CAUTION: REVIEW MAY CONTAIN SPOILERS. READ AT YOUR OWN RISK. On my quest to find a compelling female character I stumbled upon this webtoon. There are quite a few webtoons that feature female warheroes as the lead character because being a warrior automatically makes you cool right? Wrong. Its funny how people who write webtoons think that adding a little tidbit about the characters past history can be a sweet shortcut to actual character development. Just because your character used to be a topnotch warrior and is now retired doesnt mean that they cant grow as people after their wartime activities. This webtoon as well as The Emperor and His Female Knight and Blinded by the Setting Sun and probably more that I havent read love to just push a supposedly super strong girl as the heroine but then fail to actually make her strong. Why? In this new age of feminism theres a greater demand for a strong female character that young girls can look up to but it doesnt seem like anyone actually knows what makes a female character strong. Its certainly not physical strength at least by itself. Or maybe I just have high standards. My key example is Captain Marvel from the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Shes undoubtedly the strongest hero introduced so far including both male and female superheroes but shes the blandest character to ever lead a Marvel movie. Sacrificing everything important in a characters growth and development will stunt them irrevocably. In exchange for her awesome strength she has no personality and encounters virtually no struggles throughout her 2hour journey. She even beats up the big bad guy in a single punch. Yawn. Perhaps people think that the key to a strong female character is removing all emotion because one of the reasons people cite females as the weaker sex is that girls are unable to control their emotions or theyre overly emotional. By doing that youve just created a robot not a human. Can you even call her a female character anymore? Stripping the emotions of a character in an attempt to make her seem strong is reducing her to a flat character on a page an empty symbol that means nothing. Sure its a way to pander to some of the easiertoplease feminists out there but if you think about it male characters that show absolutely no emotion arent all that popular either. Humans are special because of their incredibly wide range of feelings and if you take that away its just not really a human anymore. Readers want characters that they can relate to can empathize with and can invest emotionally into during their journey. So this webtoon here also fails to produce a proper female lead just like many before it. If you think about the setup its easy to see why this stumbled before it even started. Firstly it sets the story after the great war because who wants to see all that dark boring war stuff me? It tells us that during the war the female leads heroic actions have caused four very important men to fall in love with her but before they could confess their feelings she disappeared. Whats the reason? She thinks that war victors dont deserve happiness because of the bloodshed theyve brought. Okay let me stop you right there. This is just unrealistic. I can understand why she would feel that way but leaving a nice cushy place to avoid happiness is not a very convincing way of living. I think its rather impossible if you ask me. Its not like she is purposefully going about to live miserably such as throwing away all her possessions or going to live in a wartorn area to repent for her bad deeds that shes supposedly committed. Shes not even going to work as someone that helps suffering people that are in need to help relieve her heavy guilt. No what does she do? She goes to live in a peaceful town where her brother is and works as an assistant bookstore clerk while still receiving stipends for the war contributions she had made. So yeah shes well off and living quite comfortably with barely any thoughts about her old glory war days...so much for not living happily huh? Secondly we are shown the four male characters who love the female lead but this is done in the most laziest manner possible. If you want characters to be important you have to introduce them one by one and not all at once. While I was reading this I basically forgot who was who but it didnt matter anyway because the only thing distinguishing the four men are their looks and their titles. Ones a priest ones a knight ones a mage and the last one is a king. Otherwise you might as well treat them as the same character because their wartime backstories and why they love the girl are so boring and lack all sorts of depth I cant remember what they were. Its even worse because the female lead doesnt feel anything in particular in regards to any of them she just treats them the same as the way she treats her brother. So we can throw her brother in the mix too because Im not even sure if this is hinting at a siscon here and there with how overprotective her brother is of her. So there you have it we have five bland dudes chasing after one bland girl but she doesnt even know it which is why the whole story falls to pieces. I think this poor setup could have still been salvageable if it had focused on the right things but it doesnt even try to. Honestly it seems like this is some sort of wish fulfillment story where a pretty girl is surrounded by hot guys and thats all there is to it. But for fear of confusing the reader with too many dudes at once the guys rotate their appearances every couple chapters. Theyd randomly show up for several chapters have a chat and some weird interaction with the female lead where she usually ends up injured so she can be a cute damsel for them to save and then disappear to be replaced by another guy. The guy that leaves always has some internal monologue about how he is so glad that he has met the female lead and for her to have played a small but precious part in his life. And that made all the difference. This kind of storytelling is the basic principle of what NOT to do when telling a story which is show dont tell. Each guy that winds up in the female leads village in search of her is always telling the reader about how they care about her and how their pasts have intersected on the battlefield. But theres nothing that comes out of that because they dont really treat her like a person that they love. They dont even seem to understand what love is even since they avoid any showing of real affection towards her. They go out of their way to look for her but then dont confess their love to her and just leave. Whats the point of even coming to see her then? If the authors answer is To make sure that shes safe thats just ridiculous because they dont all need to go. Just send a servant to look for her or have one of the main guys go and then report back to the others. Im suspecting its because the author realized they messed up with the setting up of the reverse harem and decided to reintroduce the males all over again to the reader. Most reverse harems usually start with a girl picking up more and more guys along the way like collecting Pokmon and they follow her around like an entourage. Here she already has four guys but they already know her so they need to be introduced again one by one for the readers to figure out who is who. And thats why I said the time placement of this story is all wrong it should just have started from when she met them in the war instead. Also its more impactful since war is far more eventful than being set during peacetime where shes just tending an unpopular bookstore. Then we have the problematic female lead. Shes supposed to be a veteran knight but youd never think that because shes so passive. She doesnt have any strong motivations at all and nothing to protect or strive for. Shes supposedly laden with guilt but we dont actually see any flashback scenes of her killing someone or something like that to help us understand why she feels so strongly about avoiding happiness. In fact it seems that shes perfectly fine living an uneventful but comfortable life with her brother and she is really happy there so I dont understand what all the fuss is about. But because shes so honored for her militaristic contributions we cant have her act as an actual damsel in distress for people to save because thatd weaken her strength as a character. We need her to get hurt every time but only just a little and then have all the guys carry her bridalstyle to somewhere safe to bandage the wound because thats so much more dignified obviously Furthermore lets make her have zero monologue thought bubbles because thatll make her more mysterious and appealing No just no. You cant have the main character exhibit zero internal thoughts and then expect readers to understand how shes feeling. To me it seems like shes more of an object that all these guys are chasing after and shes just sitting there for them to flock to her. Thats basically her whole role in this story or lack thereof. It just makes it that much harder to see why all these guys like her so much because she does nothing at all. Even her expressions are limited and shes almost always in neutral except when speaking to one of the five guys in her life and then she smiles at them. Id rather see the tragic heroine shes supposed to be whos trying to live a better life after the war by actively changing other peoples lives but thats not what we get here. She might as well be a holy grail and all the guys go to the town to look for her find it and take a sip and go back to their lives because thats essentially what happens for the 40+ chapters that have been released so far. The one good thing about this webtoon is the art which is quite good especially the closeups of the female lead with very stunning work on the details of her face. The art in the prologue/oneshot is awful though I guess they hired another artist for the serialization of this story. What a shame that the art is wasted on such a pointless uneventful and meaningless story. Overall Breakdown: Characters: 1/10 Story: 1/10 Art: 7/10 Lore/Worldbuilding: 1/10 Enjoyment: 2/10
24 /100
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