Admittedly, the first few chapters were a bit iffy (though it could just be because the first review planted some seeds of prejudice into me lol), but it genuinely solidifies after we get over Nari's inferiority complex. It doesn't wholly disappear at once but instead is made so that her character development and how she values her friends are more drastic but subtle.
There's also quite a bit of melodrama that lasts a considerable number of chapters per arc, but they always end heartwarmingly and the four's friendship is concrete despite some rough patches around the beginning. The main characters are lovable even if they can be frustrating one way or another. You can see how they grow to care for and defend each other. They each have their own role in the group, which makes for an entertaining dynamic.

... Last updated on January 18th, 2019, 9:31pm

Four high school girls become friends, despite their different backgrounds, storys and personalitys.
Will experience high school strugles while we get to know the story of each of them. Even secondary characters.
Its funny, the romance is REALLY tiny, and the friendship betwen them is the BEST part. Trusting each other is something they'll have to learn.

Unlike the first reviewer, if you stick out past the first couple of chapters, you can really see just how much these characters grow and learn from each other. If there's anything else you need to know about this series, just know that everyone - not just the main leads - get the chance to grow up and develop beyond what they're initially seen as.

What's always annoyed me about shoujo/female-targeted series is that the series rarely talks about girls' friendships and how much they can grow from just that. Because each girl is so, so different, at first, and they really don't understand each other. They merely become friends by circumstance and ostracisation from the rest of the school, and the only reason Nari (our main protag) is dragged into this is because of coincidental acts of kindness and an old friend who she never really understood anyway. It makes sense that she doesn't feel like she belongs, especially when she compares herself to these seemingly perfect girls (and who hasn't done that?), but that's the thing - the more she learns about these girls, the less she puts them up on a pedestal, and the more she values herself and grows to value them and their friendship too. Because each girl has their faults - this is always pointed out - and they all grew up differently, having different understandings of their own worth and the world around them. And that's true about most friendships; but in that same vein, the more they understand each other, the more they care for each other.

Nari grows from being self-deprecating, insecure, envious, and a pushover, to someone who can and will stand up for herself, snark back at those who gossip and bully her, and fiercely protects her friends without giving a damn about how pretty they are (unlike how most of the other girls see them). Seonji, shy and sweet and naive, has a lot more complexity than just the running gag of her not knowing things - her story explores how someone, in the face of all of the crap that life gives her, can still have the ability to be gracious enough to leave behind the things that have hurt them instead of being petty and vengeful. Her strength lies in her ability to move on from being hurt and to finding happiness in her friends and herself instead. We're now on Mirae's story, and from what I can tell she has a lot more discomfort and hurt to explore, and we get to see more of what it's like to hide behind an ever-present mask of cheerfulness while always thinking that you don't deserve friends. And as for Yoona, we've also yet to reach her story. But we do see her growing up too, slowly valuing her friends more, although still very much remaining her abrasive self. The relationships with their families are all different too, and the series showcases that. Even the bullies are all different - some change, some don't understand why they'd need to change and continue to be toxic, some become friends, and some just fade away from the girls' lives, just like in real life. The background characters aren't always nice, but neither are they mean - they just act with their own understandings of the situation, which isn't always the same as the main characters, and that's entirely fair. Everyone is very much an individual with their own agency, and it's amazing.

All in all, they're all wonderfully complex characters who all learn about each other. More importantly, they learn how to be good friends to each other, which is something that takes time. This isn't a series that starts off sparkly and happy - it's a series about how different people can be, how others' judgements of us does affect us, how friendships are only truly formed because you come to learn and care about each other, and how people can change. It's wonderfully realistic and fulsome in its depictions of human interaction, and I cannot recommend it enough.

... Last updated on July 30th, 2019, 10:30am

Contrary to the previous reviewer, I really enjoyed this webtoon and recommend you give it a try.

The humour in the webtoon is definitely a different type of humour than you're usually used to in shoujo. Nari is dry, sarcastic and quite self-aware. Her group of friends consists of 3 other girls who are seemingly beautiful and can't fit in anywhere else. Despite the tough love, they have Nari's back when it truly counts. They watch out for her, and defend her when she's being taken advantage of or bullied.

Nari on the otherhand, has a very strong inferiority complex. She can't see the friendship that these girls bring because all she can see is that she's physically an ugly duckling in comparison. Her focus is stubbornly fixated on her own physical appearance that she fails to consider each of these girls for who they are individually. I like Nari though, she's sarcastic, levelheaded and knows how to take a joke.

Yuna, in a nutshell is a yandere. She cares for Nari a lot, but doesn't express it verbally. Instead, she is always looking out for Nari.

I found their friendship and humour very relatable and I actually love reading their interactions.

... Last updated on August 13th, 2018, 10:25am

All reading this did was raise my blood pressure. Got up to chapter 10, but decided to just stop because most of the characters were irritating me.

Yoona is pushy, and selfish. And her actions are basically just bullying. What kind of friend forces someone to give them shoulder massages and fan them when it's hot?? That's basically just a master-servant relationship, especially with the way she habitually ignores Nari's discomfort and stress.

Her squirting lotion over Nari's face when she got offended on the way to school was kind of the last straw for me.

I tried reading through chapter 9, just in case I was overreacting, but... here are some things Yoona does to Nari because she's angry Nari had the balls to tell her she was being rude to another girl:


I....is this supposed to be cute? She's wearing Nari down and bombarding her with small abuses. That's not cool.

I dislike when authors put the onus of patience and empathy on the main character. It's apparently Nari's responsibility to constantly do the emotional labor and work to understand Yoona, while Yoona just does whatever she wants, expecting to be forgiven.

And she is forgiven. Nari ends up apologizing because she "slighted" Yoona. No apology from Yoona.

Meanwhile, her other friends constantly make little remarks that belittle and hurt Nari, but that's okay because they were just teasing. And her brother is an a**hole, but I guess that's supposed to be a normal sibling relationship?? (I mean, if my sibling constantly called me ugly and a fat pig, we'd probably have some serious issues.)

To make everything worse, Nari just. Doesn't stand up for herself. She only gets drawn being comedically offended.

Idk, maybe all this is okay to someone else, but I...I'm going to pass.