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.
He was a multi-timing gold digger who tried to break up Haebom and Taesung (didn't work, duh), and was forced out after attempting to sexually harass Taesung and later tried to blackmail Taesung's father over his son being gay. He was exposed as a cheater to his male lover, who then hit Yoon, took him to a hotel, tied him up, and raped him.
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.
In the epilogues, he gets so jealous after someone flirts with Haebom that he forcefully has sex with Haebom and makes him bleed.
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
creampie and hickey covered ass
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.
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