Concubine Walkthrough
This is by far my least favorite story I have ever read in this genre. And I really do mean BY FAAAAAAR. The art was very unique and beautiful. But the art is kind of the only thing I can really praise about this. Sure there were some characters I kind of liked, but not nearly enough to overshadow how much/how many characters I did not like. Sure there was a string or two of well written dialogue in there, but not enough to be significant in the face of how much of it sucked. I could just start typing out all the shit I hated about this stream-of-consciousness style, but that would make this review all over the place because of how much I disliked reading this story. So for the sake of keeping this clean(ish), I’ll break this review into my seven main gripes: 1) the world-building, 2) the MC, 3) the ML, 4) the romantic pairing, 5) the 2nd ML, 6) “the reveal”, and 7) the ending. World-building: The main problem with this story is the plot and the world building. When it comes to world-building, everything is set up so that you do feel well enough established in and immersed in the world the story is set in, yes, but the rules of this world and logic of the world’s inner-workings are so incredibly messed up that it takes you out of it time and time again. I have no problem usually suspending my disbelief and overlooking illogical things for the sake of enjoying a story, but damn this one just took it too fucking far. Sci-fi and fantasy. Two very different genres. They both have to have some level of logic set up so that a story can be written in them, but with fantasy, the creator just has to make sure they follow whatever rules that they originally set up in their fantasy world. With science fiction, as the title of the genre suggests, the creator has to (or is supposed) to follow the rules of, you know, ACTUAL science! There is a reason why this story is the only one I have ever read in the otome isekai genre to be sci-fi instead of fantasy. A very obvious reason: because why would the authors put themselves through the hassle of having to maintain within the constraints of science when they could just chose fantasy instead and do whatever they want? The creator of this story defo either thought it didn’t matter that much and that she could make this sci-fi, but get hella lazy with the actual science part OR she thought she truly was adhering to the rules of science. Either way, thats so icky. It’s like me watching Tokyo Revengers and being upset about the time travel being so bad in it. I think this is just a pet-peeve of mine honestly, I am just not someone who is okay with science fiction being done incorrectly or in a way that seems like the creator doesn’t really care about doing it right. Because girl……… for all that, you should have just made it fantasy, no? And like, you could always do both. It has been done before, combining science fiction and fantasy. But even when the creator of this story had the means to concede and be like “okay okay, this started off as sci-fi, but it’s actually also fantasy”, she refused and never let up on insisting that this was a purely sci-fi story that takes place a mere messy 100 years in the future of our real-life timeline…. How fucking annoying honestly. Truly. The MC: Yona is a child. Literally and figuratively. She is 19 years old, and just immature as a 19 year old high schooler would be. It was unfortunate to watch her go through this world and these situations are not very well suited for a 19 year old to handle. Especially when it came to the romance aspect of it all. There is a reason the Otome isekai’d genre usually has MC’s who are grown women and not children….. also, usually a grown woman enters the body of a younger person in this genre. This is the first time I have seen a MC enter the body of someone older than them…… there is a reason we don’t do that either. A child entering the body of a grown women? The whole thing was starting off hella sketch. Aside from her being immature, she also just wasn’t my cup of tea. She was kind of annoying and embarrassing sometimes. And didn’t have enough good redeeming qualities to help me look past his down bad she was for Sunshine despite him mistreating her. (And “mistreating her” is SUCH an understatement bro. he was doing her dirrrrrrrrt. It was sickening to watch.) The ML: I hate Sunshine. Worst ML in the genre I’ve ever seen honestly. Like I actually cannot stand him. He acted out and truly showed his ass for over 100 chapters and had the nerve to not even be unbearably attractive to make up for it! Like, yes, Sunshine is attractive, he’s beautiful. But he’s not unbearably so. (And doubly unfortunate for me, he is simply not suited to my personal tastes). I hate Sunshine, and nowhere near in a “we love to hate him” kind of way. Or even in a “we hated him and that made it such a big payoff later when he switched up and made us love him”. Nah, I can confidently say genuinely never ever at a single point in the entire story (even before he started mistreating her!) was I ever fucking with male lead named Sunshine. The romantic pairing: let me be clear….. That girl is a child. . . . she literally is a child bro. I understand that she is not a minor, and the creator went out her way to say that (it’s cannon that MC is older than Sanjae and that Sanjae is 18 years old). But also, look man she can’t be that much older than Sanjae. She is a senior in high school, so sure she can be 19 years old, but she can’t be any older than that. And it would still be different if she was a 19 year old college freshman or even a 19 year old high school dropout working off jobs to make ends meet in her cigarette box of an apartment. But no, none of that. She is truly a 19 year old high school student, aka A FUCKING BABY. How old is the male lead? The creator defo didn’t say and for a reason probs lol, but here’s what we do know: he is old enough to have a very full, very long beard and a daughter who is at least 4-5 years old. Statistically speaking, for his beard to have gotten as long, thick, and full as it was he had to be at least 30 years old. Also, they described him in the beginning as a middle-aged man. So yeah, we’re going to say he is at least 30. He’s 30, she is 19. He has years and years of life experience but even he calls her a greenhorn upon first meeting her and comments on how obviously immature she is and how she doesn’t seem to have much experience in life. Don’t y’all see a problem here? And it’s not like he is a 30 year old that just cherished this 19 year old baby girl. NO, he proceeds to very hardcore manipulate her, galsight her, publically & privately embarrass her, and play her like a fucking fool for nowhere near good enough of a reason. Look, we can talk about his reasoning behind doing all that shit later, but regardless of the reasoning, it is understandable that I as an adult woman did not have fun watching a 30 year old man do all of this to a 19 year old little girl for 100 straight chapters. It wouldn’t be as bad if he just treated her poorly, but the real insidious part is the push and pull dynamic he created between them. He really truly played with a young innocent girl’s heart and it was really not fun to see her go through that. He literally himself says that he researched and rehearsed every single thing he needed to do to get her to hate him, so we know it was all premeditated. And again, he did all of that to her and again, WAS NOT EVEN HOT LIKE THAT! ew The 2nd ML: let me start by saying I’m not a Youngjung fan, and I never really was. But I will defend him. Why? Because the author did him dirty. It was icky. Youngjung is a sacrificial lamb character. The word “character” is even too good for him, because in the end of the day he was way more a of a plot device than he was a character. The entire reason for his existence was to make Sunshine (a character I hate) look better to the audience despite sunshine being trash. “Oh look, Sunshine is so cool! Look at how he outsmarted Youngjung at every turn! Wow, Youngjung is such a dummy. Haha, he really thought he was gonna do something.” …
The Great Wish
The Great Wish ️ 8.3 So….somehow, I managed to read three major duds in a row. :/ First Black Winter, then Concubine Walkthrough, and now… The Great Wish. Wow. How did I do that, lol? Idkidk. All three had beautiful artwork and ML’s I don’t fuck with. They were all so bad in such different ways. Black Winter was infuriatingly and illogically contrived. Black Winter made me angry. Concubine Walkthrough was daringly upsetting in the name of being ~original~. Concubine Walkthrough made me feel disgusted. The Great Wish was causally problematic in a way that was almost insidious. The Great Wish made me feel like endlessly rolling my eyes and fake gagging. There were so many things wrong with The Great Wish that I barely even want to write this review honestly. And unlike other stories where the things that are wrong with them span over a variety of reasons, all of the things wrong with The Great Wish can fit very neatly into three categories: 1. The problematic ML 2. The rushed ending 3. The major plot holes Like, literally it’s just those three. But the number of instances of each of those three is immense. Just a crazy surplus of examples to choose from. 1. The ML…… *huge sigh*. God I hate that man. I hate hate that mab fr. I want him to go to H-E-double hockey stick. He actually makes me sick. I know I mentioned in the beginning of this review that having an ML I don’t fuck with is something The Great Wish has in common with Black Winter and Cocubine Walkthough, but I need to clear that up. Black Winter dude has a personality I personally can’t say I 100% enjoy, but he also has objectively God-tier physical appearance on his side. Concubine Walkthrough dude has a subjectively good appearance but one that I don’t personally like, and a personality that is ever so slightly attractive, but that I could never ever ever remotely condone. The Great Wish dude? He’s got a personality that is downright vile. So vile in fact, that it mimics that of a genuine, true-to-blue, honest-to-goodness REAL LIFE MAN. *throws up in my mouth* No but literally, he acts like an irl modern man. Sick. Vile. I am telling you that his personality is so bad that it completely overrides his looks and makes it so that you cannot even bring them into consideration when discussing him as a male lead. That’s just how fucking bad it is. Khun is sexist with a capital S. He is, he is, he is and no one can ever convince me otherwise. It’s really not hard to see bro. There’s no argument against it either because there’s no woman in the entire story that he actually treats with genuine respect! (And no, I won’t count his interactions with the nanny! How can that count when he is only putting on a mask of respect so he can gain approval to get into the FL’s panties!!!) Khun does not truly respect women. He looks down on them. He looks down on the MC, and this point is REPEATEDLY made apparent to the readers. He looks down on her, condescends, and belittles. Aside from his sexism, he's also a nasty SELFISH hypocrite!!!!! For the overwhelming majority of the story he did not really give a rat’s ass about what MC wanted. Like he cared about her on a superficial level that had to do with himself. He wanted to keep having her, so he wanted her to be alive and safe. But her dreams, goals, ambitions??? Nah, that shit was not of any real concern or import to him. It was so icky. He spent the entire story being her literal OP, and then even worse playing victim and waxing poetic about how “torn up” he was to be being her OP. Like….. Bro. And then when we finally find out waaaaaaaaay late into the story what his reasoning was behind his OP ass behavior? The reason sucks ASSSSSSS. Like oh my god. There’s so many more things wrong with him (there’s his attitude and behavior surrounding sex, there’s his emotional outbursts and unsexy possessiveness, there’s that whole seen where he flipped out on her because she wouldn't join him in his emotional distress and it seemed to seriously hurt his pride that he was upset and she wouldn’t get upset and he then tried to say things to GET HER UPSET, and then on top of all that DO NOT get me started on the DISDAINFUL event that was their first encounter……………). *heavy sigh* Like I said, plenty of more things I could say for why I positively loathe this man, but I don’t even wanna talk about it anymore…. He’s one of my all-time least favs in the genre. To the point where I would consider being with the ML’s from My Dear Maid, The Villain’s Savior, and EVEN I’ll Save This Damn Family, before I’d be with Khun. (okay okay okay okay, I’m dragging it baaaaaaaaad now lmfao, especially with that last one there….. But like, I low low low low key mean it…. A tiny bit) 2. Not too much to say about the rushed ending tbh. It was just crazy crazy crazy rushed. That’s it. Easily the worst case of a rushed ending I’ve read in the genre so far. Like, jeez it had me lowkey glad this was already a story I wasn’t enjoying by the time the ending came around, because I felt a bit bad for all the people in the comments who really liked this story and had to deal with the huge disappointment that that rushed ass ending. SMH. 3. You know, out of the three categories, the fact that there were plot holes is the least bad. Like, yeah they downgrade the story, but like those other two things were so monstrously bad this one doesn’t compare. In general, the very barebones backstory/setup of the story’s plot was already broken and messed up, so the plot holes were bound to happen no matter what really. I won’t list all the examples, because the biggest and clearest one will suffice:why did the late emperor feel the need to kill his friend's family? He thought the friend was using his daughter to “take” the throne…. Broddie… that simply is not possible. Worst comes to worse, his daughter would marry your son. Your son would still be emperor, his daughter would be empress. And their child (a child that is the grandson of both you and your friend) would be the next in line for the throne….. That’s not him “taking” the throne man. That’s just y’all becoming in laws
Don't Cry, Sunbae!
I’ma be real… this one just sucked to me, lol. Like, I just didn’t like it. I found it so boring it was a chore to finish it. The entire first season felt like it was meant to be the prologue to a story that had yet to begin. Like, I’m sitting here waiting for the story to actually take off and for something interesting to happen. Imagine my surprise when whilst I am still waiting for that, I get to the end of one random chapter and see the words “season one end”. Bruh Yeah, that’s crazy. Then season two wasn’t reality better either!! For a split second (an I mean a SPLIT second) I thought we were about to shift our affection from the main couple ot a new side couple we were being introduced to for the MC’s best friend (Yumin) but…. I was so wrong about it haha. (The older man talking to Yumin at the start of season two was actually just…. the MC’s estranged father, lol). Anyways, yeah this sucked. It has a 9.3 on the site, but like huh? I’m giving it a 9.0. P.S.: the sex scenese also sucked yet they were unfortuntely quiteeee plentiful *ugh* P.S.S.: I really just didn’t like the LI much at all. Nothing crazy wrong with him (especially considering the standard for this genre lol) but still
You and I can't do this