i am coming off a streak of really excellent manga, and this one is suffering from the immediate comparison. i was mostly annoyed by it for 2 volumes; fortunately it started to pick up. some of the things that bothered other people didn't bother me -- mookyul sleeping with the old man out of gratitude? makes sense to me. ewon cheating on everyone also makes sense once one suspects his backstory; he's very much broken. it would have helped if we didn't get that backstory infodumped on us in the last chapter, but had more reveals earlier -- i expected something seriously traumatic so i gave him a lot of slack. that both mookyul and ewon are hyocritical about their cheating comes with that territory; that doesn't put them beneath contempt for me. also, my feminist heart has long been desensitised to rough dub-con sex and casual domestic violence in BL; it is a different world.
the middle part was decent, and i got caught up in it. the art also got better; i didn't like the character design a whole lot at the start, but around v3 it starts to get good, and there are actually some noteworthy panel designs too. i can't say that the sex ever did much for me, but it wasn't horribly bad either. the kissing is reliably hot. the humour is often quite nice; very cute chibification.
but now that i am finished i don't feel fulfilled and happy, i feel exhausted. my ghods, the melodrama. seriously; too much. it just would not let up in v6; i wish i had stopped reading at the end of v4. i feel manipulated by the extra drama, and not even particularly skillfully (WTF, after all they went through mookyul would just disappear from the hospital without notice? that is supremely retarted and doesn't even fit the character by that time). and seriously, it felt like the author crammed every yaoi cliche in here; childhood promises, blackmail, forced labour, love triangles, cute and fluffy gangsters, etc. but worse, i am not happy with the character development of ewon. he doesn't actually grow through this manga; to the very end mookyul has to do all the work so they can be together. so while i feel sorry for ewon, i don't like him much because of that; i need more effort from even damaged people (hey, being damaged myself i know what it takes, and it irks me when somebody doesn't put in the work). ewon hurts everyone around him every time he gets into a fit because of his baggage -- and he doesn't stop even at the very end.
somebody else said: Oh, if you enjoyed this series, you will adore Loveprize in Viewfinder as well!. i agree. i also think the reverse is true. i didn't care for viewfinder; the art was pretty, but the story was insipid, and to get me to swallow the "rapee falls in love with his rapist" trope, you need to do something extraordinary to make that happen, not just have the rapist continue to rape and claim the rapee really gets off on it. in contrast this manwha has a storyline that at least develops an acceptable plot, it is less blatant about the non-con, and mookyul actually grows into somebody i can sorta like (asami doesn't). so yeah -- if you enjoyed viewfinder you probably won't be bothered by the same things that bother me here -- but if you didn't care for viewfinder, i suggest to give this a miss -- or at least stop at the end of v4.
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