My ID Is Gangnam Beauty!

The short of it: A flawed but heartfelt little romance comic which deal with themes of self-image and self-love that a lot of young people will probably relate to. The characters could have been better written, but they were likeable and the romance was really cute. The long of it: I’m not gonna lie, I picked this comic up mostly because I like another work of the author's (No Longer a Heroine), and in the beginning, it was rough: the drawings were a bit amateurish, not to say bad, and although I thought that following an insecure character who underwent heavy plastic surgery was interesting, I wasa bit annoyed at how over-the-top the characters sometimes felt… I know that people can genuinely act like caricatures in real life, but there were several times when I thought the characters simply did not act like human beings, the worst offenders being Suha and Kyunseok... The former is, for most of the story your typical bitch in sheep clothings with no redeeming qualities, and although this type of character can be entertaining, in a story that tried to focus on the psychology of its characters, she felt like overkill. As for Kyunseok... I understand that he is cold and fails in social skill, but seriously kid, were you raised in the wild?! Nevertheless, I think the story picked up some pace when Mirae and Kyunseok became friends (which coincided with the time Kyunseok stopped acting like he didn't know how to act in human society), and I ended up wanting to see where it was going; the drawings also got better (nothing to write home about, but they looked more professional and better proportioned). I do think in the end that the secondary characters were not well-developed for the most part, and some elements could have been explored in more details (Kyunseok and Mirae knowing each other in middle school, Kyunseok’s screwed-up family and his relationship with physical beauty), but it was still a charming and enjoyable story; in particular, Mirae and Kyunseok’s awkward dating was so cute!