The truth is, I'm extremely conflicted on this one. In execution, this manhwa is so close to perfect, but where it counts, it misses the mark. Let me elaborate.

First of all, if you're looking for a cute romance, I highly recommend you look somewhere else. While their relationship is a huge part of the story, it's less the Ma Ri and Jae Min story, more the Ma Ri story. Less a love story, more a story about a teenage girl doing her best to cope in a highly discriminatory world.

And this is done extraordinarily well. In theory it sounds stupid, a world where vampires are an oppressed minority group, but it's done so genuinely that I would advise you to stay away from this if you've experienced bullying because of race, religion, or sexual orientation and it's scarred you. As someone who hasn't dealt with that sort of thing at all, reading this hurt, so I can't imagine what it must be like for someone who has been through this.

Because you move with Ma Ri. You feel her pain when one of the first friends she's made in a long time talks about how she wishes all vampires would just die, or when the boy who professes to be in love with her invites her to go with him to see a movie about vampire-slaying. And when people prove that she matters more to them than some dangerous stereotype taught to them by bigots, you learn to trust just as she does.

Ha Ri is a fantastic character, fleshed out in every important way, and that goes for this world, too. Often stories about discrimination are preachy or unrealistic, especially for fictional discrimination (see: Dragon Age), but this one is too real. We see every side of every character, and can see just as easily how people like this can be people we know. It's not black and white; we see unreasonable people on both sides, vampire and human, and the people who were just caught in the crossfire.

And maybe that's this story's downfall, too, setting the bar that high. Right until the final arc, it cultivates this incredibly realistic world, with flawed but likable characters and great relationships, and then it changes gears completely.

I'm not going to mince words. The climax arc is absolutely terrible. The ending is a cop-out, completely unearned, with sudden unrealistic drama leading to an neat unrealistic conclusion. The problem is, in a story like this, with obvious real-life allegories, the message is central, and the one it leaves us with is easy and unrealistic. You can't make a world this real and then base your message on obvious fiction. It sucks to see this becomes just another one of those bad, preachy discrimination stories with shoehorned morals.

Because of the easy ending, characters who were well-developed and real (my own opinion of them notwithstanding) like Jae Min and Ma Ri herself weren't allowed organic growth. Real dilemmas and real experiences with difficult and multifaceted answers were lost to spontaneous drama with easy solutions. That kind of potential is rare, and seeing it thrown away really hurts.

So that's why I'm conflicted; in a way, this manhwa deserves much higher than seven, and in another way, it deserves much less. To its credit, though, these characters are amazing and you should still read it; Soo Ri, one of Ma Ri's friends, is a real Ensemble Darkhorse, and I would honestly read this series just for her. Just - don't get your hopes up too high, and even while it's good, prepare yourself for pain.

tl;dr Orange Marmalade is brilliantly executed - with a hauntingly realistic world and realistic characters - right until the climax, where it throws away a lot of its potential in favor of an unearned neat ending and a shoehorned, overdone moral. Also, don't read this if you've been bullied about your race, sexual orientation, or religion to the point where it's triggering, because it really, really hurts.

(Also, if you want me to elaborate or want to discuss this with me, since I skimmed around some stuff in the interest of avoiding spoilers, feel free to.)