My Lucky Strike

After wading through eighty thousand terrible webtoon romantasies, My Lucky Strike is a much-needed breath of fresh air. Flawed, but still very likeable FL? Check. Attractive, appealing, but slightly-less cookie cutter ML? Sure. Charming supporting cast? Check. Bat-shit crazy antagonist FL who steals the whole show? Mijeol would do Rashta proud. Siru as an FL is pretty well done. In the beginning, she's fucking up constantly, and you can see the train wreck she is driving herself towards, but I never felt overtly frustrated with her actions. The author is very good at playing Siru's downsides for comedic effect, which lessens the blow, but Siruherself is pretty relatable. Nothing she does seems too excessive or overtly dramatic. She's in a crazy difficult stage of her life, she's not making the best decisions about it, but we've all been there. Siru is very charming, real, and fun to read about--her upsides make it all the more convincing as to why the ML, Cheong, would fall for her, because for all her faults, Siru feels like someone you'd like be friends with. Cheong himself is still charming and appealing, but isn't too far off the mold for MLs. With a tragic story and gorgeous lips, Cheong is the standard ML, but very well executed. Him being the "fakeout" true ML (which isn't really fake out since he's on the cover and his competitor isn't) was nice framing, and helped sell him as a ML--we all root hard for the second guy, after all. Siru chasing so hard after someone else at first is nice, because it makes the reader root harder for her and Cheong's relationship. Cheong's kuudere nature translates as respectful, unrequited love to Siru--the author does a great job as establishing Cheong as the man who deserves Siru without painting Gibaek as a comically evil asshole. Gibaek still sucks, objectively, but he sucks in a very realistic way. For most of the series, even though you see Cheong coming as the true ML from chapter 2, Gibeak is still a nuanced character. Ultimately, he's not the one for Siru, as Siru later learns. Gibaek's and Siru's dynamic is interesting to read about. It never felt forced or unnatural. The supporting cast themselves are also a blast. They're very funny and fit into the story very naturally. My Lucky Strike is very good at creating charming characters. The comic itself is very funny, owed a lot in part to Siru's personality and the personalities in the supporting cast. I actually remembered most of the supporting cast's names, and actually cared about them. They felt like they had lives independent from Siru's, and were able to dip in and out of the story naturally. My Lucky Strike is also pretty good at avoiding traditional romance pitfalls with the power of Facts and Logic. A romance comic pointing out common tropes and avoiding them isn't a plus on its own right, because tropes are tropes for a reason; they can be fundamental building blocks of a story. My Lucky Strike utilizes tropes (cheating, miscommunication, rival lovers) by writing intelligent characters. Problems are resolved quickly because characters weren't born yesterday, and can have conversations with each other. A female character that would've absolutely been a rival mean girl for most of the story is knocked down in the scene she's introduced in. Her attempts at foul play are instantly spotted by the other members of the supporting cast, because the supporting cast is made up of adults who have brains that can think. Siru is also very good at standing up for herself, when a weaker female protag would've taken what happens to her for the sake of the story being longer. My Lucky Strike avoids overstaying its welcome by giving its characters brain cells. The main antagonist, Mijeol, is probably about as far from reality as the manhwa gets. She is so goddamn crazy, but because the rest of the characters have brain cells, she feels a lot more like a force of nature than a traditional FL. No one takes her for her shit, not even her mother, but because of how crazy she is, she's still able to do quite a lot of damage and add tension and drama to the story. She's a villainess I was always happy to see more of. You just loved to see her do worse and worse shit, it was so entertaining to read about. It was like watching a car crash from the safety of your home. And because of the manhwa's quick pacing and overall shorter story, she doesn't overstay her welcome either. The ending did feel quite rushed, but honestly, it could've been so much worse. My Lucky Strike isn't a masterpiece of a comic, but its one of the few of its peers that feels like a real comic, and not a power fantasy. Season 2 kind of looses its luster compared to season 1, but because Siru, Cheong, Mijeol, and the others are such strong characters, it's not really that big a deal. My Lucky Strike is a strong recommendation from me, to anyone who is just tired of the usual webtoon romance.