You know, as the fall season makes me busier at work, I find myself having less time to read manga. But recently I’ve discovered something that’s great and has short enough chapters that means that I can read them in my off time and breaks throughout work—WEBTOONS. I first came across webtoons by discovering True Beauty stills on Instagram. The art was really good, and I was entertained by the snapshots of the comic. Thus, I set out on my journey to find the source material, which I quickly found by downloading the Webtoons app on my phone. I was thrilled to see that most comics were updated weekly and they were free to read. After getting thoroughly updated on True Beauty, I went out and explored more, and man was I impressed with the artistry. For today I thought I’d share some of my favorites.
True Beauty by Yaongyi
So as I said before, this was the webtoon that I fell in love with and that was my gateway into the world of webttons. This is about a girl who is “ugly” by society beauty standards, and who studies really hard at makeup to get pretty, thus becoming one of the residential hot girls when she begins at an all-new highschool. The main character Jugyeong actually has a delightful personality and her confidence and social life seems to be boosted once she gets “pretty. The thing that really gets me though, is the love interest/first TRUE friend she makes—a boy named Suho. While she hides parts of her true self from her friends, due to circumstance she is able to show this side to Suho, and it’s clearly early on that he likes her for her personality and not her looks. It’s frustrating and cute to watch these two interact, and True Beauty definitely makes me think about the power of makeup to make individuals more confident, as art, or even the social impact it has on society.
Cursed Princess Club by LambCat
This is such a cute delight I found. Cursed Princess Club is about a princess who, well who looks a little bit like a witch (she gets mistaken for one often). Her other siblings are the epitome of beauty, but they always treat her as if she is just as beautiful as they are. Because our girl Gwendolyn has the most amazing and sweetest personality. Gwen and her two sisters get engaged to princes from a neighboring kingdom, and the one engaged to Gwen is very displeased which leads Gwen into finding a group of princesses who all have rather unfortunate curses. This cute and funny webtoon follows Gwen as she interacts with the Cursed Princess Club as well as her “betrothed”. What I particularly like about this story, is that Gwen’s family, as well as her betrothed’s brothers, never really comment on her looks. Instead, they care more about her golden personality, and I can’t wait for her betrothed to see that too.
Lore Olympus by Rachel Smythe
Lore Olympus focuses on one of my favorite stories from Greek mythology: Persephone and Hades. This comic is absolutely brilliant. Though I will admit, some of the content may be triggering for some. It’s a dramatic but cute story about Persephone and Hades falling in love in the most interesting way. It makes the story modern in many ways while also keeping true to the big parts of the mythos and keeping the mythological origins. It’s really cool to see Persephone text Hades and anxiously wait for him to text her back, or see Poseidon and Zeus tease Hades for being single. It humanizes these myths in such an intriguing way while also dealing with some heavy topics and also delivering on cute and romantic moments. Plus the artwork is SO unique.
Let’s Play by Mongie
I feel personally attacked by this occasionally but in the best way. Let’s Play is about a game developer whose first game tanks due to a popular streamer playing her game incorrectly and badmouthing it to his millions of fans. Okay. Maybe that’s just how this story starts. But really, this is about that same streamer moving into the apartment next to our MC, Sam. The majority of what I’ve read on Let’s Play so far, has more to do with Sam’s confidence, her friends, and her potential love interests that make her grow as she begins to let loose parts of herself that had been bottled up. One of my favorite parts of Let’s Play, has been the depictions of Sam’s emotions as literal person-like figures that you can occasionally see tagging along behind her. Anxiety, anger, self-confidence, lust, and more. You can see by their reactions and appearance just how much she’s feeling, and while she may appear fine for the moment, some of her emotions may be lingering around. I really enjoy seeing her discover parts of herself, but I find the romance plots to be frustrating at times, if also kinda cute.
unTouchable by massta
unTouchable puts a new spin on vampires. In this webtoon, vampires don’t suck people’s blood—they feed upon people’s energy by touching them instead. The main character, Sia, is one of these energy vampires and her new neighbor has the most addictive energy. She immediately wants to touch him, but unfortunately for her, he’s a germaphobe. Sia starts ‘hunting’ him by trying to get him to be less of a germaphobe. I find Sia’s antics incredibly hilarious and the new spin on vampires had me very intrigued. What I like better though is that Sia moves from just trying to get rid of his germaphobe tendencies into trying to understand why he has them. The affection between the two grows organically and in wonderful ways, and this was a story that was good all the way through (yes it is completed). I think this was actually the second webtoon I ever read.
So those are just some of my favorite webtoons (all romances—I KNOW). I’m reading a fair bit of other webtoons as well, and the Webtoon app has a wide variety of genres. If you’ve never read a webtoon before, I highly recommend it! They are incredibly delightful.
Til next time!
xoxo
Luna
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