July's manga / #Drama(215)

Short and sweet, but little substance. The art was very simplistic, with a limited color palette. The time-constrained story it tells means the artwork doesn't need to be fancy. The couple wasn't that cute to me, I've seen better 4-koma romantic comedies than this.

It started off promising, but the plot became more and more confusing with each chapter. I feel like there was a good story hidden under all of this, but it was too abstract and incoherent to grasp, unfortunately. The art was good, and the dark color palette conveyed the depressing atmosphere very well. In short, the characterization was weak, which made it hard to understand the motives of everyone involved. It went from something simple to understand, which is a brother trying to find out why his sister committed suicide, to something far more bigger, but it was not done well. By the end, I had no idea what the app achieved, other than mysteriously wrecking people's lives in a vague manner, and that the brother felt guilty for everything. Simply put, good ideas, bad execution.

This is terribly written period BL. It is clichéd and has a very predictable plot. I'm fairly certain that the main character will end up falling for the guy he supposedly wants to kill, and they will live happily ever after. That, or he decides that revenge is sweeter, and either one of them or both of them end up dead. There's not many ways this story can develop, as this is a BL webtoon. There is no room to expand on the universe of the story as it is severely limited by the nature of its genre. The art is alright, but I actually like Painter of the Night's style the best out of all these historical setting BLs. Although I don't particularly care for that series' storyline either. It went downhill pretty fast, just like this one undoubtedly will.

The original webtoon that is later followed by "Aisha", it contains the same cast, but a slightly different plot, perhaps? In "Aisha", there's two girls who are identical twins, while in "Ayeshah's Secret" there's only one...or are there two? Well, aside from the twist at the end, it's a typical dark fairy tale turned tragedy as Ayeshah turns the tables on the wicked stepmother to get her revenge. The ending was somewhat unsatisfactory and rushed, and honestly, I didn't think either of the main characters deserved a happy ending. The art here is not as good as it is in "Aisha", but it uses the same 3D models for characters which gives this webtoon a very otherworldly look that is unsettling. Fits the tone of the story, though.

The translation gets progressively worse and worse, but the plot is not bad. I liked Ning Xi but she becomes a damsel in distress in the second half of the series. There are some nice twists and it was enjoyable, for the most part, if you ignore some of the issues that come with this genre of manhua.