#isekai
Survive as the Hero’s Wife (2018-2021) - :)
One of the biggest problems with isekai romance manhwa lies in the timeline. How do you reconcile dropping an adult into a child’s body and still have a romance develop between them and a peer in the story? There are various ways to navigate the issue, with some being more plausible than others, but the only way to make the plotline feel like it’s not being exploitative is to scale the story over a long period of time. The isekai stories that work the best seem to span decades in the life of the characters. Survive as the Hero’s Wife works on a couple levels, with the first being that the leads spend long periods apart and together at formative moments; and the second that their emotions run on an enemies to friends to lovers arc.
Canaria, our isekai female lead, is dropped into the preteen body of the villainess of a novel she had read. The character she is supposed to inhabit is the ill fated first wife of the crown prince, to whom she is already married when she joins the palace as a child. Cesar, the prince, is hounded by his step-mother the Empress who wishes to dispose of him and install her own son as the crown prince, and Canaria was intended to be one of the tools by which the Empress torments Cesar. Naturally, Canaria understands that as a child she needs to somehow leverage that relationship with the Empress and yet still protect Cesar in order to make sure when he grows up and comes to power that her head is not separated from her neck. Watching her befriend the prickly Cesar over the course of a decade or more in the story is a joy, and I liked the trust he shows in Canaria even when she is forced to have an ambiguous relationship to his enemies. Their romance, when it evolves, feels authentic–partially because it wasn’t what Canaria intended in the first place.
One of my favorite things about this manhwa is that Canaria does things methodically, but she isn’t a superwoman. She’s not a genius at business, or politics, and she’s no great warrior. The female lead is presented as a calm, caring, intelligent woman who is making logical choices in an illogical situation. She’s not always in control, and she gets help from others when she needs it. By being vulnerable to the schemes of others it made me invest in the real danger of her position, and that made this a much more enjoyable read. Canaria obviously needs Cesar, and he comes to rely on her as well; the partnership they established was almost more satisfying to read than the romance, which is rare.
The Evil Lady’s Hero (2019-2021) - :)
I don’t know when the “she stole my first time” trope started in manhwa, but I can see why it’s compelling. The idea that there is this femme fatale (or more often just really drunk protagonist) seducing a super hot absolutely pure like fire dude who then immediately doubles down on this idea that she must be special. I mean, it’s also deeply creepy when you think about it too hard, but at first blush it’s a hilarious conceit. It sets up a power dynamic early on where the woman is the one on top (pun intended). The other thing manhwa usually do with this trope, however, is pull the bait and switch where now that the main characters have slept together you get to watch them dance around the possibility of holding hands for another fifty chapters rather than allow them to continue to enjoy each other. Not so with this manhwa!
Yunifer is our isekai heroine who has fallen into a novel where she is the villainess, but instead of spending undue time worrying about it she has been leading a relatively normal life. Already, the fact that she had not bent herself in knots trying to avoid a bad ending was refreshing. When she ends up falling into bed with Ishid, she spends a bit of time writhing in angst about it, but ultimately what they establish is a decently healthy and harmonious adult relationship. Plus sex. This manhwa actually had sex scenes in it, which thank everything someone is allowing their grown ass protagonists a guilt free sexual connection. Because lord knows, modeling a healthy sex life is something manhwa could use more of! Ishid treats her well, and Yunifer truly enjoys his company in every capacity.
The plotlines circling around Yunifer and Ishid had a bit of fantasy, a bit of action, and a bit of royal intrigue, but what stood out to me was the treatment of Yunifer’s friend and the prince. Their relationship is called out as toxic and it’s never romanticized even when more context is brought in to explain why it’s so toxic. The author knew the message they wanted to convey, and I’m here for the call to embrace healthy relationships and give people space to heal from trauma. I would definitely recommend this one because even if it isn’t necessarily breaking new ground, I thought it had some fresh feeling takes.
Doctor Elise (Queen with a Scalpel) ( 2017-2021) - :(
Genre mashups can be a delightful and refreshing change of pace. When it comes to medical dramas, I think that there is plenty of room for romance, comedy, mystery, and many long running series out there prove that point. However, when I picked up this isekai/medical/drama manhwa it became very apparent to me that in embracing so many elements that were so disparate that they were not meshing well. One exception is the arc where the protagonist went to war as a field nurse, as that seemed to blend the fantasy-like nature of the setting with her skillset much more naturally.
Elise, the titular character, is our isekai protagonist which is how they manage to pack a lifetime of successful surgical knowledge into the body of a teenage aristocrat. As it so happens she also has knowledge from a different previous life in this world so this is an exercise for her in trying not to repeat the same mistakes twice and save as many lives as she can along the way. Great? Great. However, the isekai story and the medical story never actually mesh with one another. The romance is lackluster, and the protagonists lack chemistry to the point where I am hard pressed to remember the male lead’s name. The medical portion is presented more like a procedure focused drama, where there is some high stakes reason why Elise needs to perform a risky surgery that no one has ever conceived of before and yet this seems to happen over and over. It starts to really fray at suspension of doubt, even more than the standard isekai.
The thing that frustrated me the most about this series is that I think it could have been solid if it had focused on either patching up the relationships that surrounded the prince and the succession battle or on the hospital where Elise worked. By trying to give each item equal time, it really fought itself. The strengths of this story should have been with Elise making her way in the medical world and the relationships and insider drama inherent to a hospital, not with the handsome prince and his sad familial back story. If only this could have been two different manhwa, I’d be able to recommend it.
When people invented the isekai trope of “human summoned to another world, losing everything with the imminent threat of never returning home, and being enslaved all for the sake of cleaning up someone else’s mess”—
Did anyone else make the connection that when humans summon demons, spirits, or in some cases angels we are doing the exact same thing to them?
A look behind the scenes… Under every illustration is a lovingly crafted sketch!
An Earth Trans in Urtrament, Chapter 6
Ok, I finally decided to cut the chapter I’m working on off at the point I felt like was the natural break point, and chapter length be damned. It’s shorter than previous chapters, but still seven-ish Google Doc pages, so it’s not like it’s a stub of a chapter or anything.
This chapter moves towards the smutty part of my intention with this fic, but is still SFW.
Chapter 7 may take less time than this one did, even if it’s longer, because what will be chapter 7 was originally part of this chapter, and so I already have a good bit written past where it felt like it was right to cut off chapter 6. But I’m still working on it, so I don’t know when it will go up. We’ll see.
Enjoy Chapter 6, and if you like it, please like and reblog the post.
Chapter 6: Crazy, Stupid and Dangerous
It’s a few hours before I hear from Mez’gin again, during which time, I go back over the scrolls and my notes, and write out an actual spell, first on scratch paper, then copied into my spell tome. I run out and buy some spell reagents while waiting, and ask around the Derelict dining room where a good place for an experimental summoning would be around Marsti. It takes a few tries, and people who want to know what I’m working on that I have to convince it’s better if they wait till I know whether it’ll work, but I’m told about a reasonably safe, concealed place on the banks of the river that would be suitable.
Mez’gin messages me around half past ten, and appears outside of the Derelict just a few minutes later. “Ok,” she says, “lets see what you’ve put together.”
I guide her to my room, and lay out my notes and the final spell so she can take a look at them. She examines everything for another hour or so, but eventually concedes that it looks like it should work.
“I’m still not sure you’ll be able to reach into your world, but… I don’t think you’re going to kill yourself doing this. Do you have a place to cast it? Please tell me you’re not planning on using this room.”
An Earth Trans in Urtrament, Chapter 6
Ok, I finally decided to cut the chapter I’m working on off at the point I felt like was the natural break point, and chapter length be damned. It’s shorter than previous chapters, but still seven-ish Google Doc pages, so it’s not like it’s a stub of a chapter or anything.
This chapter moves towards the smutty part of my intention with this fic, but is still SFW.
Chapter 7 may take less time than this one did, even if it’s longer, because what will be chapter 7 was originally part of this chapter, and so I already have a good bit written past where it felt like it was right to cut off chapter 6. But I’m still working on it, so I don’t know when it will go up. We’ll see.
Enjoy Chapter 6, and if you like it, please like and reblog the post.
Chapter 6: Crazy, Stupid and Dangerous
It’s a few hours before I hear from Mez’gin again, during which time, I go back over the scrolls and my notes, and write out an actual spell, first on scratch paper, then copied into my spell tome. I run out and buy some spell reagents while waiting, and ask around the Derelict dining room where a good place for an experimental summoning would be around Marsti. It takes a few tries, and people who want to know what I’m working on that I have to convince it’s better if they wait till I know whether it’ll work, but I’m told about a reasonably safe, concealed place on the banks of the river that would be suitable.
Mez’gin messages me around half past ten, and appears outside of the Derelict just a few minutes later. “Ok,” she says, “lets see what you’ve put together.”
I guide her to my room, and lay out my notes and the final spell so she can take a look at them. She examines everything for another hour or so, but eventually concedes that it looks like it should work.
“I’m still not sure you’ll be able to reach into your world, but… I don’t think you’re going to kill yourself doing this. Do you have a place to cast it? Please tell me you’re not planning on using this room.”
TROPE: “With a body that is so sick and frail, I’ll still try to change my own fate!”
MANHWAS:
• I’m All Out of Health!
• The Villainess’s Days Are Numbered!
• I’m Engaged to an Obsessive Male Lead
• Karina’s Last Days
TROPE: “I suddenly woke up as a character in a dating sim! How can I even avoid my so many death flags?!”
MANHWAS/MANHUA:
• Villains are Destined to Die
• I Fell Into a Reverse Harem Game!
• The Strongest Characters in the World are Obsessed With Me
• How to Clear a Dating Sim as a Side Character
• The Bad Ending of an Otome
• Strange Love Rivals Increased!
TROPE: “I entered the world of a novel! Seeing how the young male lead suffers, I’ll make sure to take care of him until he meets his female lead! But… why does he seem so attached to me?!”
MANHWAS:
• Author of My Own Destiny
• The Little Princess and Her Monster Prince
• My BFF is a Tyrant in Training
• This Villainess Wants a Divorce!
TROPE: “I died after getting betrayed by the people that I trusted the most before. Now that I am given a second chance, I’ll definitely live differently this time!”
MANHWAS:
• The Soulless Duchess
• Justice for the Villainess
• There’s No Use Hangin On
• The Villainess Needs a Tyrant
• The Villainess Behind the Mask
• The Red Knight Seeks No Reward
TROPE: “I entered the world of my favorite novel! However, instead of the male lead, I’m definitely more interested with the second male lead!”
MANHWAS:
• The Lady’s Butler
• Happily Ever Afterwards
• Side Characters Deserve Love Too
• The Lady Tames the Swordmaster
TROPE: “I suddenly died and just when I thought that everything has ended, I was reborn as the Princess of an empire! With my new overprotective family, will I be able to be happy in this life?”
MANHWAS:
• Who Made Me A Princess
• The Beloved Little Princess
• Once Again, Into the Light
• The Princess is Evil
• The Evil Princess Dreams of a Gingerbread House
• The Matchmaking Baby Princess
TROPE: “Being treated like I’m nothing by my previous fiancé/husband, I’m finally together with someone who loves and appreciates me.”
MANHWAS:
• I Don’t Love You Anymore
• The Remarried Empress
• New Suitor for the Abandoned Wife
TROPE: “After years of painful suffering, I’m finally adopted into a family that deeply treasures me!”
MANHWAS:
• The Monstrous Duke’s Adopted Daughter
• Our Little Empress
• The Male Lead’s Little Lion Daughter
• Becoming the Dark Hero’s Daughter
TROPE: “Even if I was forced to disguise myself as a man, I will still fight to achieve my goals!”
MANHWAS:
• Queen Cecia’s Shorts
• Finding Camellia
• Golden Time
• I Choose The Emperor Ending
TROPE: “When I woke up, I’m in the body of a side character from a novel! I’m only an extra, so why am I getting the attention of the main characters?!”
MANHWAS:
• I’ve Been Proposed to by a Villain
• I Dream of Health, Wealth, and a Long Life
• I Raised My Childhood Friend as a Tyrant
• Saving the Villain from the Heroine
TROPE: “Trapped in the body of a small animal, I will make sure to find ways on how to survive!”
MANHWAS:
• The Falcon Princess
• Little Rabbit and the Big Bad Leopard
• The Tyrant’s Tranquilizer
TROPE: “When I opened my eyes, I’m in a fantasy world! With my current powers and abilities, can I survive in this new world?”
MANHWAS:
• Daughter of the Spirit King
• The Heroine of Drayfox
• The Golden-Haired Summoner
TROPE: “Whenever I die, I am reincarnated as a different person. All I want is to end this tragic fate!”
MANHWAS:
• The Lady Needs a Break
• The Lady’s Law of Survival
• You Can’t Change A Person!
• Valentine Kiss
