Father, I Don’t Want This Marriage
by Hong Heesu, Roal, & Yuri
published by Tappytoon.com
2019
This is the MOST FUN manga I’ve read in AGES. I laughed out loud! I squealed! I found myself impatient for new chapters! I have screenshots of the hot dad character saved on my phone! [*squeal*]
How on earth did this romance-action-comedy win me over, when I usually like my stories packed with sci-fi vehicles and dystopian struggles?
There are several good answers. CHARM. Enthusiasm. Humor. Artists who adore the characters they are drawing! COMEDY OUTTAKES and IN-HOUSE FAN ART AT THE END OF MANY CHAPTERS! Oh, sorry, I didn’t mean to shout, but those are the areas where I have the highest squealing-and-screenshot ratio.
Background: Tappytoon.com is a website for manga / comics / “webtoons” authored in Korea, which are serialized and sold in chapters. A common theme across the romance and action comics on this site is that a contemporary young person works themselves to death in the REAL world, and wakes up as a character in a favorite book or video game. Rather than being the hero/ine, they (often) find themselves in the role of a doomed villain, and (having read the book or played the game that is the secret script for this world), set out to upend the story by making very different decisions to change their fate. These are stories of redemption, heroism, second chances, and (for the romance heroines) opportunities to learn selflessness to earn the love of all around them.
This webtoon is my favorite of this model so far!
Plot: Our rich, pretty, noble-title-bearing heroine, Juvellian, wakes up in her book role, knowing that she loves a man who will betray her, she has lost the affection of her widowed father, and that she is fated to die a horrible, lonely death in a dark place. She wakes in the timeline after she is established as a villain but before things go completely rotten, and she decides that she will DO BETTER.
She starts a program of self-improvement, shedding the man she has been chasing and painstakingly redeeming her terrible reputation one person at a time. She is sincere, and wants to survive!
Comedy in the story takes many forms: the heroine is terrified of small, cute animals, but not the things/people that are life-threatening; ongoing mistaken identity situations lead the heroine astray in her conspiracy to dodge a marriage to a murderous royal; there is abundant, awkward teen romance silliness; there are constant father-daughter misunderstandings; there are masks; an overprotective and supernaturally handsome father terrorizes his daughter’s suitors; we see the stresses of small animals from their own points of view…
This is a period drama set in an imaginary version of [unspecified European place] so that everyone central to the plot can be rich, have too many fasteners on their clothing (a favorite theme of the illustrators!), live in palaces, have lots of idle time to get into trouble, AND can be at risk of execution by petulant local royals! There are politics, but also curses, vicious rumors, evil stepparents, very forbidden dungeons, poisons, neglected veterans, and rock-star-handsome knights.
The humor can be dry and very funny. Comedic, child-like (chibi) versions of the characters represent them in emotional moments. Cartoon wallpaper hovers behind them when they think they are being clever. There is overstatement, understatement, exaggeration, and so many other good humor-tools well applied.
This comic has teen-romance values: all the young ladies love the handsome knights because they are so “pure” (!?!), there is no kissing, nothing is racy, and marriages appear to be mostly made for class & political reasons. The heroine is very young, so the romance is a why-is-my-heart-racing, oh-gosh, how-did-I-never-notice-how-handsome-he-is slow path. And that’s fine! Both Juvelle and her eventual partner grow up and become better, braver, more responsible people during the events of this story.
There are giddy posts from other characters in the manga AND in our real world online about how handsome Legis Floyen (Juvellian’s father) is, and it was clear it was fun to draw him and his entourage. The artists’ giddiness is adorable (they love him in glasses, they love him at the beach, they love him with medallions…). I will show restraint, and share just one of those charming, in-house-fan-art images… with his shirt on. There are other favorite WHOLESOME images of Legis I could share, but they could hint at spoilers, and he is supposed to remain a mystery for many of the 123 chapters (!) I happily paid for. (Note that these comics are presented in English, but some fan sites used other translations, so Legis is Regis, Juvelle is Jubel, and the name of the comic itself has variations.)
Any comic that keeps me reading for 123 chapters and can make me laugh out loud is a winner. This comic has so much going for it: high quality art (in color!) with lots of digital fabric textures, a brave and modern girl trying to set things right, action, curses, family secrets, monsters, garden parties, monsters at garden parties, ADORABLE characters, deathbed confessions, rivalries for the hot male lead title, excessive fasteners, and high stakes battles. It’s a winner! I love it! This team should hurry up and illustrate more stories about Legis so I can keep buying them!