chlorine's Manga

At first it was kind of hard to decide whether or not to give this a proper rating, and honestly, I'm still struggling to be confident in my decision not to. Because while it is only three chapters, and the story is rather small . . . There was a dynamic to these characters that gave it a bit of depth. It was kind of unexpected for a smut story.

But a smut story is still just a smut story.

I did like it; I found the conflict of the story quite unique and interesting to read. Having the story revolve around Zheng's feelings of dissatisfaction and the feeling of being unwanted is a nice bit of angst, and the shtick of him constantly being kidnapped by villains because he's dating a hero is quite funny.

But it's still just three chapters, and despite the unique approach, the plot is still directly tied to sex. So I'm judging this to the standard I hold most purely porn stories rather than something with actual weight to it. You just can't really do much with three chapters, which is easily this story's biggest flaw. The core conflict could have been drawn out a little longer and explored a little further, to push this into an actual story with a heartfelt arc rather than just hentai.

I really liked the way this story approached the threesome, too. I'm someone who can easily be turned off if the dynamic rubs me the wrong way—like if it just feels like cheating with extra steps—so to have the third guy here be a clone of Vin was pretty smart. Also made it kinda sexy, made it look like Zheng was getting used by twins #sorry

One thing of note too is that the art here was genuinely phenomenal. Like, I really can't undersell just how good this art is. It's fucking great. These are some of the prettiest characters I've seen in a while

This one star is dedicated purely—and I mean purely—to the art. This has some genuinely phenomenal art, to the point that it's almost disappointing to see it used on such an ass story. There's such a blinding disconnect between the quality of the art and the quality of the writing.

For me, the biggest issue this story had was the fact that it's just not subtle. At all. So much of the story is spent on Risbel wondering why Kendon is acting weird after Risbel had his demon lapdog infest his dreams . . . And it's just so blatantly obvious that he's weird because he dreamed of Risbel. Like it's so obvious that it's almost frustrating to read. I don't find any enjoyment in dwelling on some half-baked emotional mystery that just isn't a mystery in the slightest. This is only ten chapters yet it felt too long. When the reader knows what's going on and the main character for whatever reason just isn't catching up, it's not enjoyable. It's frustrating.

I also thought the dynamic between essentially all characters just wasn't fleshed out enough. There's two main relationships going on, being Risbel & Robernia (the aforementioned demon) and Risbel & Kendon. While their dynamics aren't particularly bad, I did find them to be rather shallow, and that's easily attributed to the fact that this story simply isn't long enough to create a good, dynamic relationship between basically three people. They have the basics down but there's not enough room to really grow or explore these relationships in a way that feels meaningful and impactful, but especially amongst Risbel and Robernia.

Risbel and Robernia is especially annoying as they get a lot of focus together, but ultimately kind of don't amount to anything. Robernia just gets up and disappears at the end of the story after Kendon comes in and makes his move, so I'm left just thinking . . . "That's it?" The focus on their sexual relationship could have instead been shifted to further focus on Risbel and Kendon and to actually further develop and show the two of them together, as Robernia ends up being such a nothing character to me.

One last thing that's kind of annoying is that this story puts a lot of attention to sex, and the sex we do get is pretty hot . . . But it's barely there. It's like we get sprinkles of sex scenes instead of just full ones and it's kind of confusing? It's only ten chapters, and you already introduced the sex scenes, so why not put more focus on them and make the story some shameless smut? It's not like it has much to otherwise offer.

. . . It was alright. It was serviceable. It was cute.

This isn't a particularly memorable story, though I don't mean that in a way to say it's boring. It's not boring. It's cute, it's funny, and it's sexy . . . It just doesn't really do anything new. It doesn't set itself apart from the crowd.

I will say, though really no fault of the story, that my expectations weren't met. The base premise of this story is that Ryuusei is confessing to Sawami as a "prank," in hopes of going viral. I thought them basically being YouTubers was a fun premise and I was hoping to see that intertwined more in the story, especially since it is in the first chapter. But it's just not. After Ryuusei confessed that entire aspect of the story is just completely dropped—because Ryuusei & Sawami aren't the YouTubers, it's the twins they're friends with, and the twins are basically just complete noncharacters. Again, this is no fault of the story, but I do think the story would have been more fun if that aspect had a throughline throughout.

There were a few things I didn't like, mainly being the pacing. This issue is really highlighted by the conflict that comes once Sawami finds out Ryuusei confessed as a "prank" . . . It's just over as soon as it begins. It lasts like a quarter of a chapter. It's so short that it makes me question why even write it to unfold the way it did. In general, I don't think this aspect should have been a conflict, or at least not at the point in the story it ended up happening. Sawami finds out that it was a "prank" after having fucked Ryuusei . . . At that point, it's common sense that it's gone beyond just a prank. Like no one fucks as a joke. So to have Sawami blindly react and push Ryuusei away—to then immediately take him back, mind you—is just silly. I would have preferred if this happened before they fucked, or alternatively have Ryuusei explain his POV after the truth came out. Ryuusei actually never explains it, which I didn't really like. He technically didn't need to as Sawami realizes there's no way he didn't love him, but it still would have been better to me if Ryuusei explained he only went along with the prank because he did actually like him.

When it comes to the characters . . . Meh. I didn't love them but I didn't hate them.

Ryuusei was a very emotional and animated person. He expresses his feelings in a kind of loud way, and I personally found it kind of annoying. It wasn't to the extent it ruined his character, because he was still very cute and there was still even something endearing about how emotional he was, but it was something I don't particularly seek out. He's definitely not one of my favorite ukes, that's for sure.

I definitely liked Sawami more. He was written to be quite "cool," and I mean, he was. He was very suave, and quite confident. It verged into cocky but it never quite broke into that. He's confident and shameless in a way that's both attractive and surprising; there's a scene where he goes to a sauna with Ryuusei and he's just letting it all hang free, and even gets hard to brag about his size to the other guys there. Some people might not like it but I did, there was something kind of sexy about the way he didn't care tbh.

The best thing about this story was the size difference. It was fucking crazy. It was so sexy and idgaf it should have been focused on more. Ryuusei was so much smaller than Sawami and it was so sexy

. . . Meh. The strongest thing about this story is definitely, by far the art. The characters are hot enough, especially Garam when he's all beaten. The dad's tits should've been bigger though.

I just can't really tell how deeply the issues I have are influenced by the poor translation—because the translation's straight shit, like it's just not good, but I've also seen stories that have a really bad translation but you can still tell the base story, the story you're meant to be reading, is good . . . That can't be said for this story. There's just not really much salvageable about it.

For me, the biggest issue I have is the pacing. It's only six chapters. Because of how short it is, I kind of expected something that'd be mainly just smut; Garam would be transported into the dating sim and just spend most of those chapters fucking Taeho. Maybe there'd be like a backdrop of drama, like cheating or having to break up with the game's protagonist or whatever. But instead it kind of felt like the opposite—the drama took center stage while the porn was on the back burner. And for a story of such few chapters, I don't think that's a good idea. At all. You can't do shit with six chapters.

The character of Yena is quite emblematic of all the pacing issues I feel this story has, as she changes moods and goes from one extreme to the other so often that it's almost disorientating.

For example, when Garam is transported into the game, he instantly goes to find Taeho, the father of Yena. Once he finds him he forces himself onto Taeho, and Taeho ends up restraining him and being all reprimanding . . . And then Yena walks in . . . And when he sees her dad holding her shirtless boyfriend down, she flips her shit, accusing her father of trying to steal him away. Like . . . What? Is her father stealing her boyfriends a common thing or something because that's the impression I'm getting from her instantly jumping to such a conclusion. Even with the situation being quite suggestive, what type of person assumes their dad is trying to fuck their boyfriend? It's just so insanely stupid and little idiocies are sprinkled throughout the story.

And then when Garam does break up with Yena, Taeho basically instantly accepts him . . . And it's like . . . You borderline hated him before for toying with your daughter's feelings. Him breaking up with her doesn't change the fact that he still fucked her over, so the father so quickly going from hating him to opening his legs and letting himself get rawed was just kind of insane.

Again, the art was nice though. The characters were really sexy, and it's quite rare to find an older bottom dad character which I always fucking love

This was just a very mediocre story.

The plot of it is rather simple—Cheon Ki-Joon is a vampire who's in love with Yoon Han, but Cheon refuses to suck his blood as the blood of the one you love is uniquely intoxicating, so Cheon doesn't trust his self-restraint.

It's a simple enough plot—it's something you find quite often in vampire stories, such as Twilight—and while inoffensive and good enough for what it is, it isn't special. It doesn't do anything. It's not memorable.

That's the biggest issue for me, it not being memorable. Sure, it technically didn't do anything wrong, but it certainly didn't excel at anything either. This is a story you read when you're bored and sure you don't regret it but you'll never think about it again.

Following the fact that it just doesn't really stand out from the sea of vampire lit, I also found it to lack any type of resolution. This is a simple story and so it should probably follow the path it's expected to take to at least be good for what it is—Yoon Han wants Cheon to suck his blood, Cheon refuses, they have an argument or get in their feelings by it, and then by the end of the story Cheon gives in and sucks his blood. But the story doesn't do that. Cheon admits that he loves him, but . . . That's it. They're not even dating, they're in this grey middle ground. Yoon Han doesn't say "I love you" back.

I don't really understand the point of creating such an unremarkable story just to not give what's expected and wanted by the end of it. If you're doing something so typical, you may as well at least give the people what they know they want from their expectations. That's a very direct conflict with a very direct resolution so I'm just lost at the fact that the author decided to steer clear of it for no reason. Just make him suck his fucking blood.

When it comes to their characters, again, just kind of 'meh.' I didn't care for either of these boys.

Cheon Ki-Joon was written in a way where I feel like there was meant to be this poetic air of melancholy around him, and while I usually love characters like that . . . It just didn't hit for me. I didn't care. He was battling these intense conflicting emotions, that he both loved Yoon & was attracted to his blood, but he didn't want to sentence Yoon to an early death by him essentially being sucked of his blood 24/7 and it's like . . . I love vampire angst. And this is very much that. But IDK. I didn't care. At all.

Yoon Han had the same issue of being written in a way that was clearly meant to be angsty and sad but it just didn't get to me. At all. He does have a bit more to him that makes his feelings more "real," but even with that benefit I still just didn't care in the slightest. While I liked his conflict in theory, the way he was desperate for Cheon to suck his blood and how that kind of thematically acted as him being desperate for Cheon's love, his character was otherwise so annoying that I didn't care. I just didn't care. I mean, one, he was a total fucking whore. Total slut uke. Unlovable whore uke. But I also didn't really understand his whorish behavior; I can make assumptions, but they're still assumptions. It's not me picking up context from the story and accurately filling in the gaps, it's . . . Just guessing. Maybe he was fucking other dudes because he was trying to make Cheon jealous, or maybe it was him filling the Cheon-shaped hole in his heart. Idfk. Also, didn't really get the rape. Why'd he go to such extremes? He could have just admitted he liked him. Or better yet, just ask to fuck.

In general, the cucking was something that really turned me off of the story. It wasn't done for a kink reason, which would have been enough of a turn-off but the fact that it's done merely because Yoon decided to act rather cruel just completely turned me off of these characters and their relationship.

One last negative thing and this is uniquely just to my personal taste, was that I didn't find the sex scenes hot. They were pretty underwhelming. This story is full of sex but it's not one I'd ever think of jerking off to. Sorry for the TMI.

This gets two stars though because, one: great art. Two: there is erotic blood play. Yoon ends up pouring blood over his thighs and makes Cheon lick it off of him which was admittedly really hot. I always hate when authors of vampire stories don't realize the pure eroticism vampire stories hold, so at least the author did that right.

Got up to chapter fifteen and decided to abandon it.

To be blunt, I fucking hated this story. Loathed it, even.

Cheating is something I'm fifty-fifty on. I don't like it when there's cheating amongst the main couple, but if the main character or the love interest is in a relationship at the start of a story and that original boyfriend is cheated on, I'm such more likely to be more receptive to it. I'm a sucker for angst. But there's a right way to do it, and this story just . . . Didn't do it right. Like at fucking all.

My biggest issue is the fact that there's just no reason for the cheating to happen. The story begins with Shinwoo dating Sebin, and cheating on Sebin with Taesoo. The issue comes from the fact that their relationship has no problems. It's not dysfunctional, it's not a dead relationship, nor is it abusive or boring. Sebin actually goes way beyond what he needs to make sure that Shinwoo is having his uncomfortable kinks met. He's entertaining Shinwoo's desire to be degraded and abused almost fucking daily. By all means, they have an ideal relationship. All of Shinwoo's needs are being met . . . But he still cheats on Sebin with Taesoo. And for what? Because he can't get over Taesoo being cruel to him like eighty million years ago? It's fucking retarded.

To add on to that frustration, Sebin is just . . . He's so fucking pathetic, man. Like my fucking God. It's not even funny. When he finds out that Shinwoo is cheating on him . . . He doesn't get mad . . . He doesn't shout, they don't fight . . . He cuddles Shinwoo and says that "it's okay," and that he'd do better. And then when he finds out Shinwoo cheating for a second time, this time with fucking degrading writing still written on his back . . . He's slightly mad, but he still just . . . Accepts it. He doesn't do anything other than "punishing" Shinwoo sexually . . . Which is what Shinwoo typically likes fucking anyways. He just has so fucking backbone, he lets himself get walked all over and treated like shit and it's so fucking lame. He's lame. He's pathetic.

The art is meh. It's not necessarily bad but it's just not appealing to my personal tastes. I hate the way Shinwoo's lips are drawn. Take that lipgloss off and be a man.

After deciding to drop this story, I checked the final few chapters just to see how it ends up . . . And Shinwoo ends up with Sebin? Fucking really? After all the cheating . . . The shameless cheating mind you, Shinwoo isn't subtle about it in the slightest, Sebin takes him back? I need Sebin to get up off his knees and stand up. Just no shame, no backbone, no sense of self-respect. Crazy.

I really didn't like this . . . Like, at all.

There are a lot of issues I have with this story but I think the biggest one, the one that affects pretty much everything about the plot, is that there's not a natural flow to it. Things just happen. Relationships start and end out of nowhere, it takes no time to develop anything, it constantly brings up things that it instantly backtracks on—it's a complete and total mess in basically every sense of the word.

For example, the relationship between Zhen and Yirong is handled in such an insanely sloppy way. For the first quarter, maybe first half, of the story, Yirong is constantly coming onto Zhen and Zhen is continuously turning down his advances. Yirong forces himself onto Zhen repeatedly, and while Zhen does usually end up liking it, the situation is still treated as relatively nonconsensual. It's not a real relationship, there's no room really given to think Zhen likes Yirong. He doesn't. He likes the sex, and even then, he's not really given a choice in the matter.

And then in chapter twenty-two, out of nowhere, they have a fight and Zhen tries to break up with him . . . But like, break up what exactly? The story never actually established them being in any type of romantic relationship. Even a sexual relationship is pushing it. Zhen practically loathed Yirong up until this point. It's so insanely sloppy.

And for another example, this time in regards to the way it instantly backtracks on possible plots it brings up, in chapter twenty-three, immediately after their fight, Yirong ends up kidnapping Zhen. Yirong is a very possessive character and with the threat of possibly losing Zhen, he decides to take him for himself. And for like half a chapter, maybe a full chapter, it's treated relatively seriously . . . But then almost immediately Yirong lets Zhen out of his shackles and it's basically not treated with the severity it was originally introduced with. I don't mind stories that treat heavy topics like this lightly, in fact I love it when it's romanticized, but . . . This isn't that. It was introduced in a serious manner, Yirong was imposing and threatening, and then it's like the writer pussied out of it. It read like the author couldn't commit to actually making him a terrible person, even though he was a terrible person. It was weak. It was honestly kind of terrible.

The story also has the annoying habit of bringing shit up out of nowhere that you definitely feel like would have realistically been brought up beforehand. Like it somehow took until chapter thirty for us to learn that Jin had a fiance? And then on top of that, she ends up suddenly becoming a pretty active character which was just so fucking annoying. Like, fuck off. We didn't even know she existed for like half the story and now suddenly she has this spotlight on her? Get fucked lmao.

Jin's character in general left me hugely dissatisfied. It honestly felt depressing in a way I don't feel was genuine. I just loathed the way his arc unfolded; him being the personality that went away just . . . I didn't fuck with it. Especially considering Zhen never found out that his feelings were genuine. Until the end, Zhen just thought that Jin was only into him because he was affected by Yirong's feelings, which just isn't true. I also don't think Zhen ever found out that Yirong lied about that. The perfect ending would have the two personalities either coming into one or learning to co-exist and love Zhen each. Yirong's biggest character flaw was his jealousy and possessiveness so I was surprised to see it basically go unchecked. Man, I'm really just disappointed that Jin pretty much fucking died. He was the prime, too. The original. That was kinda fucked.

For what it's worth, I did usually like the characters. I thought Jin and Yirong were great, I loved the yin-yang dynamic, the way they were both extremes of opposite ends; there was a great juxtaposition there. Yirang was more outwardly aggressive, both physically but also emotionally; he was cocky and sexual, and he wasn't afraid to come onto Zhen and take what he wanted when he wanted it. On the other hand, Jin was more affectionate and caring, more reserved in how he behaved and conducted himself.

This is a very straightforward mind-break story, the whole plot revolves around Jung-Hoon going through so many sexual assaults that it essentially completely changes him. And . . . I'm very conflicted about it.

The story starts with a really strong, really intriguing plot—Jung-Hoon has a weakness for pretty boys, and because of that upon seeing Hyungjae he decides to take him in, unaware that he's a rat that plans on killing all of Jung-Hoon's men. The first sixteen or so chapters are spent developing the relationship between the two men and creating tension about how untrustworthy Hyungjae is, before the pin-drop moment of Hyungjae revealing he's actually with the rival gang. Jung-Hoon's men get slaughtered, Jung-Hoon gets captured, and from here on out it's basically just one long rape scene.

Usually I love rape. But the first few times Jung-Hoon gets raped, it's gang rape with complete strangers. And like . . . Ew. Spoiled goods now. If the gang rape was removed and it was mainly just between the two main men, I would've loved this, but it's not. For some reason, I just hate when the story sets up time to develop the main couple, and then one of them goes and fucks other people. Yes even if it's rape. IDC. But after the gang rape stops, every other scene is really hot. It has great art, great dialogue, lots of ahegao, and in general I find mind break to be very erotic if I'm honest. This does it really well, even in #those moments I disliked.

It should go without saying that the relationship between Jung-Hoon and Hyungjae is very toxic, but I really enjoyed how sick it was. Through most of it Jung-Hoon has this bite to him, which was really good, especially in contrast to how he eventually loses it from the smallest bit of stimulation. But I liked how he initially would bare his teeth and try and bark, he had a lot of spunk to him and directed towards Hyungjae. Hyongjae on the other hand had one simple goal which was to just own Jung-Hoon, like a possession. He didn't really care about the gang, he just wanted to own Jung-Hoon, even if it was by force and I thought that was very sensual. I love characters like that.

A small thing I liked was how Jung-Hoon had this extreme survivor's guilt, being able to blame no one but himself for the death of his men. It was to the point he completely absolved Hyungjae of his wrongdoings because he just shouldered so much of it himself. There were a few moments that were really good, but especially the one moment where he begs Hyungjae not to kill him because he expects his dead men will be waiting to drag him to hell. It packs a really strong punch, I wish it had more of a focus, because I do feel like it falls to the wayside.

Once the rape starts, the plot is basically just on the back burner, the story now exists purely to see the mental descent of Jung-Hoon and on one hand, I liked seeing the way his mind gets broken, but on the other hand, it means the ending felt very messy to me. Suddenly police were at the gang's main building and the gang members were all fighting each other and it just didn't make any sense like at all. None. It didn't get explained until the first side chapter, I think. That's lazy writing idgaf

One thing I really didn't fucking like was the second side story. The ending left on a relatively high note, and the first side story established that Jung-Hoon was completely mind-broken, without the use of drugs, so seeing in the second side story Hyungjae keeping him addicted was really just sad. It also seems relatively OOC to me as well, Hyungjae was a bad person but really the only thing he wanted was to keep Jung-Hoon by his side. He has that now. He doesn't need to make him into some codependent junkie. It left a bitter taste in my mouth.

To end with a compliment, the art style was something I really loved. The actual look and style of everything were great, but the creative choice of everything almost being black and white was really cool too, it created a really interesting visual flair.

Also this author is fucking great at drawing the extremely fucked-out, mind-broken expression

EDIT:
I believe the story's completed now—despite the last chapter ending with a "to be continued," the chapter both on here and Lezhin is titled as "The End"—so I'm going to give some final thoughts; this was a pretty wild story, had a lot of ups and downs. Ultimately, I just thought the plot was kind of ass, but the pure porn was mostly some of the best I've seen. This is like some A-tier shit. But the main story was thin, and the side chapters ultimately left a really bitter taste in my mouth; throughout the whole story, Hyungjae has one simple goal: to make Jung-Hoon his and his alone. By the end of the story, he's done that. Jung-Hoon is thoroughly mindbroken. However, the side stories make it so that Hyungjae starts feeding him drugs in order to make him more co-dependent on him. I fucking hated that. In most circumstances, I hate drug use like this, and these side stories are no different. I just think it makes no sense because throughout the whole thing, Hyungjae had a very clear, direct goal. And he gets his goal. He gets what he wants. So going that step further I felt turned this from a somewhat standard mindbreak story to something just incredibly mean-spirited.

Another thing is that the final chapter just . . . Didn't feel very final. It is marked as "to be continued" so if it being titled "The End" was an accident, it'd make sense, as ultimately it just feels very underwhelming. The last few chapters are spent giving backstory to a character you haven't seen for like . . . 50+ chapters . . . It was kind of upsetting but as an ending? Kind of insane.

Still, I originally marked this as two stars, but I bumped it up to three as the porn genuinely is super fucking hot, and despite how much I disliked the plot, the porn is still the main focus throughout a majority of it.

Usually I don't rate stories that are purely porn like this, but I found the uke so revolting. Take that lip gloss off, faggot. You a man. Be a man.

The concept's hot but I mean . . . I'm just not into the uke, so it doesn't matter. It's almost salt in the wound to have a man wearing lingerie just for said man to look like a fucking girl. You just got rid of half the appeal! I want a MAN in lingerie, not a boyish-looking woman. Just write het shit at that point like actually

Also, just saying, I didn't really think there was any chemistry between the characters. Nim is very much into Woo Ho, but it didn't feel like Woo Ho even noticed him, so him suddenly being so sexually aggressive kind of came out of nowhere. I feel like chemistry's extra important for porn so . . . Kinda failed on that front. Chop

This is mainly just porn so I'm not going to rate it or write a well-thought-out review, but this was unexpectedly really cute.

The ""plot"" is very basic; Sanghyeon confesses his feelings to Yeonwoo, and Yeonwoo figures to go with the flow and see if he develops feelings too. The meat of this story is their first time together, the nervousness of it, the eagerness, the aftermath. Like I said, it's really cute.

When they finally fuck—since the first time we see them try, Sanghyeon is too tight; a biggish portion of the story is actually Yeonwoo then researching how to properly prepare, which I thought was sweet, it showed he really cared about him in a way you don't really see in most stories—Yeonwoo cums really quickly . . . And I thought that was pretty hot. Like IDK what to say, I always find it really attractive when the guy is just so attracted to the man he's fucking, or he's so overcome with a sense of love or adoration, that he just can't help himself.

That's actually what made Yeonwoo realize he likes Sanghyeon and that it's not just a fling for him; he came quick because he was just so into him. And I thought that was a really cute, kinda sexy way to end the story. It was good