nathandouglasdavis

A lot of my scores are subjective (well, obviously) and based on a gut feeling more than anything. For this manhwa, the art looks well-drawn by whatever objective standards I could try judging it by, but it doesn't do anything for me subjectively. It feels empty. I think part of that is the eyes and mouth. And it feels a bit too clean or something.

The story is pretty neat and deals with fighting against destiny--portrayed through the idea of a comic book side character gaining self-awareness and trying to go against the creator's wishes, even if it's just in small ways. Fe is still compelled to say the lines scripted to fem, but fe has been able to alter feir facial expressions a bit. There are several aspects of the story which are introduced to help show what's going on, but then which don't play a major role after that. For example, feir ability to see the future (fem seeing the "storyboards") helped fem realize that something odd was going on in the beginning, but after that has been irrelevant and unnecessary for the story. Likewise, the "dried squid fairy" character played a role in the beginning of explaining what was happening, but has served no purpose since then (other than, I guess, to show a more fatalistic attitude). And the author/editor notes that we see in chapter five were a really cool idea and were vital to show that feir actions can have minor, inexplicable effects on the real-world comic, but beyond that initial instance the few other author comments we see don't seem to have much point.

But I like it. It's a romance with an interesting dynamic because of the time skips and lack of complete control over their own actions. And I liked how it portrayed the sense of isolation that would come from an unnamed and uninvolved background character gaining self-awareness.

NOTE: This is only reviewing Season 1.