The art,the emotion and the depiction of trauma and abuse makes this yaoi a hat above many of the rest, but argh! The writing! The cliches! The totally unecessary cheap tricks, like attempted murder, jeloaus spurned lovers, two faced friends ready to do you in... Boring. The lower the otherwise great story. If only the manhwa was focused solely on the uke and the seme, and their development, this would have been, IMHO; a much, much better story.
On a personal note, and I know this is very subjective, I disliked the uke pretty much constantly. I just don't like such meek, passive character thrust into a power struggle with much more sturdy guys. I generally dislike the weak uke trope, and this irked me so much. Na-kyun could have been made a great uke even without being a overtly naive, sweet boy depicted here. While this trope can work, at times, I find it okay only in fluffly manhwa, since a huge personality imbalance beteweek uke and semeis just a receipe for distaster, as far as writing goes. Only a few mangakas managed to deal with this in a mature, gentle and humane way. So the reason I give this a lower score is for certain that the uke was not to my liking, and a weak link generally in the story. I also think his background and his psychological make-up were ill developed. There should have been much more of the story dedicated to how he became a painter, his unhealthy obsession with his teacher, his relationship with his kiaseng sisters, and so on.
The seme was a much better fleshed out and more interesting char by far. A real depiction of a PTSD individual, a man shackled by the past like an octopus layering him bit by bit. He's sexy as hell, handsome and marvellous, but damaged as heck and an apsolute POS in the dark moments of his soul. But his back story is heart wrenching and perhaps the best part of the manhwa. If his relationship with hsi father and brother were better fleshed out, and his struggle to leave the fiery pits of hell behind were front and center instead of the silly political scheming the author generated, this would have been a much more powerful work.
But boy, the art is first class, and the attention to detail was stunning! Enjoyed each and every frame!
Wbhile this is a good work, with some major storyboard changes, and a different uke, I think this could have been a winner. But it's still a very good work, and will bring tears to your eyes, guaranteed!
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