A Returner’s Magic Should be Special… but it’s not (Korean webtoon review)

I had a conversation with someone a while ago where I likened “A Returner’s Magic Should be Special” to an airplane endlessly taxiing on the airport runway but never taking off. I said this when about 100 chapters were out. 58 chapters later and I still feel the same way. A Returner’s Magic Should be Special has a lot of potential to be an interesting series, but endless, draggy arcs and very slow progression towards the main point mean that it’s probably never going to fulfill that potential. The pacing is just too bad.

Summary

“Now that I’m back, I won’t allow my loved ones to die again!”

The Shadow Labyrinth – the most catastrophic existence humanity has faced in history. Desir Arman and six survivors attempt to clear the final level of the labyrinth but ultimately fail, and the world comes to an end.

However Desir is returned to the past, back to the time when he enrolled at the nation’s finest magic academy He is reunited with his precious friends, and is prepared to change the past to save the world and his loved ones…!

The good part of A Returner’s Magic Should be Special is that it has a nice team of main characters and a few memorable supports. The core team of Desir, Romantica, Pram and Adjest comes together quickly and has stayed together solidly through 160 chapters (as at time of writing). Pram is a shota who is not annoying. Adjest is an ice princess who is also not annoying. The story is not bogged by romantic subplots (!!). It’s bogged down by a lot of other things, but romance isn’t one of them… yet.

I also like the colorful, slightly goofy art style. The action is also easy to follow, though the battles can be interminable. So the art is nice, the characters are nice, the story is promising. Despite all that, the problems are so many with no solution in sight that it will probably take A Returner’s Magic should be Special another 160 chapters to unravel everything and finally start getting somewhere.

  1. There are too many parties and characters that don’t get enough attention for us to care about, but they still show up here and there. Too many factions even in the real world, so I can’t keep track of all the kingdoms and different parties working together.
  2. It’s natural that as a poor commoner Desir will have to spend some time building up enough influence to change the world, but it’s still a tedious process to read through. All that whining about discrimination between commoners and nobles, the tragic backstories, the comically evil noble villains who never amount to much, etc.
  3. Desir’s time travel advantage is very quickly negated when a third-party called the Outsiders show up who didn’t’ appear in his last lifetime. So now instead of preparing for the Shadow Worlds like the premise suggests, almost all of the time in the real world in the series is spent on fighting the Outsiders, then, maaaaaybe one day, we’ll eventually possibly get closer to the secrets of the Shadow World invasion.
  4. Even after 160+ chapters there is a lot left unexplained, with no sign that they will be explained any time soon. Things like the Shadow World which are a mystery in the series as well, but all things like Circle Magic and how exactly magic works. For a series called “A Returner’s Magic should be Special,” the author does precious little to explain the ins and outs of the magic system. What’s a first circle magician, second circle, what’s the difference, what is vision magic, what makes Desir so special that others can’t imitate him, what what what. So many questions.

  5. Since we’re the good guys, we are automatically right, so there’s no need to try to understand the other party.
  6. Because there are so many questions, it’s painful to have so many chapters wasted early on on petty academic squabbles, cheap discrimination plots, etc.
  7. The arcs drag on way too long. Any arc where Desir and friends enter a Shadow World should be a cue for the reader to sign out for 30 chapters and come back when things pick up. Because there’s still no clear answer to the relevance of the shadow world or why they later posed a threat to the real world, everything that goes on right now in there is 90% filler which could be entirely removed for faster pacing. Maybe eventually, way down the line it will all make sense, but again it’s like I said. The series takes forever to get anywhere.
  8. Speaking of forever, I hope you like long drawn-out battles against irrelevant enemies. Like most of chapter 160 was Adjest versus some random guy who was introduced two chapters ago, hyped and quickly disposed of. And then after battling another enemy for several chapters, only now is Desir Arman getting round to “part two” of the battle. Ridiculous.

TL;DR maybe one day it will be good, but for now A Returner’s Magic Should be Special is not special at all. It’s a long series of chapters, a lot of fillers, some charming characters and some intriguing ideas that are not explained. I kept reading because I liked the main party and their interactions, but that can only take you so far. It’s something I’ll have to come back to in about five years to see if/when it ended. Either that, or I’ll have to read the faster-paced novel so I can see things happen before I forget who did what or why. But really, it’s not worth my time when there are so many other faster, more tightly-plotted series out there.

Divorce me, Husband – Mediocre so far (Korean romance webtoon)

Divorce me, Husband is one of those series that are worth reading if you can binge them, but once you get caught up, there’s no point continuing. Actually I rather like romance series with arranged marriages where they later fall in love, like in The Evil Lady will Change that I reviewed last time. But plenty of other fans like the trope as well, which is why there are dozens of series with the same premise. Divorce Me, Husband is on the mediocre side both in terms of story and in terms of art, so it’s not something I’m going to stick with now I’ve caught up (chapter 20 as of writing).

Summary

She possessed the body of a supporting character who was swept away by her husband’s treason and was killed.

I’m trying to divorce my husband, Claude, to survive, but this guy won’t let me go. In the original novel, it was said that he was clearly a man with no interest in his wife, so why is he refusing the divorce?

Even if you give me the most expensive diamond in the Empire, I refuse to live in such a marriage. Because I want to live!

So please, please… divorce me, husband!

The heroine Ayla has good reason to divorce “her” husband after transmigrating into the world of a novel where she gets killed because of a husband who doesn’t love her.

The series has got all the usual cliches, like dumb servants who actually mistreat a duchess because her husband ignores her, petty nobles who actually talk down to a duchess in public for the same reason, the usual tea party full of snark, scheming royals and of course, the grand daddy of all cliches: “I’M MAKING ALL THESE CHANGES TO THE STORY, BUT WHY ISN’T EVERYTHING THE SAME AS THE BOOK?”

To Ayla’s credit, she realizes very quickly that some of the things she read in the novel are different from what she’s encountering. The original female lead is petty and jealous, the original male lead is a lazy, crazy and rude and her husband is actually a sweet and affectionate gentleman who was only avoiding her because he mistakenly (?) thought she was scared of him.

Claude is one of the brightest spots of “Divorce Me, Husband” because he is so open about his feelings for Ayla and his desire to be closer to her. The majority of these romance series have a male lead who is either super dense about his own feelings or super tsundere so he’ll never say his feelings out loud.

Claude on the other hand comes clean not just once but repeatedly and makes a sincere but cute and clumsy effort to win her heart by doing things she likes. He’s even man enough to apologize when he oversteps his boundaries by interfering in her social relationships. Honestly, he’s a complete sweetheart, so if you’ve had enough of neglectful male leads in Korean series or the abusive/rapey CEOs and princes in Chinese series, he’s a breath of fresh air. If I continue reading this, it will be largely for him.

BUT! There’s a problem with his relationship with Ayla. The problem is the original Ayla. If new Ayla hadn’t transmigrated and asked for a divorce, Claude would have ignored the original forever until dragging her to a messy end.

That’s one thing I really don’t like about transmigrated arranged marriage series. The implication is always that the bullied or ignored person deserved it somehow, and if only she would change herself, everyone would also change and start treating her better. Sure it’s not good to be entirely passive in life, but sometimes people treat you badly because they’re bad people, not because you deserved it by being quiet or scared. And sometimes it’s not possible to safely stand up for yourself, especially when those in authority are turning a blind eye to the bullying or even engaging in it themselves.

So yeah, poor original Ayla. Hope she found happiness somewhere else and not with a husband who completely ignores her for a year because of some pre-wedding jitters. Then says “I like this version of you better” when an imposter steals your body, so sad.

But the series doesn’t dwell on the unfortunate implications of this trope for long, so neither shall we. The long and short of it is that Divorce Me, Husband has a cliched story and a dense female lead who is resisting the advances of our sweetheart Claude because she remains convinced he is a traitor even though she has plenty of evidence that things in the novel are not what they seem. So whether you enjoy it or not depends on your tolerance for stubborn leads balanced with your love for puppy dog love interests.

For my part, I was going to firmly drop it, but the latest chapter (20) ended with Claude in a pinch, so I have to read at least one more just to make sure my boy is okay. Plus, even better, Ayla is finally using her knowledge from the novel to change Claude’s fate, though she hasn’t admitted it to herself yet.

I think the next five chapters will be the key to whether this series is worth continuing or not. Since the raws seem to be caught up with now, I’ll have to check back in about 6 weeks, but the next developments will be important. If Ayla successfully shakes off that pesky “It’s just a novel” mindset and commits herself to staying with Claude and saving his life, all well and good. Otherwise Divorce Me, Husband will just be another mediocre entry in the rapidly saturating field of Korean webtoons. Remind me in 6 weeks to check back again and see.

The Evil Lady will Change – Refreshingly sensible romance

I discovered that despite the Chinese raws, The Evil Lady will Change (恶女会改变) is actually a manhua based on a Korean web novel. That explains so much about the sheer decency of all the characters in it. This isn’t to say that all Chinese romance series have rapey male leads or comically evil female rivals, but… a LOT of them do. Enough that many fans reading The Evil Lady will Change were like “Wait… is this really a Chinese series?” It’s that surprising.

Summary:

Athanasia Cloix, a woman whose elegance and beauty is akin to that of a swan lake. Due to some rumors, however, people began to misunderstand and belittle her. As she suffered through these unfortunate events, she agreed to a political marriage with the Winter-comer who’s also known as the “Northern Monster”.

“As the Grand Duke, I will do my best to accommodate your needs and desires. But love alone is something I can’t give to you.” Unbeknownst to her, that very man will change her life and thus a new fate is about to unfold.

Yeah, you know the drill. Neither you nor I have ever read a series with an arranged marriage or “we definitively won’t fall in love” relationship where the main leads actually succeeded in not falling love. It’s a foregone conclusion, so the issue becomes watching the process instead.

The huge plus in The Evil Lady will Change is that both leads have very decent personalities, to the point of being Mary/Gary Sues. Athanasia (a.k.a. Aisha) is competent, kind and friendly, same with Ryan. They treat each other respectfully and maturely with no childish bickering or arguing. This isn’t one of those series where you’ll wonder what they see in each other.

As a double plus, they aren’t excessively dense about their feelings either. Yes, it does take them a little bit of time to realize their “won’t fall in love” pact is hokum, but once they do, it doesn’t take long for them to confess to each other and deepen their relationship after that.

What’s more, there are no credible love rivals wasting large swathes of chapters trying to make a relationship happen when it’s not going to. Both Aisha and Ryan have previous crushes which have helped shaped their personalities but which they have also firmly moved past. I enjoyed seeing Ryan put his old flame firmly in her place before she could even try something with Aisha/Athanasia. None of that nonsensical “maybe he still loves her and I’m still in the way” crap that some series spend ages on.

All this to say that The Evil Lady will Change is a great read if you want a refreshing romance with mature and sensible characters in a mature and sensible relationship. I hear there’s a happy ending as well, though that’s par for the course in these series.

Unfortunately there’s no perfect series in the world. There are a few downsides to this series, one of which is the terribly spotty quality of the translations. Which isn’t the source material’s fault, but is still a flaw anyway. I already explained at length how unfair a bad translation is to a good series, so you can refer to that post if you’re curious.

The second, bigger flaw is that the story doesn’t make a ton of sense. Part of it is the bad translation, but even accounting for that, it takes a while to get some clarity on what a “winter breaker” is, what the Arundi is, what winter actually works like in the series and why it needs to be sealed? unsealed? To be honest I still don’t fully get the plot or what the bad guys are trying to achieve and why. The series doesn’t focus on the main plot often enough, is the problem. So you’ll get a satisfying romance but everything else going on in the series will be ???

The final thing that bothers me is the disappearance of Aisha’s dumb little sister she was constantly compared to. I’m sure she’ll appear again eventually, but I miss her. She was so clueless and hateable and it was fun to see her true colors being recognized by everyone once Aisha wasn’t around to serve as a foil. Well I’m only at chapter 90, so she might show up again later. There are hints that something sinister was behind the excessive love she received from others before.

I’ll update this post once The Evil Lady will Change is complete, but for now it’s a satisfying romance to read with a couple you can really root for because they’re so decent. And eventually the story will make sense and we’ll get to see Aisha and Ryan save the world and live happily ever after. I’m looking forward to it!

Overgeared webtoon review – Very standard power fantasy

Overgeared? More like overrated, am I right? I’ve seen people commenting about Grid / Greed all over the place even in the manga that has nothing to do with it. It was always a bit baffling because I read the original webtoon that got cancelled after about 20 chapters. It was nothing special. I tried to read the web novel, but between the so-so translation and Greed’s juvenile thought processes, I couldn’t get into it.

But eventually all the references piqued my interest again and I finally tried the new webtoon. Right when 87 chapters were out, so I got a nice good binge out of it. I learned a lot of Korean while I was at it too – not from Overgeared but because I forced myself to do one brief Memrise review or Anki review for every chapter of Overgeared I read.

Summary: Shin Youngwoo, Username: Grid. In the words best virtual reality game , bad luck always revolves around him. But he stumbled across a job during a quest, the strongest legendary job out of over 2 billion players!

Like I said, a standard power levelling fantasy. Weak loser with plenty of debt suddenly finds a wonderful job/artifact/whatever and becomes powerful. His whole family depends on him, his classmates and former bullies are green with envy, every hot girl in the game longs for his touch… You’ve seen it all before. If you haven’t, I have. And better done, to boot.

It’s a very common thing in Chinese cultivation series, though it usually involves finding an ancient treasure or realm. For Korean series, the whole gimmick about finding a hidden, powerful class was popularized by The Legendary Moonlight Sculptor, and I don’t think it’s been done better since then. I’ve also enjoyed other series, usually involving time travel, about characters becoming overpowered in game worlds.

I have a special love for Emperor of Solo Play because it’s short and complete and the MC was so utterly self-destructive… then it caught up to him in the end XD! It was so silly that One Man Army mocked it by having the MC consciously take care of himself and his finances. Rebirth of the Thief Who Roamed The World was okay-ish, except for the “romance” and some ridiculous shenanigans outside the game. It’s also complete and not that long if anyone is interested. Reincarnation Of The Strongest Sword God was interesting early on, but got so ridiculous with the power creep that the author wrote himself into a corner and had to drop the series.

Point I’m trying to make is, Overgeared has been done before. I honestly think it’s popular with people who haven’t read many of these kinds of series, so something like this is new and satisfying to them. The money-grubbing habits of Shin Youngwoo a.k.a. Greed are old hat to me, he’s not particularly good-looking or smart or witty to make it understandable why people are falling all over him. He just makes good weapons and is lucky enough to be in the right place at the right time. That’s all it takes to make the ladies fall over themselves for him.

Buuut, I didn’t make this post to trash Overgeared, believe it or not. If power leveling fantasies are your thing – and honestly they are mine or I wouldn’t have read so many – then it’s a decent read. You still get the rags-to-riches experience you crave, and unlike many other heroes Shin Youngwoo does actually pick up a (virtual) wife if that’s what you’re interested in.

It’s just that compared to other series, the world is very narrow and poorly fleshed out. Shin Youngwoo has been based in the same two towns for 90% of the series’s length, so you don’t get the variety of locales and NPCs that you do in most RPG manhwa. He’s been hanging out with the same people, using the same weapons and artifacts (until recently), fighting the same small pool of enemies and the same overarching bad guys (church of Yatan). So it’s not bad, but it’s not impressive either given what other series in the RPG power leveling fantasy genre are capable of. He’s not even enjoying his money apart from buying a fancy car he almost never drives.

TL;DR Overgeared is overrated but not actually bad. You can do better, but you could do a lot worse than reading it if game world series are your thing. I’ll still be reading it as updates come out, but really it’s nothing special.

My Fiance is in Love with My Little Sister – Only if you like pointless tragedies!

The past two posts I’ve written have spoken about romances that go nowhere. But it can get worse – you can have a romance that goes nowhere repeatedly. That’s if you’re masochistic enough to read “My Fiance is in Love with My Little Sister” (婚約者は、私の妹に恋をする). 

Summary (from novelupdates)

Aah, again? My fiancé was gazing intently at my charming younger sister. When I saw the blaze that lit up in those cold eyes, I was assaulted by deja vu. My fiancé had been in love with my younger sister even in the last life. There was nothing I could do but watch. And, by some karma, I was someone who kept returning to that exact moment.

Right, so, it’s exactly what it says in the title and in the blurb. There’s this lady… and it’s been a long time since I read it so I don’t remember any of their names. Guess I’ll google it. Okay, the lady is Ilya, and nobody can be bothered to mention her fiancé or her sister’s name, so I’ll call them F and S.

Basically Ilya has been reliving her life over and over again from the point where F meets S and falls in love with her. The sad (?) thing is that, despite knowing that F will inevitably fall in love with S, Ilya can’t help loving him or wanting to be his wife. In her early lives, she kicks up a fuss, turns into a villainess and gets dumped/executed/something messed up like that.

In subsequent lives, she tries different things like pretending she doesn’t know about the relationship – but sis dies somehow and everyone thinks she did it. In another life, she attempts to flee the marriage, but gets sold into prostitution and dies an ugly death. After another, she goes mad upon losing her child. In still another… I forget, but either way her attempts to escape from this loop of losing her fiancé to her sister end in failure.

Eventually, after several loops, a mysterious man/crow (Karasu?) shows up. And heavy hints are dropped that her fiancé, at least, is being controlled somehow. In one loop there are several occasions where he feels one way, very fond of Ilya, but is physically unable to say so or act lovingly. It’s like something takes over him and prevents him from doing what he wants. In a sense, he’s a victim of the loop as well. But who set up the endless time loop? Why? How long will it go on? Why is Ilya forced to fall in love with F and F with S?

Welp, don’t think you’re ever going to find out, because My Fiance is in Love with my Little Sister just goes around in circles for ages without ever addressing the key questions.  Most likely the author hasn’t a clue so s/he is just buying time while figuring something out. I forget around which chapter finally made me drop it, but eventually the author got tired of Ilya’s story and started writing some nonsensical gibberish about the crow… I think? Either way, there’s only so much glurge and tragedy a person can wade through before they get tired and start wanting either a conclusion or an explanation.

I checked the details on novelupdates and the web novel is still running at 55 chapters with no updates since February 2021. So… you just want a repeated tragedy of Ilya, F and S, and someone getting killed somehow, welp, go ahead. Just don’t expect satisfaction from it. It’s just weepy romantic tragedy. Ilsa simply can’t move on from F, F simply can’t move on from S, so it’s not even one of those “I’ll be happy in my next life!” or “I’ll live a slow life in the countryside!” deals. There’s zero satisfaction or lasting joy to be found in My Fiance is in Love with my Little Sister, so prepare yourself.