romance Archives - Animefangirl!

Real Missy Relies on Food to Counterattack Chinese web novel review (ending spoilers)

Last time I wrote about a heroine who wasn’t originally human. Turns out that’s a whole genre of Chinese romantic web novels, and I quickly found another one in the same line. Real Missy Relies on Food to Counterattack has a heroine, Tang Qiaoqiao, who was originally… a cooking ladle in a cultivation sect’s kitchen! I can’t make this up… but someone already did!

Summary (condensed from Novelupdates):

She is an ancient profound iron ladle from the cultivation realm. Tang Qiaoqiao has good cooking skills. She cooks on one show and also on the next show. While filming, she also works part-time as a chef in the crew. She has become popular.

Shen Yue was paralyzed after a car accident. His temperament changed drastically, and his life seemed to fall into the boundless darkness. At this time, she was the only light in his life. Not only she healed his legs, captured his stomach, but also occupied his heart.

What, if his legs are cured, they will get divorced? Don’t even think about it!

There you have it. Tang Qiaoqiao takes over the body of a mediocre C-rank starlet who also happened to be the “real” daughter of the Tang family versus the “fake” daughter Tang Rou. All that AND she happened to marry the usual cold CEO Shen Yue even though the original Tang Qiaoqiao was in love with Shen Liang, who is Shen Yue’s nephew and also Tang Rou’s boyfriend.

Sounds like the perfect setup for a dog’s blood drama, right? Nope! The full series is very short, at 101 chapters plus 1 side story, and in that time, almost none of the things you would expect from this kind of family drama occur. BTW you can read the full thing as a cleaned-up machine translation with videos and pictures of the food at Pure Love Translations.

Anyway, like I said, no dog blood drama despite the over-the-top setup. Firstly, there’s very little tension with the Tang family. I’ve written before about hating the trope with the “real” daughter coming back later and the family having to choose between her and the “fake” daughter.

In Real Missy‘s case, the Tang family comes down firmly on the side of the “fake” Tang Rou. Meanwhile Tang Qiaoqiao is not even human any more, and what happened to the original Tang Qiaoqiao is never addressed. Therefore, the Tang family doesn’t want her, and she doesn’t want them either. There’s one short showdown and everyone sensibly decides to leave the other party alone, the end.

Secondly, nothing happens between Shen Liang and Tang Qiaoqiao because again they’re not interested in each other. Shen Liang comes to love and enjoy Qiaoqiao’s cooking just like everyone else does, but the relationship stops there, if nothing else because he’s terrified of his uncle Shen Yue. Without Tang Qiaoqiao to serve a foil inflaming their passions, Shen Liang and Tang Rou quickly fizzle out as a couple. He’s focused on trying to make it as a star, so he loses interest in her when she tries to leak their secret relationship. Eventually she moves abroad with the rest of the Tang family and they disappear from the series forever.

Thirdly, there’s no family drama on the Shen Yue side as well. Shen Yue’s mother takes an immediate liking to Tang Qiaoqiao (and her cooking) so no one objects to their relationship. The one sister-in-law (Shen Liang’s mother) who tries to be unpleasant is quickly put in her place by Qiaoqiao’s almighty cooking, while her husband is thoroughly cowed by Shen Yue’s cold demeanor and hyper-competence. The teased rivalry between the two brothers doesn’t go anywhere because Shen Yue simply lets go of the family business and starts his own which is even more successful, the end.

As you can detect from the above, Tang Qiaoqiao silencing rivals and making friends through her cooking is the whole theme of the book. They took the title Real Missy Relies on Food to Counterattack very literally. Her food is soooo good that absolutely everyone who tries it is won over, plus it even helps with stomach ailments, paralyzed legs and other minor diseases. She even starts growing her own vegetables which are somehow also the best things ever.

The chapters follow a predictable format where, as a minor star, Tang Qiaoqiao goes onto a set to film and show, ends up cooking, and wins everybody over including the audience and a growing army of fans. There’s also some comedy in there about how her original iron ladle nature makes her stronger than the average person, leading to the nickname “King Kong Barbie.” That part is actually pretty funny but doesn’t really go anywhere.

Okay, okay, but what about the romance between her and Shen Yue? Well… TBH Shen Yue is not a very nice guy. A combination of his despair over his paralysis coupled with his disgust with Tang Qiaoqiao (remember the original TQ was in love with his nephew) means that he is outright rude to her and verbally abusive for quite a ways into the novel. It’s hard to feel good about that until he starts softening up.

Luckily Tang Qiaoqiao is more focused on her cooking and acting than on winning his favor. Since she is not hurt by him but rather finds him amusing – especially how he can’t resist her food at all, that makes him a little less odious. And once he falls, like the typical novel CEO, he really falls hard and goes out of his way to sponsor and support her movie career without being overbearing about it.

He also confesses quite early but gives her the space and time to process her own feelings and decide if she reciprocates. Yes, this might be hard to believe, but he is not rapey at all. A little stalkerish, but not rapey. The bar for Chinese web novel CEOs is truly in hell.

Meanwhile Tang Qiaoqiao’s plan when she first became human was to cure Shen Yue through her magical cooking, and then divorce him for reasons that aren’t fully explained. Once Shen Yue cottons on to this idea, he does his best to woo her and succeeds, so she eventually changes her mind. They become a couple for real, have a cute little baby, Tang Qiaoqiao’s food and acting empires both take off spectacularly, and they all live happily ever after, the end.

Simply put, Real Missy Relies on Food to Counterattack is exactly what it says on the tin. The “real” daughter cooks her way through every single crisis and wins the day. No, it’s never explained how a cooking ladle came to life in a CEO novel. And due to her inheriting OG Tang Qiaoqiao’s memories, you never get the comedic hijinks that you normally get when a non-human has to deal with becoming human for the first time. Instead, Mary Sue the Super Cook just cooks for 102 chapters and gets her man, the end.

For all that, I actually really enjoyed the series. Last time, I said Lady of Fortune was boring because there was no drama. In Real Missy, that flaw is countered by the very short length, so that the whole thing is over by the time you start wondering, “Where is this going?” and receive the answer “Nowhere.” The food Tang Qiaoqiao makes also sounds and looks very delicious (I enjoyed the recipe videos the translators added) so this isn’t one of those series like My Fantastic Chef Wife where you come for the cooking and get served stale drama instead.

Recommended for anyone who wants a quick, heart-warming read without thinking too much.

Lady of Fortune, Jiao Niang Chinese web novel review

I haven’t read any Chinese romance web novels in a while. I enjoy the face-slapping and the romantic tension, but they were always kind of… rapey. Or full of over the top dog-blood drama. Or otherwise uncomfortable to read, either from the start or as the story developed.

I dreamed of a world where a Chinese romance would exist with no rapey prince/CEO and insane antagonists, and at last I found it in the form of Lady of Fortune, Jiao Niang. Even better, it’s complete and relatively short at 215 chapters including side stories.

Summary (condensed from NovelUpdates):

Ye Jiao, an ancient ginseng root, woke up to find herself already riding in a wedding sedan chair—a wedding meant to bring a sick groom good fortune.

Qi Yun was frail and sickly, plagued by an ill-fated birth chart and constantly hovering near death’s door. Yet after marrying Ye Jiao, his health began to miraculously improve.

Only then did they realize the luckiest person under heaven was actually his own wife…

Just because it’s complete doesn’t mean I finished it, however. I stopped around chapter 64 firstly because I ran out of the better translations and had to switch to brain-melting machine translations, and secondly because the main character Ye Jiao got pregnant, and romance series always decline for me when babies come into the picture. Most readers seem to live for the precocious “little bun” scenes, but that’s where I lose interest unless I specifically signed up for a child-raising series, in which case the baby had better come early.

That said, I still highly recommend Lady of Fortune, Jiao Niang for any readers looking for a series full of positive and supportive relationships. It’s not just the one between Qi Yun and Ye Jiao: almost all the relationships in the series are positive. For example, their world is some alternative ancient China where almost no one has concubines. The Qi patriarch doesn’t have one, none of Ye Jiao’s acquaintances do, even the third prince they run into has only one wife. Improbable, yes, but it also reduces the drama and tension of a series set in ancient China by 70%. Happy (one) wife, happy life.

Meanwhile Qi Yun is, of course, appears to be the usual “cold to every one but sweet to my wife” character, but we quickly discover he was largely that way because of his long illness. He’s actually fairly warm and caring not only towards his wife, but also towards his family, especially his two brothers Qi Ming and Qi Zhao. There’s no sibling rivalry even when he recovers and begins to shine brighter, and although his sister-in-law Madam Fang is shown to be a bit petty, she only tries some minor scheming and quickly gives up (as of chapter 64 anyway).

Meanwhile Ye Jiao is initially sold into the Xu family by her sister-in-law and her second brother Ye Erlang, but unlike most examples of this trope, her family doesn’t hover around trying to suck up or insisting that she owes them money. Since she’s not the original Ye Jiao anyway, she doesn’t go looking for them and they don’t come looking for her unless they have business with her. If you’re looking for annoyingly persistent relatives being face-slapped ever chapter, this isn’t the series for you.

The theme runs throughout the whole Lady of Fortune, Jiao Niang. People are generally nice and decent to each other, and those who are not are still not as terrible as other examples in other series.

The romance—the whole point of reading a romance series—is extremely positive. Qi Yun does get slightly jealous of a few things (including a rooster, of all people) but he’s secure enough to understand that Ye Jiao only loves two things in this life: him, and food. And he respects that by not being jealous or confining, not trying to touch her against her will, no rape, no harassment, nothing. Even when they finally sleep together, it’s fully consensual with no hints of hesitation or discomfort.

For Ye Jiao, there’s genuinely nothing in her head besides loving Qi Yun and eating good food. Okay, and she’s interested in medical herbs to make her beloved husband better, and she treasures good relationships. But in general, due to her past history as a spiritual ginseng and not a human being, she is too empty-headed and disinterested in others to be a Mary Sue. If she has food and Qi Yun, that’s enough for her.

By the way, shockingly enough, she cannot cook. If I had a dollar for every heroine in a Chinese web novel who wows the whole world with her astonishing cooking skills, I’m positive I could retire, but for once there’s a series without such powers.

She’s not even that great a healer either, and mainly helps Xu Jing recover by holding his hand, being near him and eventually raising a medical plant that makes him much better. Though apparently he always remains a little weaker than others despite that. A Chinese fiction heroine who isn’t an action girl, isn’t a miracle doctor, isn’t a fantastic cook, can’t even embroider… what kind of rare beast is this?!

So Lady of Fortune, Jiao Niang is a nice change from the usual toxic dog-blood series in a lot of ways. It’s not perfect, however. The biggest thing, and the reason why I quit, is that the lack of drama unfortunately makes the series highly predictable. Like yeah yeah, Qi Yun will become filthy rich, Ye Jiao will have babies, the third prince will probably become emperor, blah blah. In most series you can guess the conclusion, yes, but you stay for the twists and turns and the face-slapping along the way.

Or at least if the heroine does anything beside eating and sleeping, then you read for the delicious recipes or to see whose life she saves with her mighty healing powers or whose butt she kicks with her awesome ninja skills… something, anything! There’s nothing like that here, so if you want the fluffiest of fluffy romance series with the greenest of green flag MLs, this is your series.

For My Derelict Favorite manhwa review (liked and hated it at the same time, ending spoilers included)

It’s very popular in romance manhwa to have a villainess going up against the original female lead (OGFL). Almost always the villainess turns out to be not so bad while the OGFL is not so good, so then you’re happy to see the “villainess” (actually a nice person) wins.

For My Derelict Favorite is a manhwa where the villainess is low key a real bitch who actively mounts a campaign to destroy the life of the OGFL who has done nothing to her personally, and succeeds in the end. If you’ve ever wanted to see a villainess act like a villainess and succeed and have everyone paint her as a saint in the process, this is your series.

Summary (from official Webtoon): What happens after the story ends with a “happily ever after”? When Hestia enters her favorite novel as a side character, she happily fangirls from the sidelines. Thinking she’ll return home when the story reaches its end, Hestia finds that the only thing awaiting her is the tragic death of her favorite character. Now miraculously restored to the day of the ending, Hestia decides that she’ll no longer spectate from the sidelines – instead, she’ll save her derelict favorite!

For My Derelict Favorite where the protagonist enters her favorite series and takes revenge on everyone who (in her opinion) wronged her favorite character. Everyone who has ever suffered from Second Male Lead Syndrome can relate to her feelings, if not her actions.

Since Hestia was not a character in the original novel, she doesn’t technically count as a “villainess.” Instead she is the ultimate fangirl who goes to great lengths to get “revenge” for her favorite character Cael who starts the series feeling suicidal after his crush Diana cuts ties with him (because he murdered two people), and then marries his friend Helios.

In Hestia’s first experience in that world, Cael ultimately succeeded in killing himself. However Hestia went back in time and forced her way to become his wife, running his affairs until he gets out of his depressive funk and resumes his normal duties. She also uses her knowledge of the first timeline to pass herself off as a prophet, getting Cael and Helios to trust her by making predictions that come true.

Now, let’s get a few things straight so you can see how unreasonable Hestia was being.

Yes, Cael was in love with his crush/friend Diana, but he never confessed his feelings or even touched her. The whole country knows it, but he never said anything. For My Derelict Favorite paints the marriage of Helios to Diana as one big betrayal of Cael, but what were they supposed to do? Just not date each other because Mr. Can’t Speak Up will be hurt?
Diana was absolutely a hypocrite for using Cael’s love to her advantage by accepting a big gift and his assistance when it suited her. However she did not two-time Helios with Cael, or even divide her affections. She didn’t lead him on or pretend they had a future together.
Diana was also a hypocrite for condemning Cael for murder when it is that murder that allowed her to become crown princess. It was a crappy thing to cut a formerly good friend off so quickly and permanently.
However, it is undeniable that murder is a heinous crime and a sin. Cael killed two people without following legal procedures, and got away with it too (in fact, he even gets their land later on). As a saintess with deep convictions (at the time), you couldn’t very well expect Diana to go yay, whoopee over murder, even if it was ostensibly for the sake of the nation. Of course, Diana’s condemnation could have been done with far more grace and understanding instead of coldly cutting him off while benefiting from his misdeeds. But she’s not wrong to feel and speak negatively of the act.
Nobody “owed” Cael marriage, nobody owed him a romantic relationship just because of all the sacrifices and silent service his offered. Nobody “drove him to suicide” except him and him alone. And to his credit, Cael comes to understand that pretty quickly. Hestia is the one who continues to bear a grudge long after Cael has made peace with everything that happened.
It’s doubtful whether Cael ever loved Diana anyway, as opposed to loving his idea or image of her, and what she stood for. The same goes for Helios. It turns out that none of them really understood her and all her flaws. Instead they painted a perfect picture in their minds, pursued that ideal and then were disappointed and abandoned her when they had to face reality.

All that to say, I really felt sorry for the OGFL Diana in all this. While she was initially presented as a perfect, caring saintess, Hestia mounts a campaign to rob her of her confidence and all her friends, including wooing away her one supporter in high society, while building up herself and Cael as the key figures in the kingdom, eventually inheriting the Dukedom of the people Cael murdered. How that for a villainess turning the tables?

And of course, as opposed to the flawed Diana and the confused, diffident Helios, Cael is absolutely perfect, can do no wrong, is only ever sinned against, never sinning. So smart, so handsome, so everything. Unfortunately he’s pretty likeable so I couldn’t hate him, but gosh dangit, that’s a Gary Stu if I ever saw one.

So back to Hestia, who basically loves and worships Cael so much that she wages a campaign to bring Diana down while elevating Cael and herself. In fairness, it must be said that part of the reason why she succeeds is Diana’s own weakness. However, just because someone has a weakness doesn’t mean you’re just or justified if you use that against them. If someone leaves their door unlocked despite your warnings, that doesn’t mean you should lead a gang of thieves to rob them. Unless you’re Hestia, of course, in which case it’s Tuesday.

Honestly I blame the King and the Crown Prince Helios for Diana getting into this mess in the first place. It turns out the personality traits needed to be a good saintess (purity, love of prayer, strong convictions, backing of the temple) are liabilities when she becomes the crown princess and has to learn to compromise, flatter others, schmooze with the local and foreign nobility, and so on. She was just a random village girl with a few special powers. That did not inherently make her fit to be crown princess.

At the very least she should have undergone a LOT of training before the marriage, which would have quickly exposed how unfit she was for the position. Instead they rushed into the marriage, and I believe part of this was to take advantage of her popularity with the ordinary people versus Helios’ shaky position. Otherwise there was absolutely no reason for the crown prince to rush into marriage with a commoner. They should have known how much opposition there would be to Diana, and yet both Helios and his father failed to provide the necessary backing, support, correction and education to help her succeed, and then threw her out once she inevitably made huge mistakes.

What mistakes, though? Apart from hosting poorly planned lunches and being a bad hostess, Diana doesn’t do any of the evil deeds you usually see OGFLs do. She doesn’t plot against Hestia, doesn’t try to kill her or turn society against her, nothing.

Her big mistake is to stubbornly make investments in a fraudulent company with money from the temple and the crown. A terrible and costly mistake, but not one that couldn’t have been overcome if Helios had stood by her, kept her out of society’s eyes, and helped fix her mistakes. Unfortunately once her popularity and powers are gone, his love (or “love,” shall we say) for her quickly disappears as well. He divorces her, drives her out without a penny to her name, and later marries someone else.

Of course I’m not trying to absolve Diana here. Like I said, she had a lot of weaknesses that others gleefully took advantage of, chief of which was a ridiculous level of stubbornness. For example, the only reason she made that bad investment was to spitefully stick it to Hestia, who she despised because Hestia made it a point to needle her at every opportunity and point out her hypocrisy on occasion. Diana was even warned repeatedly to not do the investment. She was also the first to withdraw from Helios and even try to get Cael to love her again, so I won’t say Helios was completely unjustified in moving on.

But again it boils down to point #6 I made above, which is that neither Cael nor Helios ever bothered to know the real Diana along with her insecurities and tendencies. They just decided, “This is what she is like because this is what I want my ideal woman to be like.” Helios and Diana never built up a relationship of real trust, and that is what doomed them and allowed events (and Hestia) to come between them in the end.

In all this, I haven’t said much about Hestia herself. TBH she’s quite annoying, always squealing and blushing over Cael while plotting against Diana for daring to not return her sweetie’s affection. Despite her prophetic powers, she also does not try to save a ship full of people she knows is going to sink but instead uses it in her plot to oust the crown princess. What about all the families that lost fortunes or were ruined due to the fraud? And what about the people in the capital who died just so she could prove that Cael’s territory had better hygiene? Ha, like she cares about anyone except herself. Hestia is toxic to the max.

And she proves it when there’s a long period where she refuses to accept that Cael is genuinely over Diana and over his heartbreak and ready to move on with his life. It brings up the question, when is a victim allowed to stop being a victim? Sometimes people are so fixed on getting justice for someone that they stop considering what the other person genuinely wants.

The “derelict favorite” quickly stops being derelict and returns to his former self, and Hestia is forced to confront the difference between the pitiable victim she has in her mind and the actual red-blooded male she is married to, who has more than a brotherly interest in his new wife. Fortunately for her, unlike with Helios and Diana, the ‘real’ Caelus is smart and wonderful and funny and all the other Gary Stu things I listed above, so Hestia gets her happy ending with her hubby and three obnoxious kids while Diana is sent penniless back to her village to be bullied by random girls.

Meanwhile the author tries in vain to make us sympathize with Hestia by arguing that the reason she’s so fixated on revenge is because if she lets go and admits her job is done, then she will have no reason for being in that world and being next to Cael. But again, it’s all about her isn’t it? What she wants, what her future is, what her place is in that world. If she has to destroy Diana and hundreds of lives because of her crippling anxiety, so be it. Like I said, Hestia is totally toxic.

Let that be a lesson to you, Diana. Maybe next time you’ll think twice before calling out murder when you see it, and you’ll marry the guy who never asked you out versus the guy who loves you and who you’ve been openly dating for ages.

Actually it’s a lesson for all of us: everyone in the kingdom knows that Cael murdered Duke Letona and his daughter, but no one says anything, and the only one who gets in trouble and ends up unhappy is the one who calls it out. The moral of the story is, when you’re benefiting from someone’s misdeeds, just shut up and enjoy it. Or else.

Lastly, since I’m spoiling everything anyway, it turns out the goddess of the world is the one who summoned Hestia there, because the goddess was a fan of Cael and didn’t like how things played out. So she wrote the story in a book, scattered it in the multiverse, summoned the biggest Cael fangirl to help her change the ending, and even reversed time to make her try again when Hestia didn’t perform to her satisfaction.

It’s very bizarre that the goddess had the power to do all that but no power to change the ending herself. In fact, I wager she had more than enough power to intervene, but enjoys being a voyeur and spectator much more, watching the characters move around and suffer for her amusement. How very sad for Diana, who even after the ending spends a lot of time praying to a goddess who doesn’t give a fig about her or about anyone except Cael, and who gives and withdraws powers at a whim. The goddess is the real villainess of For My Derelict Favorite, if you ask me.

Long story short, should you read this? If you’re a fan of romance manhwa, absolutely. It’s short, it’s complete, the art is nice (the bishies are suitably fine), and the main couple gets a happy ending (undeserved IMO but whatever).

But plenty of series do the same thing. What makes For My Derelict Favorite much better is the complexity of the supporting cast. They’re not black and white good or evil people and that leaves the reader with a lot of “What ifs” and “Why didn’t theys” that ensure the series will live longer in your memory than the usual isekai romance manhwa will. It left a rather bad taste in my mouth but I won’t forget it in a hurry, at least.

The main series is concluded, with ongoing spin-offs, but they’re mostly about Hestia and Cael crowing triumphantly at the reader because of their perfect lives, so I’m done here. It’s a controversial series with readers, so I’d love to hear your thoughts about Hestia (boo!) and Diana (also boo, but kinda… you know?) if you’ve read For My Derelict Favorite. Until next time!

Back to the Small Fishing Village In 1982 Chinese webnovel review – Great until it wasn’t

When you’re reading your slice of life web novel and having a great time and then suddenly the author takes a really bad decision that pisses you off and you drop it but now you’re sad. If you want to experience that, read Back to the Small Fishing Village In 1982.

Summary: Ye Yaodong is a fisherman who falls into the sea in his 50s and wakes up again in his 20s in his fishing village in China in 1982, just like the title said. Having squandered his life and burned all his bridges last time, he decides to live this life a little more sensibly.

And that’s really it. Ye Yaodong isn’t one of those people who go back in time with a system or superpowers or even esoteric knowledge. His memory isn’t even that good, with only major events like his wife’s miscarriage standing out to him. And as an ordinary villager in rural China, he can’t even read until he takes night classes, though he proves to be quick study.

The only thing special about him is his high degree of luck when it comes to fishing. That, and an ability to shmooze. He also knows enough about future events to recognize a pyramid scheme at a time when few have heard of it, and to know that certain things like oyster pearls will go up tremendously in future. This helps him stay out of trouble by working diligently and avoiding standing out too much, while preparing for a prosperous future by making and saving money when he can.

I read up to chapter 77 from a blog that cleaned up the machine translation, but unfortunately the rewrites stopped just when Yaodong had bought a fishing boat and was preparing to become independent from his family. After that I read the brain-melting but still understandable raw machine translation. If you read it, you can look forward to choice lines like, “What kind of mouse meeting last time, didn’t they just not listen to A Dong? You see, they didn’t believe it and didn’t lose. We are too greedy, and the ghosts are obsessed.” It… kind of makes sense in context, but phew!

Not only did the half-garbled nonsense make me appreciate the first blogger, but it also made me think that edited machine translations (a.k.a. post-edited machine translations) are the wave of the future, at least for web novels. But that’s a discussion for another day.

Thanks to the machine translation, me and my surviving brain cells were able to read up to chapter 466 of Back To the Small Fishing Village In 1982 before giving up due to a very disgusting action on the part of Ye Yaodong. Before that, there’s a lot that happens, but for the most part this is a slice of life about a fisherman in a fishing village, so he goes fishing, catches fish, comes back and sells it, rinse and repeat. Whole arcs can revolve around catching spawning squid (sustainability? what’s that?) or picking up scallops on the beach after a typhoon. Here are major events I recall:

In his last life, his wife Lin Xiuqing miscarried a daughter, but this time they are able to hide the baby until it is almost due (barring one person who finds out and tries to blackmail them). Lin Xiuqing goes into labor just when inspectors come round to check, but the villagers are able to delay them until the baby is born. The truly horrifying implication is that she would have been forced to abort the almost full-term baby if she hadn’t given birth right then, which is too cruel to think about but was a reality in China’s draconian one-child policy days.
Ye Yaodong quickly upgrades from his small wooden boat to a mid-sized iron boat. He hires his father as his deckhand and sells (IIRC) the wooden boat to his friends. His two brothers take over the dad’s old boat, and everyone is happy.

Ye Yaodong makes a lot of money through different bursts of luck, such as finding pearls in oysters, picking up and selling a beached oarfish, taking rich men fishing, and finding a reef with plenty of abalone for the picking. He buys a diving suit so he can pick up expensive seafood like sea cucumbers from shallow waters, and comes to a profit-sharing agreement with his friends to let them borrow it.
He also has occasional run-ins with unfriendly people at sea, such as a guy who later incites someone to rob him, and a gang of pirates from Luzhou island. So far he has successfully fended them off every time.
There is a long drawn-out and boring sub-arc where his friend Ah Guang tries to woo his sister Ye Huimei and eventually succeeds. Every reader breathes a sigh of relief once they are finally married and out of the picture.
He successfully mends and improves his relationships with all those who knew him as a ne’er-do-well in his previous life, such as his long-suffering wife, his children, and his in-laws.
For example he goes foraging in the mountains and rivers with his in-laws and helps them make a lot of money, he helps his mother get a job as a village cadre, and he builds an extra room in his new house for his doting grandmother – which indirectly saves his life because she’s around to give him advice during a typhoon.
He saves a whale and gets his picture taken with it.
He picks up a box of treasure while diving and hides it in his garden for the future. He also picks up a tripod that he places in the local Mazu temple, then the government comes sniffing around after it. Long story short, he comes up with an idea to rebuild the temple using donations, and he also makes valuable connections in the army and the government.
He finds out that stores are being sold in a new market that he knows will be prosperous in the future, so he borrows money from his friends and buys two stores without consulting his wife. He later persuades his brothers and some acquaintances to do the same.

This is where the trouble came. He bought it without discussing it with his wife, who keeps the money in the house. When he went to get the money from her to repay his friends, she was understandably upset. So… how does Ye Yaodong persuade her? He doesn’t. He rapes her instead. Uh… yeah. When that fails to persuade her, he tries plan B: rape her again. Which works this time. The writer tries to play it off as nothing, but the magic was gone after that.

I kept reading a little longer and other things happened like Ye Yaodong making tons of money through a squid fishing trip, and picking up boxes dropped by smugglers in the process, or ordering an actual fishing ship at the shipyard (his wife doesn’t bother to oppose him any more, I wonder why) which will be ready in two years.

However, once I lost the will to support Ye Yaodong, I didn’t want to slog through the bad machine translation for his sake any more. I give kudos to the author for making a series about fishing in a Chinese village really interesting and compelling even when he’s just picking up fish on the beach, but maybe try not making him a rapist next time, yeah? I’m done here.

Beloved by the Male Lead’s Nephew manhwa – Nonsensical but very charming (some spoilers)

Manga / Manhwa / Manhwa is a largely visual medium, so it follows that lovely art and designs go a long way towards giving a series popularity. I firmly maintain that Solo Leveling wouldn’t be anywhere near as popular as it is without the slick art.

And the same goes for Beloved by the Male Lead’s Nephew, a romance series with a largely senseless plot that is all over the place, but with art that is so nice that fans are willing to forget everything and just revel in the art. I mean, look at the very first page:

Sasha-kun, so cuuuuute! So cute I almost forgot to include a summary of the series.

After being reborn as a stalker villainess destined to die for trying to kill Archduke Calix Elluiden’s lover, Charlize Lienta fled from the capital to stay away from the archduke at all costs. But her plan goes awry when she returns a year later and rescues a poor boy on the streets… because he turns out to be Sasha, Calix’s long-lost nephew! Given her infamous reputation as Calix’s stalker, will Charlize succeed in returning Sasha without raising the archduke’s suspicions?

…Of course she will. Okay, basically you should throw all logic out of the window and check your brain in at the door when you read Beloved by the Male Lead’s Nephew. In the first place, the timeline isn’t clear. At first she says the world she is in is from a novel where “Charlize” was executed as a villain. But then we get a flashback to her past life and she was a poor orphan in a medieval era who presumably never learned to read. So when and where did she read the novel?

And at what point did she become “Charlize”? At first it seems to be recent, but then she talks about being in the academy together with Callix. Has she been in the world for a while but unable to control her actions, or did she just reincarnate into Charlize’s body but somehow their memories have merged into one?

There’s a lot that suggests that Charlize is an unreliable narrator – for one thing, she says in chapter one the original Charlize was executed, but then she later remembers committing suicide. She claims that Charlize was an unwanted stalker who never spoke to Callix in the novel, but then remembers that they spoke once and original Charlize never forgot it. Plus in recent chapters, it seems original Charlize’s affections weren’t completely unwanted after all…?

Stop thinking so hard and just focus on Charlize’s ultra-long nails that change color with her outfits. I love them so much!

Honestly, the thought that all this timey-wimey stuff will make sense one day (and the gorgeous art) is what encourages me to keep reading, because the rest of the story is all over the place and makes no sense. First Sasha is the legitimate prince and is supposed to take his place on the throne… but nothing happens and the usurper is still there, scheming against him (or actually doing nothing and the Empress does all the scheming). What’s the delay? Why a delay? First he’s confirmed to be the late Emperor’s son, then there’s an artifact that says otherwise, then no, actually the artifact was reacting to his divine power… it’s a huge mess.

Speaking of divine power and messes, there’s a divine beast that forms a contract with Sasha and supposed to protect him… then it suddenly loses all its powers off-screen and is reduced to a stone which is tossed in a lake and only shows up once to be a deus ex machina. What even is the point of its existence?

And speaking of more powers and messes, Charlize has the power to see flashes of the future when she looks into Callix’s eyes…? Or gets closer to him? She also experiences it with a side character, but it happens once and never again, another mystery. The plot is powered by these flashses, where Charlize sees something, works to prevent it, sees something else, etc. But the power has yet to be explained and is just kinda… there. I’m sure they’ll tell us why she has these powers eventually. Maybe.

I already mentioned the ineffectual Emperor and Empress who have their own thing going on, but mainly do… not very much to anyone. The Empress is easily fooled by the fakest acting even though Charlize has thwarted her plans over and over and over again by “coincidentally” being in the right place at the right now. The Emperor is presumably usurping the throne but barely appears and doesn’t seem aware of the Empress’s plans. He’s just kinda… there.

The Empress is in a hurry to have an heir, but that’s pointless until she gets rid of Sasha, but she doesn’t try very hard to get rid of him, just minor things like pushing him into a lake (where you can’t drown because it’s magic) and setting up a fake artifact. She rather spends her time terrorizing minor nobles… I told you, it’s a mess. I like her design though. The art really carries this series.

Okay, so we established that Sasha the nephew is adorable, Charlize has something interesting going on in her backstory, the villains are a joke, the story is a wash… what am I leaving out? Aha, the romance! And the male love interest! It’s easy to leave him out because while he is very handsome and a very nice guy (no yandere stalkers here), he’s also very flat and boring. But boring is good when it comes to manhwa male leads. Some of them can be completely insane, so a relatively normal guy is lovely. It’s just that he really needs to not be so passive because there’s a lot going on around his passive, good-looking head.

Seriously, he doesn’t really do much except dote on Sasha and be nice to Charlize every chance he gets. I’m very interested in Callix’s relationship to the original Charlize in the previous timeline. He seemed to merely tolerate her stalking out of pity for an abused girl who was pushing everyone away. But later on he seemed to feel more than pity for her. And we get a flashback showing he was crushed at her death, but was it because of love or just more pity? Will the series ever address that, or am I hoping for too much?

I’d also like to see what he plans to do with Sasha, because as of chapter 42 he just spoils him rotten at home. Which is cute, but doesn’t get us anywhere. I’m guessing he wishes he could just keep him safe and let him grow up as an ordinary child, but unfortunately the Empress won’t allow that. That’s why Callix needs to take a stronger stance about pushing for the Emperor to step down and Sasha to take the throne. But no, he would rather go on playdates and slowly get closer to present Charlize… Yeah aight, you do you, I guess.

TL;DR Beloved by the Male Lead’s Nephew is a series you read when you want to go “awwww,” and “kawaiii” and just have fun without thinking about things too much. I think it’s called “fluff,” though most fluffy romances do attempt to make sense. Also read it when you want to see nice art. I love Charlize’s nails, though fans have mixed feelings about those talons, haha. If I read to the end – and I have no intention of quitting anytime soon – I’ll write a follow up post explaining how things turned out. Until then!