the MC's shop because it felt so perfunctory for them to set her up to be this cool character with cool ambitions but to not give us any closure on it, as if all these interesting character things were written solely in service of the romance.
Overall: fun MC, fake dating, decent romantic chemistry, good breakup arc for the ML, great jealousy arc, but lacking in closure. The character writing is mostly simplistic, but with touches of complexity.
CW: dysmorphia + surgery, eating disorder + disordered eating—all of which are treated as insecurity and lack of confidence, though the manhwa is sympathetic to it
Till Debt Do Us Part (complete, ~80 chapters)Modern-day contract marriage romance. WOULD NOT RECOMMEND. This manhwa doesn't live up to the drama of its English title! It's disappointingly generic and even worse, the FL's role is to fix the ML and his family. Dropped it when the FL got pregnant, which was at least pretty much near the end, but was still too much for me to deal with lol.
Plot: The FL owes the ML money. For nonsensical inheritance reasons, the ML needs to be married for a year, so he offers to write off her debt in exchange for a one-year contract marriage. The ML has abuse and abandonment issues which cause him to be a jerk to the FL (he cares for her, but goes hot and cold and is sometimes just mean); his stepfamily is equally dysfunctional and emotionally constipated. Naturally the FL fixes everything and becomes the heart of the family... long before the year is over.
The FL's own situation with her parents (loving and healthy but struggling with bills and medical issues) and a long-term past relationship that turned violent are only written as plot devices and left unexplored, as the focus is all on the ML and his family, because the FL is, idk, built different and overcomes everything with her light or something. An ironic line of messaging because the manhwa started with some sort of social commentary about patriarchal expectations.
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Date: 2025-08-03 09:32 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-08-05 11:12 am (UTC)