I had to write this because reading other comments made me almost skip this series and I'm very glad I didn't.

For one thing, the jealousy factor in other comments are GREATLY exaggerated. Unlike other romances I've read where jealously is mishandled greatly (such as possessiveness, temper tantrums, rapes, etc) there was NONE of that here. The two MCs whole worlds essentially revolve around each other so between that and the comments I 100% expected that type of jealousy here. It isn't.
Instead they sulk a bit, and openly show their love for each other when sulking doesn't work. They admit they're jealous to their partner and continue to move forward. In particular, there's an epilogue episode quoted in other comments "that caused him to bleed". No it didn't. Standard smut shots of stuff leaking out afterwards but it's not BLOOD. And the seme is appalled at himself for having anger sex, and the uke reassures him he wanted it like that. If you don't think anger sex happens in real life, you're living under a very sheltered rock, and this manga presented it in a realistic way.
Additionally, things like "seme was even jealous over a teddy he bought" no. Just no. He was expressing his feelings in a very cute way. After reading that comment I expected a fight or something but it was literally a cutesy one liner about not wanting anyone else to sleep in their bed. HOW JEALOUS RIGHT /eyeroll/.

Yes it's a slice of life. The drama that happens comes up, is dealt with, and forgotten. That's how it works in real life. A healthy couple isn't having a huge misunderstanding every 5min that spirals out of control. That's why people like this manga. It's a healthy relationship slice of life that doesn't go for very heavy storylines.

Now, it's deff not perfect. The initial misunderstanding doesn't make much sense. It's presented as though the seme knows what happened but later you find out he had no clue, and he immediately realizes it's his fault. That little plot hole didn't make much sense.
The whole going ~ 10 years without knowing each other is extremely understandable though. I grew up with a sister who hated me. All you both do it lock yourselves in your room if you are home, and spend as much time outside the house with friends as possible. We only talked when forced to over family meals. Which is exactly what happened in this as well. So to say it's unrealistic, congrats, you can't imagine it happening. But it does and it happens exactly how it was shown.

The storyline with Yoon was really unnecessary. Especially the epilogue. He had already been fired so it didn't need to show his life getting so weird and stuff. I guess the author thought he didn't get enough come uppance? But it wasn't needed.

"So many storylines she needed 19epilogues to wrap up loose ends" well no. All those epilogues did was wrap up the weird fact not all their friends knew, the job situation, and what their future looks like. Three things. That's generally what an epilogue is for.

Yes this story has some flaws, but none as severe or numerous as stated in other comments.

If you want a somewhat realistic slice of life yaoi that depicts what two people who love each other go through, this is a great read.

I really, really wanted to give this manhwa a 10. But alas.

Art
The main characters, even the supporting ones, are all really good looking. Their style is always on point, too.

My main problem is with the main characters' faces. While reading the first few chapters of season 3, I remember going "Wait why do they look different now?" Then I stopped and compared the drawings with season 1. Bruh.

In S3, the MCs' faces are smaller, thereby making them look way younger than when they were high school students. They still look good either way, but the sudden art change just irked me a lot. They looked older and more mature in previous seasons.

Thankfully they look much better in S4. D̶a̶t̶ ̶g̶l̶o̶w̶ ̶u̶p̶ ̶d̶o̶e̶😌🤚

Plot
S1 is good, S2 and S3 drag for too long, and S4 is pretty good. I truly hope the rest of S4 doesn't disappoint.

Main Characters
Haebom, in my humble opinion, is an utterly boring mc. There's barely any character development for him so he stays pretty much the same all throughout the story. The same goes for Taesung. He has no interesting personality aside from being a total simp for Haebom.

On the plus side, though, they have a very healthy and wholesome relationship. The kind that makes your single ass cry in loneliness.

***

I hope my review doesn't come off as harsh. This isn't a bad manhwa per se, it's just not as good as I thought it would be. But if you wanna read something light and fluffy to pass the time, I'm sure you'll enjoy this.

This webtoon is very popular, and both the 16+ and mature versions have millions of views on Tappytoon combined, and I'm sure millions more if you count all the aggregators. But popularity usually means middle-of-the-road fodder, and "Cherry Blossoms" is no exception. In my opinion, its popularity shows that the main audience for BL must be mostly high school girls and young college-aged women. If you're older (later 20s to 30s), you'll probably only like this if you're looking for something mindless to read after a hard day. I like fluff as much as the next girl but it should have some substance to it.

The story drags, and I fault the nature of serialization and its expectations on that. It's a slice-of-life, but after the core conflict is solved in season 1, and Haebom and Taesung are together, there's really nothing else to "Cherry Blossoms" but following them in their daily life. That's not really enough to carry a story through 127 chapters and 19 epilogues. So bits of easily resolved in 2-4 chapters "drama" is sprinkled throughout to add interest. Some are mildly entertaining and some aren't but all are dreadfully predictable in their outcome. The fact that the author had to add 19 epilogues to resolve various discarded plot points or elaborate on others shows the story is poorly crafted. One of the weirdest epilogues was about Mr. Yoon, the team leader at the company the 2 MLs worked at. That's how that story was taken care of. Like, WTF?

But my biggest issue was with Taesung, the seme. I like Haebom a lot because he was adorable and good-natured, I didn't like Taesung at all. He was possessive and jealous over anything and everything to do with Haebom. He was even jealous over a damn teddy bear that he bought for Haebom. Who is attracted to this? (Well, apparently BL fans because it's a common trope). Usually, I like possessive lovers, but in this case, Taesung's behavior was so... infantilizing. Haebom is the typical cute, innocent doormat uke. The way he acted towards Haebom made Haebom seem like a feckless, powerless, brainless damsel who needs to be protected and who can't be trusted to make decisions for himself. To make matters worse, Haebom literally does everything Taesung says. Sometimes that was cute, but it was mostly annoying by the end. But the author doesn't make Haebom even aware it happened, so what was the point of drawing it? Ugh. He was so unlikable; he was like a dog that only likes its master and growls when anyone tries to pet it.

The art was nice. Very cute chibi drawings which added a lot of comedy. The sex scenes were okay and very numerous. Haebom is the stereotypical effeminate, smaller bishonen uke while Taesung gets more muscular as seasons pass. I typically hate this type of paring personally, but Haebom was a likable enough character that his looks didn't bother me as much during the sex scenes. I will say the art was weird in the 3rd season; their faces were smaller and they were less attractive, in my opinion. It was better in the 4th season.

Overall, not that good. I wasn't bored, but I was happy when it was over. I wouldn't re-read this comic.

_____________
Edited in response to Yamara's review:

Remember, reviews are opinions and no one has any interest convincing you to agree but rather to share their own take, so you're entitled to yours as much as I'm to mine, but a couple of points.

Firstly, it is absolutely poor writing if you need a bunch of epilogues to close the narrative plot holes. One is fine, but not 19, especially when many of the holes stemmed from unnecessary additions that didn't even need to be there -- additions only put in there to give some kind of life to a meandering story that was serialized too long. Those epilogues were used to "right" content "wrongs", not merely to provide an update of the two's lives. I stand by that 100%.

Secondly, all petty snark about rough sex aside, it was blood. It was from a tear. It happened in the beginning of the scene, Haebom didn't care, and Taesung proceeded with approval to continue. Haebom's later at the end of the scene was not what I was referring to. It was used to emphasize Taesung going "crazy" with jealousy over the one-sided flirting. I wouldn't have had any problem with anything (I'm not a consent Karen at all) if it didn't seem like such an odd thing to insert. Because despite all his faults, Taesung loved Haebom, so it was very out of character, random and, frankly, dumb. But the author is a fan of these types of inclusions, i.e. unnecessary and unneeded.

Lastly, Taesung's possessiveness was unbecoming because he was exceedingly dull. He wasn't likeable, he had no pep, zeal or life. There was nothing to balance it. This was his only shtick, therefore, and it was annoying. He was brusque with anyone who wasn't Haebom (which never made sense because wasn't he supposed to be popular?) and he never changed through all 146 episodes. I said before, possessiveness can be attractive in BL, but Haebom's bland weakness only magnified my annoyance and heightened my distaste for Taesung's chilly demeanor. Sure, his silly jealousy over a teddy bear could be cute but I'd had enough of his behavior by that point that it made me like be like "Really? How more annoying can he get?" You can balance possessiveness with personality, to the point that you enjoy seeing how crazy they are toward their lovers, simply with better writing and characters, but CBAW doesn't have that. A fine example of successful blending is "Third Ending" by Chovom with the seme character Suh Yoonseul. But this is my personal opinion. The high expectations because of the popularity makes the flaws stand out, and my review is based on my guttural first impression.

... Last updated on July 25th, 2022, 11:38pm

everything is so perfect on this webtoom that it is one of my favorites! I've read it, read it again and again, and I'm looking forward to the new season again! the couple is one of the most perfect and full of chemistry i've ever seen! They are soo cute! I recommend it to everyone! it never gets boring, season 1 is one of my favorite because it shows so simple and genuine the beginnings feelings, in fact, every season is great! ( season 3 have so much cof cof se* x! from season 3 onwards there is a lot , and that is the best part .
And this was so wonderfull!!always with the story that holds you, why do you want to have a life like this wonderful couple! haha

... Last updated on August 14th, 2021, 3:37pm

All around nice story with a lot of heart wrenching moments. It wasn't a particularly thrilling webtoon, but I appreciate that nothing was over the top/unbelievable. The story was well planned out in phases, however, season 1 was a little frustrating to read. Haebom's meek personality and Taesung's inability to speak his mind made things super boring and dragged out. Of course, they faced many obstacles with their relationship throughout the series, but they were solved in very idealistic ways. I don't necessarily think it's such a bad thing though since it's nice to read easy stories like this every now and then. Especially with all the headache stories that are out there in the BL world. Regardless, Haebom's adorable character was enough to convince me to read through to the end.

If you are looking for a relationship that gets very wholesome later on, and has a bit of drama here and there that I reccomend this for sure! Both of them are so cute and the art gets so much better after season 2. The smut scenes in season 3 were great!

It wasn't 100% perfect but it's enjoyable.

Okay so there's low self-confidence and then there's this. It's really frustrating to see a protagonist not even try to stand up for himself and grow as a person. I'm guessing the story will get there, but I don't think I have the patience for that.

I also think it's very unlikely that two people could live in the same household for 12 years and essentially still be strangers. That's crazy - even if you actively avoid each other, you would still pick up on things about the other person.

And how do none of their classmates know that they live together? They're trying to hide it? Why? What's the point?

Dropping at chapter 26.

... Last updated on June 12th, 2022, 6:50pm

Honestly, ngl, I read this on a whim cause I kept seeing it everywhere.
To begin with, Haebom might be like a puppy, but he's a literal *doormat*, Taesung is the tsundere, I guess, who can also be possessive and well, obsessive, only mildly annoying in the first two seasons.
...but as soon as the third one comes it gets worse, cause that's when the smut is introduced, now I don't have anything against smut but it was just literally everywhere so it was just disappointing to go from the fluff to *that*.
I keep seeing Taesung being praised as such a high standard ML in a BL, and if that's the case that's really sad...constantly he's hands on with Haebom with his constant, "can we do it again" even if Haebom says he's tired who then goes along with cause he got tricked and it feels good. This is the literal overarching plot for the last 2 seasons, it gets really friggin old.
Then the special episodes omfg:

What wasted potential. If you still give it a go, only read until the end of S2, unless you like smut with ambiguous consent...or worse.

... Last updated on November 13th, 2023, 11:16am

This is top-tier! What I love about this story is that the seme (Taesung) has white hair. And his personality is cold and snob to other people except for his one and only!

I love that we were together with their journey from they’re high school student until they’ve grown into mature adults to the point that we saw them get married which is very satisfying to readers like me. Too bad that it’s not omegaverse because we would love to see their children if ever.

You know what’s the best thing happened in this story is Taesung’s father. Hihihi. I know, I love DILF and he’s very available!!!

Overall, this is satisfying to read and I bet this is one of the stories that most readers like and fave!

I read 10 chapters and I so agree with "Pandoreye" comment. Well they dropped it in chapter 26 and I dropped after 11 chapter, they have so much patient unlike me lol
It's felt like a 12 years old kid write it so ...

Both leads are UNLIKABLE like wow but
Omg it's just so disturbing, painful and annoying looking at that guy Haebom , he is not cute or anything fgs , stop calling painfully submissive, timed , clumsy aka ppl who can't even stand up for themselves and waiting for a hero , "cute" 😩
He act like a dumbo frustrated guy so that supposed big dom guy come and save him , just like all average shoju out there , frustrating and stupid female lead saved by the dom hero cold cool guy 😩 I seriously don't get the hype for this ...

... Last updated on August 3rd, 2023, 6:27am