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Manhwa Review | Bloody Sweet by Lee Narae

Title: Bloody Sweet

Author(s): Lee Narae

Artist(s): Lee Narae

Shin Naerim’s life isn’t going so great. She’s being bullied at school because her mother is a moodang (Korean shaman), and her only solace is online, where she writes web novels and keeps up with a blog. Though she is bright and cheery online, she cannot even speak in real life because it would only entice the bullies further. So instead, she spends her days silently taking every comment and nickname (“wig,” being the main one, short for “witch girl”), waiting for her high school life to finally be over so she can move on with her life.

Unfortunately, there is still more high school life to contend with, and next on the docket for Naerim is an overnight school field trip. As if it isn’t enough for her to deal with the name-calling and abuse during the school day, now she has to do it overnight. Even more unfortunate is that there is an abandoned church nearby where they are staying. It is the perfect backdrop for more bullying of the “witch girl.”

However, these school girls don’t know that just because a place is abandoned doesn’t mean it is empty. While forcing Naerim through the abandoned church, they encounter a closed wardrobe with talismans on the outside of it. They make Naerim open it to reveal a man hidden inside – presumably a dead man as he falls out of the wardrobe on top of Naerim without a word. Of course, everyone is shocked and runs off, leaving Naerim alone in the church with the dead body. As luck would have it, though, it isn’t a dead body but a vampire, and he finds Naerim delicious.

After taking a few licks of Naerim’s wounds, she kicks him off of her and takes off back to where the class is staying, but even as she escapes the church, she finds that a red thread now trails out from her wound, seemingly to nowhere and she is the only one who can see it. However, it’s not clear what the thread is until the man appears on the balcony of the place Naerim is staying. She realizes that the man, named Vlad Fetechou, is a vampire and because he drank Naerim’s blood, a witch, he has now become her servant with a collar and red string that ties them together. If Fetechou drinks enough of Naerim’s blood, he will eventually become human, and their pact as servant and master will be broken, but will Naerim survive long enough to help Fetechou? Does she even want him to become human in the first place?

Title: Princess Jellyfish

Author(s): Akiko Higashimura

Artist(s): Akiko Higashimura

Tsukimi Kurashita is obsessed with jellyfish. Her obsession began when she was a child, and her mother took her to the aquarium. While there, her mother promised Tsukimi that she would make her a wedding dress that looked like a lace jellyfish. Not long after that promise, Tsukimi’s mother passes away, leaving her with the memories of the lace jellyfish and her mother’s unfulfilled promise.

Even as those childhood days grew further and further away, Tsukimi’s love and obsession with jellyfish never faded. Instead, it fuels and drives her entire life as she resigns herself to single life at the Amamizukan – a retro building dubbed the “nunnery” where many other like-minded, home-bodied women have congregated to live out their single lives together, obsessing over their own passions (some of which include elderly men, trains, and kimonos, just to name a few). As a result of their obsessions, the women of Amamizukan are all very anti-men and those they dub “stylish” and find themselves unable to interact with the general population as a result.

However, one evening, Tsukimi notices two jellyfish being kept in an aquarium together, and these two species can’t be housed together; otherwise, one of them will die. Tsukimi does her best to explain this to the store clerk, but because the clerk is a man and a stylish, Tsukimi struggles to communicate with him. A stylish woman comes by and helps Tsukimi rescue the jellyfish by chance. Though the woman is a stylish, she is allowed into the sacred nunnery because she isn’t a man. Throughout the evening, Tsukimi realizes even though her new friend Kuranosuke Koibuchi is a stylish, she is still a good person and even finds herself drawn to her beauty because she looks like a princess – something Tsukimi herself feels she could never be.

The next day, though, it is revealed that Kuranosuke is actually a man who cross-dresses as a way to escape his family’s political background. To protect her place in Amamizukan and maintain her new friendship, Tsukimi tells all of her fellow nuns that Kuranosuke is a woman. Even with her own position at Amamizukan protected, the entirety of the building and the neighborhood itself is under threat by large corporations seeking to buy out the land to build hotels and stores in its place. Having fallen in love with Amamizukan and the residents there, Kuranosuke enlists the help of all the women of Amamizukan to create a fashion line based on Tsukimi’s jellyfish illustrations so they can make up the funds needed to buy up the building before it is sold.

Title: The Sweetest Man

Author(s): Haejin

Artist(s): Haejin

Minhoon and Hyungwoo have been best friends for 15 years. Minhoon has always been inexplicably drawn to Hyungwoo, but Hyungwoo has always had a wall up that Minhoon has never been able to cross. Yet, for some reason, Minhoon is desperate to do just that. One evening, after heavy drinking, Hyungwoo is in no state to take care of himself, and as he has always done, Minhoon makes it a point to take him and let him sleep at his house. What neither of them expects, though, is Hyungwoo to suddenly attack Minhoon, biting him on the lips in a sudden kiss.

At this point, Hyungwoo is forced to admit to Minhoon that he is actually a vampire, and due to the bite, Hyungwoo is now a kin – a partial vampire created as an immortal food source for their creator. A dark world is soon opened to Minhoon, one that is full of violence and danger, primarily because of Hyungwoo’s father, the head vampire, who wants to take control of Minhoon so he can then control his runaway son Hyungwoo.

While Minhoon is struggling to come to terms with his new immortality, the threat of the surrounding vampires, and his daily life, he must also contend with something he has had to figure out for the last 15 years: what are his feelings for Hyungwoo?

Title: I Choose the Emperor Ending

Author(s): Kim Suo

Artist(s): jaradog

Marina is obsessed with medieval fantasy. While her dream is to be an author, under the pressure of her family, she goes into mathematics and science, which leads her to create a virtual reality system that allows the user to import their own worlds and live out their fantasies. Then, of course, Marina has to try out her own creation and ends up in a fantasy world that she has written and published herself. Unfortunately, though, she spawns in as an enslaved person. No big deal, though, as she can just exit the game, right? Right?

Unable to get out of the game, Marina is forced to take on the role of an enslaved girl disguised as a young man named Rino. Using her knowledge of the world and the story and her scientific and mathematic prowess, Marina seeks out the protagonist Edward Allen Dihas, and offers her skills to him to become the emperor. Will she be able to help her male lead achieve his ending? More importantly, will she be able to find a way out of the virtual world?

Title: This Villainess Wants a Divorce!

Author(s): AhBin

Artist(s): AhBin

This is a good old reincarnation story. A young Korean woman is reincarnated into a novel, and the person she has taken over happens to be the villainess of the story, Carnelia Easter. She just so happens to reincarnate right after her marriage to the crown prince, Caesar. If the original novel were to play out as it should, she would marry the male lead Caesar under the direction of the empress in an attempt to weaken Caesar’s claim to the throne in favor of her own son. Caesar would eventually go off to war, return a hero, proving that he is worthy of the throne, and fall in love with the female lead Gracie Lancaster, who Carnelia tries to get rid of only to cause her own execution, resulting in Caesar being free to marry Gracie and to take over as emperor.

Not willing to set herself up to die this time around, she makes a concerted effort to help Caesar thwart his stepmother’s plans as well as grow closer to Caesar. She does her best to ensure Caesar still achieves all of his goals while she cheers him on from the side in hopes he will grant her an amicable divorce so she can live out the remainder of her days in peace. Unfortunately, not everything goes to plan as Gracie and Caesar don’t seem interested in each other, and Carnelia herself begins to fall in love with the prince instead. As a result, the story starts to change. Will Carnelia be able to keep herself alive in this unpredictable story, or is she destined to die no matter what?

Title: Beware the Villainess!

Author(s): Berry

Artist(s): Blue Canna

Melissa Foddebrat is the villainess of the novel All the Men That Loved Her, but the Melissa we are following is not the actual Melissa from the story. Instead, she is a Korean woman who has somehow reincarnated into this novel. Having read the story herself and knowing that her fate is to suffer and die, Melissa is determined to defy the world she has been thrust into and forge her own path.

In doing so, she rescues the female lead from her own fate at the hands of the men who vie for her attention, earns the trust of her family and employees, and even befriends and gains the admiration of an abandoned werewolf. All the while, though, the main plot of the novel continues. Will Melissa actually be able to defeat fate? Or is she destined to fall?

Title: The 101st Heroine

Author(s): Menanick

Artist(s): STUDIO D

A young woman is reincarnated as the only daughter of a humble family in the countryside of a fantasy novel. Under her new identity of Evie Collins, Evie is determined to live a normal, productive life with her soon-to-be-husband. Unfortunately. Evie’s world is rocked when her fiance returns home from the capital with a new woman on his arm.

In a fit of rage, Evie signs up to join the kingdom’s latest competition: to marry the crown prince. She doesn’t sign up thinking she will actually get chosen. 100 noblewomen are selected, with the final 101st contestant randomly selected from all the commoner submissions. Surprise, surprise, though, Evie is selected as the 101st contestant. Now, country Evie will have to face off against 100 noblewomen, all while her efforts are being aired to the entire kingdom.

Title: Devils' Line

Author(s): Ryo Hanada

Artist(s): Ryo Hanada

There is a hidden group of people called devils. They are humans born with an insatiable hunger for blood – similar to vampires, though they aren’t weak to sunlight. Tsukasa Taira, our female lead, comes face-to-face with this group when her male companion is outed as a devil – a devil serial killer and rapist, in fact, and the person who calls him out? A devil police officer named Yuuki Anzai.

There is an immediate attraction between Yuuki and Tsukasa. But, as their attraction to each other grows, they quickly find that a relationship between a predator and prey isn’t going to be as simple as they might hope. While dealing with the personal issues surrounding them are espionage, conspiracy, and worldwide efforts to either empower the devils or stomp them out for good.

Title: Fruits Basket

Author(s): Natsuki Takaya

Artist(s): Natsuki Takaya

This story revolves around our lovable, orphaned main character, Tohru Honda. Tohru’s life is filled with hardship. Her father passed when she was a young girl, her mother died not long before the start of our story, she is forced to live in a tent in the woods due to her grandfather’s home renovations and an unkind family living with him, and she works a cleaning job to pay her own way in the world while also attending school.

What Tohru doesn’t know is that she has mistakenly started camping inside the land of the Sohma clan, a family of mysterious, attractive men and women who mostly keep to themselves. One of the main members is Yuki Sohma, who goes to school and is in the same class as Tohru, though they do not interact as Yuki is very distant at school. Tohru ends up accidentally stumbling across the house where Yuki is staying, thus encountering the second Sohma Shigure, an older and unreliable author who cares for Yuki as a guardian.

When Yuki and Shigure question how she found their house, they discover she is living in a tent. For her safety, they ask her to stay with them, at least until her grandfather’s home renovations are complete. While Tohru is unwilling at first, as she fears being a burden on people, a landslide ends up crushing her tent, which forces her to accept the Sohma’s offer.

During her first day with the Sohmas, she ends up meeting Kyo, another Sohma member who hates Yuki with a passion. He challenges Yuki to fight, which, of course, shocks Tohru, but Yuki and Shigure are not surprised in the least. While trying to stop him, Tohru ends up accidentally embracing him, and when she does, Kyo turns into a cat. It is then revealed that Kyo (the cat), Yuki (the rat), and Shigure (the dog) are all part of the Sohma curse, which causes 13 members of the family to turn into the 13 animals of the Chinese zodiac whenever a member of the opposite sex embraces them.

Title: Invitation of the Mystic Messenger

Author(s): GIMAN

Artist(s): MeriG

Hana Kang was not having a very good day. She gets fired from her job, her rent goes up, and as a result, she loses her home. So she goes out into the world with her few possessions, lost and alone. Out there, she runs into a beautiful blond woman who comforts her and asks her to be her friend one day. Naturally, Hana wants to be her friend, too, and after they part, Hana finds that the mysterious woman has left her phone, which gives her the perfect opportunity to seek her out.

However, upon checking the phone for information on the mysterious woman, Hana finds nothing except an app called Mystic Messenger. When she uses the app, she gets a response from someone named Unknown, who points her toward an empty apartment. Little does she know, the apartment and the app are being monitored by members of a group known as RFA – Rika’s Fundraising Association – and because Rika has passed, her role in the group is opened, and they all offer it to Hana. So, with a new job, a new apartment, and a gaggle of attractive suitors at the ready, Hana sets off into the unknown.

Manhwa Review | Bloody Sweet by Lee Narae

Manhwa Review | The Sweetest Man by Haejin

Manhwa Review | This Villainess Wants a Divorce! by AhBin

Manga Review | Devils’ Line by Ryo Hanada

Manhwa Review | Invitation of the Mystic Messenger by GIMAN

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