Models are people too. They just entice more peeping. (Oh gawd, my lame notevenapuns are a curse.)

I admit I'm shallow. I even have the saying, "If he ain't cute, he get the boot." Though to my credit, I'm not as shallow as I used to be. I'm starting to see people for their inner beauty, and realizing I'm aging at an alarming rate--but mostly for the inner beauty.

When it comes manga though, it better have some damn awesome art. Or at least tolerable art with damn awesome writing.

But I'm a "what the fuck" aficionado. And thus, my standards change sporadically. Sometimes, I like forcing myself to read, "Oh mah gawd, I love you even though we met five seconds ago when you saved me from falling into a train track," and "Okay, because you're the splitting image of my dead lover."

It's like doing homework. For entertainment. But not learning anything besides new ways I can lower my I.Q.

So here's to okay art and weird writing.


The first manhwa, Model, hits my sweet spot when it comes to main characters. I love innocent, can do you no wrong, male leads in a Shoujo. And it's about his rise to becoming a popular model. What a bonus! Adorably innocent and hot? It's like Bambi turned into a human but of legal age (that's important).

The plot's decent--it's interesting enough for me to keep on reading. The art, passable. Hey, all the pages are in beautiful color.

With some questionable anatomy here or there.

What frustrates me the most about this comic though--the waste of space paneling.

That picture you see up there? That's one page. Cropped, without removing anything at all (except the scanner's group watermark who I will credit). I can't enjoy watching Jun Nam Hee's rise from waiter to beautiful people stardom because I have to click through ten pages so he could walk from point A to B.

 This picture is also a page. In the writing world, showing so much emphasis on such a tiny detail means that this is pretty goddamn important for the plot.

Not this picture.

This picture is the manga equivalent of people taking food porn. Except, I don't want to eat it. I don't even know what this is nor care to backtrack to find out. I can't even pretend this is anything but a tray of diseased dirt with seeds on the top (which would mean they also don't know how to plant).
 I try not to mind the one picture page paneling so much because the author has this romance subplot going on with main guy and his agent who is an ex-supermodel. And it's nice that the author touches on the pressures of staying skinny when Jun Nam Hee catches a fellow male model in the restroom heaving.

But this comic's giving me high blood pressure. Some pages have two or three panels. This comic wants to trick me into thinking it wants to be normal. Like "Don't worry, I won't throw feces anymore. I'm a civilized monkey." And then it reverts to its natural state, laughing its one panel pages off as a piece of excrement strikes me in the back.

It's labeled as a Webtoon so maybe I'm criticizing a beaver, thinking it's a bear, but even as a series of comic strips, I'm just shaking my head. We could of had something special.

Baby, we could of have had it all.

The second comic on my list of rants for today is rather popular. It's called The One.

And yes she does get together with one of these hot twins.

I've been following this comic since 2008 so I don't remember all the juicy details. The main character is Lele Cane, the daughter of two legendary models. Her parents tragically die in a plane accident when she's small so Lele grows up thinking the fashion industry's superficial and unnecessary. But after she turns seventeen, her aunt convinces her to become a model especially when Lele sees Angus Lanson's super awesome poster.

Now the manhua's got 93 chapters and counting, so I can't do a proper summary of everything. Instead I will list things that I remember (lots of spoilers ahead):

Shoujo girl: the cure to angst

• Lele goes to see Angus, her super awesome inspiration
• She meets a hobo with stubble in the park
• No, false alarm on the hobo, he's really a young hot dude who's Angus's older twin brother
• Lele and Eros develop a relationship filled with banter and sexual tension
• Haha She gets a roommate named Leo who's also after Eros
• Angus turns out to be bisexual, leaning towards guys or gay so he's out of the running for Lele's heart
• Lele's grandma who raised her after her parents died becomes ill and dies (oh god why)
• For some reason that I can't remember, Lele's aunt ostracizes her and they stop talking (thereby removing the only family Lele has left; why must you be so cruel author?) 
• Lele becomes the new IT Girl for a famous fashion designer; her star power increases
• Deep, DEEP into the manhua, you find out Angus's and Eros's father is a fucking psycho

Okay, and pause. I might jumble this part up, but if I remember correctly, their father holds his sons hostage. This is the part that I should be discussing, but I'm not in the mood for writing about fucked up fathers in detail. Basically, the twins live a hard life, mom has a break down and commits suicide. The twins get separated for a while. Eros becomes a runaway living off other people and grows up in the streets (which explains his quirky hobo tendencies). Angus, the younger twin is subjected to a life of sexual abuse because he's forced to stay with his father. This is fucked up to have to say this, but luckily the father does not touch Angus. No. But his father's friends do.

His fathers pimps his son out as a way to build business connections. So when Eros tries to rescue his brother after finding out the sick shit that happens behind closed doors, he's also trapped inside the house. Eros ends up posing as his brother so Angus can escape. His father accepts the switch--this time pimping Eros instead of Angus. And I think Angus eventually comes back for his brother with one of his father's biggest business partners on his side. They use blackmail to free Eros. Or it could be because one of the servants decides to give Eros a motherfucking gun. Not sure. But he frees himself.

Oh and during his time being held hostage, Eros takes drugs and has a flashback from when he was living on the streets.

Author: What would make his life even more angsty and tragic? Oh wait, I know!

No, ma'am. Your boyfriend's a pedobear named Jimmy the Poohchute.

And since the manga updates once a month, you can imagine how depressing that year was.

Eros comes back with a drug problem so one of his friends tries to help him quit and get it out of his system. Lele happens to be in the neighborhood (she's supposed to be getting ready for another modeling gig in another country), finds him through his friend, and decides, "Fuck my modeling career. I need to help my on and off boyfriend. We need to continue our 'will they or won't they' courtship!" She nurses him through the painful drug shivers, and through the magic of Shoujo, helps him discover that his mom really did love him with a conveniently placed letter inside one of the his mom's picture frames.

And then they sleep together before waking up and sleeping together. No really, Eros wakes up, looks at Lele in the eye, and says, "You like me this much?"

Yeah no shit.

Then they go to baby making. Eighty chapters later. (It's Chapter 84 specifically.) Eros has more attacks going cold turkey from the drugs. Lele's modeling career is going down because the designer had to get somebody else to fill in, and Eros finds out.

My interpretation of what went down:
Eros: What the hell is this? *dramatic magazine cover reveal of another model* Did you turn down those job offers because of me?
Lele: Naw man, I ain't no sucker. Taking a break from the usual.
Eros: Don't joo lie to meeeeeee. *stare down* Which means more to you, love or your future?
Lele: *cries* Your health of course! Yeah so what? I needed to take care of you.
Eros: Not like I was gonna die. Damn girl, you need to go get it. You might never get this chance again. I love you now, but this romance may not last forever. You've got to take care of yourself.

Everyone should be dead on this page.

And this is when I did a slow clap. You have to relish these moments.

So Lele goes to Paris while Eros stays behind in New York. She meets up with the designer, and he gives her another chance after she tells him Eros is now her boyfriend (Eros is a director). Designer gives her a challenge--get Anji, the finicky, hard to work with androgynous male model, to work with her in the next photo shoot.

Of course Anji don't give a fuck, and treats Lele like shit, blocking her from the camera and sabotaging the shoot. Lele tries to reason with Anji, saying that models who don't show respect won't last long the industry. There will always be another person who could replace him.

Anji: Fuck you. *pouty face* I'm gonna seduce the photographer into giving you a hard time.

And so the photographer gives Lele a hard time. He even slaps her to "create an unguarded look". That asshole. She starts getting blisters on her shoulder after being on the shoot for hours. Anji just laughs. And then Shoujo works its magic. During the after party, Anji gets harassed by two guys after a server accidentally spills some drinks on him.

Fucking karma.

Oh this author.

He's lucky Lele isn't a spiteful bitch.

And Lele swoops in to save the day. She scolds him. "Why didn't you know how to resist? Even yelling would do. You're a man." Anji cuts her off with a sad remark, "Have you ever seen such a weak and thin man? I had to keep my body thin to fit into women's clothing." They have a heart to heart. Anji and Lele start to get along. Everything's all rainbows and sunshine and butterfly fart cakes.

By the end of another shoot, Anji's spilling his guts about what makes him tick, and how Lele 'saved' him with her words. Shit like this is where diabetes comes from. And for some reason, Lele never takes care of her wound. Her shoulder blisters get worse as they do more photo shoots together.

Designer's pretty fucking pleased. This time he challenges Lele to do a gender bender photo shoot with Anji. Convince people that she's a man. During the cab ride home, Lele faints in Anji's arms while she's talking to Eros on the phone. They find out at the hospital that Lele's wound is infected and that's why she has a high fever.

         Good grief, that's because you were a bitch to everybody else.

And guess who takes the fastest goddamn plane in the world to see her?

And he's pissed.

"I'm giving you one chance to back off before the ball crushing."

NO ANJI, STAHP IT.

Eros isn't pleased that some dude is shacking up with his girlfriend. Even if that dude looks like a woman. Though I'd be threatened too if he really did look like Andrej Pejic, a model who readers say is the Anji prototype.

It's just not fair.

"And you're pregnant."

But back to the story. Anji employs the tactics of the gamma stag beetle--seduce the alpha so he can get together with Lele. Eros with all his street cred and new found love for Lele doesn't buy the bullshit.

Unfortunately for Eros, designer watches Asian dramas when he's not practicing his James Bond villain faces, and decides that Anji and Lele should live together for two weeks. Eros tries to bunk with Lele, but she kicks him out and tells him to go back to New York. "I need to do my job, mmkay? Cultivate my inner man."

...No, Lele, that's channeling the typical Shoujo male lead rapist.

STAHP IT, LELE. Since when did you smoke?

After bumming around Paris for a while, Eros employs the ultimate tactic to get Lele weak in the knees.

Why bishies should never grow mustaches and beards.

Lele's best ten to fifteen minutes of the day was standing next to the shower.

Eros gets out of the shower, Lele dries him off, and he's got this "I knew you couldn't resist" smirk. And then he lays out some rules--while she's with Anji, no sleeping in the same bed, no intimacy aside chaste kisses and hugs (which I thought was implied when people enter monogamous relationships), and finally, no matter how deeply she cultivates her feelings for Anji, all the rights to her body and heart belong to him.

My reaction:

Being possessive isn't romantic. You don't fucking own a person. No matter how much you love them, they're not obligated to return your love. This kind of bullshit is one step away from "No you can't go out with your friends because there are people with the male genitalia there." There's got to be trust in a relationship.

But back to business, I only went up to Chapter 91 though the raws go up to Chapter 93. I looked at the raws and to my displeasure, by the end of Chapter 93, Lele's running away crying because she found out Eros slept with somebody else from a long time ago. And spots him meeting up with that person.

Fucking Shoujo.

Credits: Shojo-Manhwa Scans, Kat Scans, and other scanlation groups I might have forgotten because The One is translated by different ones. Both hosted on Mangafox. Google'd random Andrej Pejic so I don't know where they're from and the meme's from memegenerator.