I feel almost horrible for doing a review like this, because I should, by all accounts, be giving this manhwa a solid 9 or 10. When I look over everything I've just read, all the areas that attract me to a story were covered. Plus, the art was great. Why, then, do I have an underlying gentle hatred towards all of this? Well... I don't know.
ART:
I think we can all agree that whether you liked or didn't like this manhwa, the art was exquisite. It was beautiful. So beautiful, in fact, that sometimes I just paused on a certain page to admire it. It was that good. I cannot find a single fault in it.
STORY:
Now here's where the manhwa really lost a lot of points with me. I feel like the author could have cut easily 25% - 40% of the plot, and the story would turn out so much better. There's only so many times I can read through a scene where someone is about to say something life-changing, only to be interrupted by whatever interrupts them, and then awkwardly refusing to say it. I just couldn't take it. I couldn't take how so many of the things that happened seemed to happen for absolutely no reason. What seemed to be problems that could be easily resolved in the span of 2 - 12 words were dragged on for chapters. People got angry for no reason, and didn't get angry enough when there was good reason. Too much crying, whining, and not enough actual logical procedures. It made me angry as I was reading it, which I don't think was the original intent.
CHARACTERS:
Okay, they all started out with so much potential. I thought the main leads were quirky, funny, everything that I like in characters. Then, slowly -- I'm still not even sure how -- I ended up hating each and every one of them. I honestly cannot recall a single character who I consistently liked throughout the manhwa. I don't mind if the characters screw up a few times, that's okay. I don't mind when they make stupid decisions sometimes. I DO mind it when they make the same mistakes and stupid decisions OVER and OVER again. I'm pretty sure every other chapter included a scene where a character sat down, and was like "Well, I screwed that up. *insert obnoxious sobbing and whining here* I must now go out there and screw this situation to the point where I am the biggest screwer of situations who ever screwed.". By the end of this whole semi-fiasco, I honestly couldn't care less whether the two leads got together or just said "Fuck it, I didn't like you that much to begin with anyway." and left it at that. And honestly, all of the secondary characters were such pricks. I'm pretty sure most of them were inserted to just be pricks but at different times -- to provide variety. I tried to like people, I really did, but you can't ask me to do something that would crush any morality that I have left inside me.
OVERALL:
... Now, despite everything I've said, I did finish it. That says something. Well, I finished it provided that I've seen the drama (which leaves out 80% of this manhwa, and changes roughly 10% of it), and I actually really enjoyed it. I felt as if I would almost be betraying the drama if I didn't push through this endless black hole of depression.
If I have anything good left to say about this, it would be the following. The comedy was pretty good. I enjoyed the humor that was injected into here, most of it managed to make me laugh out loud. When the characters weren't forcing themselves into self-induced love traumas, when they were actually with each other and not being all stupid, their scenes were pretty cute. The angst was hardcore -- so if angst is for you, you will seriously fall in love with this. It was a complex story, and it had a lot of things going for it; it just wasn't for me.