Flirting with the Villain's Dad

I have been binging a bunch of otome isekai manhwas and that probably influences some of my review. I am just tired of stupid tropes with barely any new content. The good things 1. Art is nice (initially). Good character designs. But it gets progressively blander throughout the series. 2. Comedy is fine. It won't make you LOL, but it still maintains a light mood even in dangerous situations. 3. lots of romance. It makes up like 75% of this series, although a lot of it is pretty boring. The bad things I cannot understate how generic this series is. The characters, plot, settings etc.. are all boringas fuck. Lets start with our FL. Fl was an orphan in korea and her relatives didn't take her in. That's it. She is an incompetent weak lonely pitiful kitten with sad flashback and must be protected by ML 24/7 or she gets into dangerous life-threatening situations. And she is a transparent idiot, so her thoughts are visible on her face which makes her "interesting" to ML. Her fluffy immaturity/childishness is often played for laughs, but it is super annoying considering her age (25 in korea) and the stakes/consequences (her and ML's death). ML's entire personality is also being lonely because he's burdened with responsibilities of a ruler from childhood and didn't have anyone close. To be a good emperor, he keeps everyone at a distance and won't fall in love. He finds FL "interesting" and as FL gets into dangerous situations, his heart melts and he falls in love. He is actually competent and powerful. Villainess is the best character. She also has a tragic flashback, but she is unabashedly evil for the sake of her revenge. Unlike our useless FL, the evil villainess uses her brain and works hard for years to succeed. And she has the raw power to go against ML in combat and enough intelligence to keep high society under her control. Her only failure in life was not killing FL or trying to kill FL in the dumbest ways possible. Except for ML/FL/Villainess, the rest of the cast is irrelevant and has ZERO character development. You can take a character from first chapter and put them in last chapter, and you won't see any difference. Considering the length of the series (140+ chapters), this is truly an achievement. The story moves at a slow pace, and there are times where the plot just stops progressing for about 10 chapters or so. Nothing really happens except for ML and FL flirting with each other. The series is also riddled with glaring plot conveniences. Overall Towards the end, I was just skimming the romance scenes to finish this series and move on. If you like the FL, then you will like the series. If you hate her (like I do), please abandon it early on and read something else.

Good fantasy rom-com manhwa. Another one of the “returned female protagonist” cliché, but not generic because it focuses on romance more than what the protagonist is capable of doing. Good art + lovable character of the mc makes the story make sense. How generic the protagonist is makes the story unique. Ironic but after reading all kinds of rom-coms with special main characters it felt unique. When I read reincarnation stories, they often turn into some pointless political drama, which breaks immersion. (And there are those parts that don’t make sense, like when the protagonist somehow knows the novel better than the author does.) But here, themain character doesn’t really make much use of memories from a past life—she just gets through things with her charm. And because that feels convincing, I actually liked it better. Instead of studying boring history, it’s better to stick to the role of a pure romance fantasy. 전생물 보다보면 툭하면 왠 시덥잖은 정치물로 틀어서 몰입 안되게 했는데, (주인공 거의 작가 급으로 더 소설을 빠삭하게 안다던가 하는 이해 안가는 부분들도 있었고) 여긴 오히려 주인공이 전생의 기억을 활용하는 장면이 별로 없고 그냥 매력으로 해결하는데, 그게 설득력이 있어서 오히려 좋았음. 관심도 없는 역사 공부보단 차라리 아예 로맨스 판타지 역활에 충실하는게 낫지.