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3.56 AVERAGE
3.56 AVERAGE
Enemies to lovers(?), reincarnation, forced proximity, fated mates (kind of), office romance, fantasy. What more could I want?
When I first picked it up, I actually DNF'd it because based on the first few chapters and the way the supernatural elements revolving around one of the characters being cursed by God and whatnot was presented was not something I could buy into. I just feel like it's really hard to execute stories like this properly. If a character is suddenly told by someone that they're cursed by God then they'd be way more reluctant to believe it than the way it was shown here. I can tell that this supernatural element is integrated mainly for the purpose of having a means of getting the characters to be together, but it all just felt incredibly wishy-washy. I was fine with it during the middle because I could sort of breeze through that aspect and focus my attention on the characters' relationship instead, but near the end of the story these supernatural elements came to the forefront of the plot (understandably so) and they were just executed so sloppily. It's as if these supernatural concluding points were just hastily put together at the end for the sake of not leaving any loose ends in the story, rather than creating a well-executed, believable conclusion.
During the last 5 ish episodes, everything was happening so fast which made the ending really rushed. Without getting into any spoilers, an antagonist character just does a complete 180 and changes their mind so quickly after a very abrupt "realization," and as harsh as it sounds this was simply just lazy 2-dimensional writing. It was just done for the sake of concluding the story as fast as possible and disposing of this antagonist character to reach the happy ending, rather than carrying through with this character's motivations and actions in a way that makes sense.
Everything around this supernatural plot, while initially tolerable, turned out to make the story very weak and required too much suspension of disbelief on my part, which is why I cannot rationalize giving this a higher rating.
You can read this manhwa on Manta.
Ending felt rushed and the backstory was sort of an after thought. You get a sense they are building the back story but then it’s over in one chapter and then we’re at the end. I did enjoy this but was over too quickly.
There is one thing I haven't talked about yet in this blog, which would be that, from time to time, I indulge in some webtoons. I read quite a few in some bursts of not reading them for weeks and then catching up in a binge, which is my favorite way to read 'em. Of course, there are those that I get so invested in I can read them almost weekly, which I do when I'm in college because it is a great decompressor and also light reading.
During the last weekend, I decided to start reading another webtoon that I heard about on TikTok, called Semantic Error (I'll talk about it soon enough - it's great!) and ended up needing to pay 4 whole euros to be able to finish that one. Realizing that I now had a month to read more comics on the app (Manta), I decided to give a shot to other BL stories I found, namely The Director Who Buys Me Dinner, whose art caught my eye for reminding me of a Tapas comic that used to be called Smurf's World but got changed into another name I don't remember.
The story and plot in this is mainly the romance, and it starts a little bit shaky on what it wants to do, in my opinion. It feels like the publisher wanted the story to get popular, and the way to do that is to make it insta-lovey or at least pretend it is insta-lovey. Dongbaek (I sure hope that's how you spell it) is called into his Boss' Office and is asked to go on a date. So, as you can see, it dives right into it. After this, a little over a chapter is spent on creating a very bland enemies-to-lovers storyline which is dropped almost immediately, and thank God it was because it wasn't working.
This story must've been pantsed, yet it works quite well! I'd label it a soft fantasy because some sort of curse seems to bring down the main couple. By the end, the story seems like it's going to create a love triangle, and it kind of did? But, unlike most love triangles I see in romance stories, I wasn't turned off - it was done for plot and to enrich the fantasy backstory, which was needed because until then it was only just a looming threat that apparently never made anything happen.
The romance is nice and the nice art is another reason I kept going - the main character is quite basic, probably to let one project themselves onto them so the more developed character (love interest) can get the very deserved spotlight. The ending is happy, which I thank the authors, but I was a bit mad when I thought that this story must've been a straight romance the publisher said "Those stories are already too prevalent, give me something newer and popular", with which came the Achillean romance. I do thank it, but it still irks me a bit.
I do think you'll have a good time reading it though.