Sign

Ahhh, yet another sweet binge! A story about a man named Kang Soohwa, who isn't having the best of times (no money, no energy, no food, no happiness) tries to walk off the dread when a man dumps a bucket of water on him in the cold weather. Although a simple apology would've been enough to solve this problem, Soohwa takes this chance to beg for a job from the owner who splashed water on him. Being the sweet heart he is, Go Yohan hires him on the spot to work in his little cafe. Although these characters seem completely different, they actually complement each other perfectlywith their charm, sweet nature, being overly protective, not wanting to hurt others and so on. It sucks that it's all over, but this couple was just ohhhh Sooo SWEET <3 You got to become apart of Soohwa and Yohan's everyday life, trying to work around the cafe not trying to "turn on" anything with ether way of communication. For others the amount of "DOings" might've been much, but every time it happened the two seemed to grow closer in heart and body.

*Brief Review-Reflections* ~~ My first ever pornhwa doesn't feel as lascivious and smutty as its label entails. *Sign*, illustrated in the charm of a clean and innocent artstyle, bubbles with fluff and horniness simultaneously—it's one of the common dreams of a gay relationship. In that sense, and in writing (moreso, in drawing) out an attractive puppy-bear in the form of Yohan, *Sign* already covers many bases to keep the readers interested. Fleshed-out characters that resemble real human traits aside, Oh Byung is like a buzzing fly that ruins the scenery, a series of hiccups that never fails to sour entire chapters with his flawfully psychotic makeup thatconcludes horribly, incoherent and chaotic to how he was portrayed all along. He never was seen as humane, but a full-fledged product of everything morally wrong, yet he says the reason why he did all those things, including making Yohan go deaf, was because only wants to be forgiven? Sure. Other than that, I enjoyed *Sign*'s ambience akin to a cafe—which is very meta—even when the pages brew actions wild, raw, and primal. It paints a most important picture perfect for any era in the history of mankind: the horny transcends everything, even disability.

Content Warning: some scenes are clearly dubcon AT BEST. This story has quite a lot of potential. The writing is VERY easy to read; I breezed through 115 chapters in less than 3 days and I believe I could have done it faster. The art leans more towards the simple but it's also well-drawn and clean and dynamic, with an abundance of lewd smut and fluffy intimacy alike. I enjoy the attempt to include sign language; while it's not as significant as other stories, it's neither dramatized nor disrespectful. That's perfectly fine to me. The main cast are pretty amusing. They have good romcom style banter,and when the romance clicks, it really clicks. At the same time, though, it certainly is not as 'green flag' as it is advertised to be. While the story tries its best to mask this, there are quite a plenty of scenes that comes across as dubcon AT BEST, and noncon at worst. ML in particular is really reckless with sex, especially when he 'punishes' the MC, and there have been instances of MC screaming no only to be ignored by him. I'm used to it, this is not the worst, but still...a bit jarring, given how many people are lauding this for the supposed green flag-ness. And for a 115 episode BL, this story is...flat. Don't get me wrong, the flatness is not for lack of trying; the second season is a weird and (IMO) disjointed attempt to add drama to the overall narrative. But throughout these episodes, the cast doesn't grow as much as I'd like them to. That most likely happens because this story falls into a common pitfall of mistaking banter and arguments with communication, mistaking sex with intimacy, and mistaking possessiveness with love. The cast banters a lot. MC and ML have plenty of faint-inducing sex. Once they got together, ML gets jealous really often--to say nothing about so many of the people around MC and ML, who all possess different flavors of possessiveness. But that's about it. There's very few attempts where characters attempt to learn more about each other, few attempts where characters try to understand the other's POV. So by the end I see the characters all changed, but I honestly don't feel most of it. The story could have gotten a bit more fleshed out and it will be amazing. And that's a bit sad.