TLDR: When it comes to pornwha this is by far one of the most impressive. Having interesting plot that would be suitable for a more general populace and art that can be compared to few others. 9/10
The Characters 9/10 It's great to see characters with unique motivations unfortunately most lack a goal.
Main Character
Hosung Lee:
He is so well developed, from his insecure beginning to his overly dominant uprising then his aggressive, protective, caring conclusion. Throughout this series he had all these qualities from the start but throughout the course of the plot each trait gets it turn in the sun. Not to forget to mention, with his confidence boost he visually gets more attractive as the story unfolds. He has faults that bring him down a bit such as his indecisiveness and lack of foresight. Alas the thing that bothered me the most is him not fucking forming a "real" harem instead it's this weird "sex-friend" type of relationship with most of the girls.
Heroines (The brackets is there for descriptive purposes, to better distinguishing between one another)
Mi Jung Kim: (Purple Hair, Voluptuous)
The main character's superior and initial antagonist. Due to circumstances involving her daughter whom she only wanted to do her best for, her rise in the company is very much akin to prostitution, but after all that she gets to be in a position that she doesn't really need to do it anymore (she does use her body to get what she wants or appease some jackasses). She goes from all-out enemy to eventually completely submitting to the MC, their relationship by is by far the most well-developed and feels the most organic among the heroines.
Sori Na: (Short-brown hair, Trendy, Slender)
A work collogue that and initial antagonist. She Starts out as a gold-digger dating Ju-wan Cha but their relationship felt purely transactional. After getting blackmailed she inexplicably and slowly develop conflicting emotions towards MC. But after getting gifted (she stole it) a bracelet she really starts seeing the MC in a positive light. She who never knew how to love had begun feeling it towards someone she could never have considered to give a second glance.
Seorin Jin: (Blonde long hair)
The daughter of the chairman's concubine and potential heir to his empire. How can i say this she simply has a type and she handled it accordingly. I think it would be an injustice to say she didn't love the MC the most. She had no desires to speak of, except to be with he MC. She even organized 2 out of the 4 threesomes that happened in this series.
Jeong Sook Seo: (Black hair, Red glasses)
Coworker of MC. She is in a abusive relationship with her boyfriend that eventually lead them to break up after he was caught cheating. This gave Jeong Sook the courage to explore her lingering feelings towards MC. She makes it very clear that she wants to be his "object" during play but greater feelings do appear when they talk to each other, she even tried to see how he'd react if she were to get someone else. It did feel like sometimes the creators put her on the back burners even though she felt more relevant than most of the other girls.
Somi An: (White Hair, Tanned)
Orginally school friends with Seorin and Joohee, she relunctantly joined Johee as her attendant. A very empathetic person often caring for Suk Yeong. Somi use to have many relationships according to the series but was a bit starved for a connection, this is where MC comes in. After she spied on Seorin and MC she got envious/curious about the relationship. After being coaxed by Seorin she understood why she(Seorin) liked MC
Suk Yeong Yoo: (Brown Hair, Modest(Style))
Neighbor and co-worker of the MC and the daughter of the chairman's true love. Caring for her ex-boyfriend(who's trash btw), that's currently in a coma she just want to get cash for his hospital costs. She is the one that helped MC get out of his depression and in turn is the one the MC loves most, she also loves the MC. It is without question that she is suppose to be the Female lead.
Yoonjung Mo: (Purple Hair, Thicc)
"Friend" of Mi Yung and a person who has "voting power to appoint the CEO". She's married and a very promiscuous woman. Mi Yung stated something along the lines of "She always goes after the things I like". She comes off a bit ditzy and carefree which lead to her quickly falling for MC. She doesn't get a lot of attention and that's a absolute shame.
Joohee Cha: (Black hair, Smug face)
The daughter of the chairman's legitimate wife and potential heir to his empire. She's technically speaking an antagonist throughout the series. She expresses her attraction towards MC but never really act on it. She's is by far handled the worst compared to the other heroines. She gets r*ped by MC and they don't reconcile at all, and the whole reason why that happened in the first place was because her brother fucked up her plan.
Antagonists
Ji-Wong:
Mi Jung's superior that frequently sexually assaulted her. He eventually dissipated into nothingness.
Yeong-Guk:
A student with a bad attitude he publicly humiliated Jeong Sook after he cheated on her and she dumped him.
Kyung-Joo Cha:
A loser that promises girls a future by r*ping them as a down payment. He eventually got what was coming to him.
Jung-du Kim:
Hyomin's(Mi Yung's Daughter) Tutor and a hacker(hinted that he was part of a extremely qualified group). For some reason he likes to strangle people while climaxing (hinted that he may have killed or harmed someone to that effect). He has a huge crush on Mi Yung and basically became her slave, but luckily his presence wasn't very harmful.
Doo-Chul Cha:
The chairman himself. an old guy that's honestly pretty well written but that doesn't take away from the fact that he has done horrendous acts. He has this obsession about things that are beautiful and honestly it was pretty refreshing.
Ju-Wan Cha:
The most detestable bastard. He tried living "normal life" after his previous orphan self gained new wealth through his biological connection to Doo-Chul. He dated Sori and moved on to use every woman after her, just to r*pe and record them, effectively blackmailing them in the process as well. This guy's ugly too.
Plot: 8/10 Wish it was longer.(even though it's 262 chapters)
Premise
The overall premise is nothing special that's for sure: MC gets framed for something he didn't do on the grounds of him just looking a bit creepy paired with some unlucky events. MC Gets depressed and gets some alright advice in the line of "be worse than the rumors". After a few encounters, by sheer happenstance he gets his hands on some blackmail which he uses to "survive".
Story
For the main body of the series very little actual plot happened after the attempted betrayal Mi Yung had tried. Afterwards the main crux became the "kill the VP" goal, which in simpler terms is "get someone trusted in a position of power" and the separation of Suk Yeong and Hosung, which added a constant sense of unease throughout the series.
Ending
The last chapter isn't very satisfactory, it's open-ended and it leaves so much ambiguity. Instead of seeing how each heroine gets their ambiguous end it's told to us, and I'm a firm believer in the show don't tell mentality. It felt like a disservice to send off the characters with so few words.
Art 10/10 The art is objectively top tier among the art-gods.
Style: The use of black is notable throughout the series when it comes to defining the hair or getting into the crevices and of course the linework. For the rendering itself it's a combination of cell shading and soft shading which evokes a semi-realistic result. Something extremely unique would be the faces, especially the eyes.
Consistency: I would say this is a classic case of the art is great and it gets better. It starts out very good but you can really see Yoon Gonji (the artist) improve throughout the series yet remaining loyal to the overall style.
Backgrounds: I personally don't have anything against the use of 3d background or photos used in manhwa, but i have to admit it's a bit sad to see it in such an technically artistic piece of art.
Closing Thoughts
If this was "a perfect world" there would've been a couple of things I would've liked to see.
Every interaction had been handled with so much care, but i did wish that the Hosung's relationships could've been a bit more evenly spread among the heroines. Tt was mainly focused on Mi Yung and Sori. Heroines such as Jeong sook needed more attention.
There is also this unsaid thing I noticed while reading this series, how Joohee, Seorin and Suk Yeong (half-sisters btw) had a simply liked Hosung without really getting to know him. which lead me to hope for a foursome, which never came.
Then the side characters that I thought could've been heroines:
1.Mi-ok (Hacker) 2.Yong Sun Jin (Journalist) 3.Youngeun Han (Idol) 4."The Director of Aesthetics"(Waxer) 5.Hyomin Joo(Mi Jung's daughter)
If i could be really indulgent, I would've really liked if the series' ending would've had Hosung as the new chairman and essentially have all of the heroines he were close to, to live comfortably with the man they all fell in love with. I don't think every story has the potential to have an organic harem but this one had that and decided against it.
(-168)
(+10)
