buttcruncher's manga / #scam sandwich(11)

idk if it's the translation but the dialogue is confusing af. not a fan of simone, don't understand the hype with tito (i got second hand embarrassment from his "interest in japan"), eugene's hotness carried my will to read on.

look. you can’t be a top spy agent and be still be green behind the ears. it also doesn’t make sense to turn on the shower fully clothed, only to move into the bedroom and attempt to have sex while fully clothed and wet.

the extra star is really only bc the art is really that good and i love yankees and the char designs for both ryuu and tora are great and if they had sex the potential would've been astronomical, but the story is SO TRASH

the art and the character designs for the pairing dynamics are SO GOOD (jun is taller and bulkier and he's an uke!) but the story was SO BAD. i think this rating is mostly for the last few chapters bc while jun gave himself agency in some ways, he threw it out completely in others. isshin faced literally ZERO consequences AND he didn't have any sort of redemption arc, he's just a little bitch-twat with no remorse who still got to eat his cake. jun didn't see how fucked up isshin's treatment of him was. their "relationship" (yes, in quotations bc wtf was this) isn't healthy but it's made to look like everything's supposed to be great from here on out. if the story's fucked up and it's self-aware it's one thing, but this bothered me bc we're supposed to believe that everything's resolved when it's clearly not.

i really wanted to like this, the premise sounded interesting and the char designs look great. we get a lot of internal dialogue from nakwon, but it feels too much like telling vs showing, like the author is feeding us his view instead of letting us come to a consensus based on what he's thinking. his interactions with mokhwa are awkward and their convos are flat, so it's hard for me to connect where their relationship would go. mokhwa falls victim to "difficult past exposition" syndrome, which, when not done well, sort of feels cringey? bc it comes off as whiny even when it's not intended to be. bc he seemed to be operating on survival mode this entire time the way he rationalizes social events and even how he's treated by nakwon makes sense, but idk it just translates weird when reading. in the beginning it was more clear that he experienced trauma when he was raped, and the nuance is still there in later chapters, but idk.... nakwon... nakwon is living in his own universe and i don't understand the weird ass leaps he'd be making. he doesn't get a pass for looking pretty and randomly seeing the error of his ways after being an evil dick who's probably very much psychotic bc how the hell do you kill someone in cold blood without suffering anything afterwards regardless of your evil dick status. anyways their relationship doesn't seem to work for me and i'd personally be upset if ppl around me kept taking what's supposedly my money and using it however they see fit without taking my feelings into consideration.

the translation was bad and i yeeted when the uke said the seme was still a child in his eyes bc i have no idea how i'm supposed to take that

their motivations to get together felt really superficial, which is fine, but it's made to seem deeper than it is. i can't understand the tattoo artist, who just started falling for the yakuza guy bc he comes in often and wined and dined him? and the yakuza guy saw "a vast amount of emptiness" surrounding the tattoo artist and suddenly feels charitable? their relationship feels stiff and i personally didn't get any chemistry from them. from what i gather in the comments and the story, it might be about overcoming certain tragedies and finding your one true love but the story was a bit of a slog to get thru even to ch 10. i started reading this bc the char design for the tattoo artist was nice but i didn't enjoy much else

i'm sorry but the uke started off so lecherous and smarmy but got reduced to maachan face at the end what happened it's like i got catfished. it's such a pity bc he's a hot brown-skin uke (look at those boobs!) and how many of those do you see in the racist-imaginings-of-the-foreign-prince trope???