100% Perfect Girl

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"I don't want love anymore."

100% Perfect Girl started like a fairy tale but along the way it shifted. Left me wondering how could love sometimes mess us up so to the point where we don't even recognize ourselves…

You have your average fairy tale story of a regular girl, Jay, who is living her normal life. While running an errand one day she meets Jarten. He is captivated by her. He had never seen anyone so beautiful and he has to know her, to have her. Jarten looks like royalty and it’s later revealed to her that he indeed is a Prince. After spending time ... with him and getting to know him he has to fly back to his country. Not before he proposes to her and asks her to go with him. Love knows no boundaries they say, Jarten and Jay will put that theory to a test.

Was it perfect? No. Like a lot of manga, the heroine was coveted by most of the guys, almost all. She was nice to boot and changed people’s lives, sometimes for the better and sometimes she was a calamity that befell on them. To say it with the words of someone in the manga, “She was like a cancer..” There was so much drama that it makes the story far-fetched but still leaves you wondering, what next?
You have your assassination attempts, bodyguards, weapons dealers, pro shooters/snipes, mafia, and the high class parties. Need I go on?
The plot sometimes got repetitive in a way but it's a common thing I have seen with long manhwa.

It started like a regular fairy tale of Prince falls in love with a regular girl who feels trapped in her life. He loves her, needs her? She saves him with a promise to be by his side. Unfortunately, the other side is not greener in this case it’s just bigger and with it brings seclusion.
Havoc was at every corner for them, one after the other, you witness the relationship change. All that mattered is that she was by his side. At first it surprised me the gloomy turn the manga went. But it made me like it even more. Because not all love is great and it does have it’s darkness.

I want to say that this is a romance but that’s not exactly true. Love meets that thin line that borders on obsession and restraining order.
Was there love? Yes, but it sometimes it was masked to look like obsession. The love became selfish, started changing them all while it makes the one you love self destruct by your mere presence in their life. that’s how you know. That’s what happened to them.

It showed love at its worst, destructive.

You’ll meet characters you’ll like and one’s you’ll hate to your core. Others you’ll love to hate or hate to love.
There’s villains up the wazoo, but then again it is to be expected when the hero of the story is a rich Prince who seems to have it all.

Jay is kind and doesn’t know the meaning of evil. At least not at the beginning. The characters whose change takes the longest is hers, in way. Because as a person you tend to have to hit rock bottom before you can really start to pick yourself back up and that’s what happened to her. I find that I really did like her character and you start to see her become who she wanted and not who everyone thought she should be.

Jarten was the hero but his character made me feel like I was in a malfunctioning elevator. Sometimes I liked him and sometimes I wanted to throw crap at him. He was actually pretty flawed, borderline psychotic at times. He’s the type that loves someone so much that would rather see them dead than with someone else.

You have your best friends whose role you sometimes enjoy more than the actual protagonist. The devoted bodyguard who’s story helps in creating and developing a great love for a character, Making him one of your favorites. You have villains that are so ruthless but yet so wounded you can’t help but feel for them in a dark and twisted way.

The art was nice. I had to get used to the way some features were drawn but after it will become the manhwa’s style and you start to enjoy it. There’s a beauty to the characters that give them a surreal look. Also, got to give Wann props for making the guy characters look great without their shirt on. They all look the same a little bit but still, a girl can appreciate.

The writing is amazing and the use of imageries and metaphors was great.
The ending, be a judge for yourself, it wasn’t my favorite the first time around. The second time I gotta say I kindda digged it. I still think it should have ended differently but hey to each their own.
Life, death, lies, obsession, coveting, selfishness, betrayal. This one has it all and it shows you, even being a princess is nor all it’s cracked up to be.

Well, I've never written a review here so there I don't expect it to be quite helpful. But this manhwa had me aggravated. That's the closest I can describe this feeling. I considered dropping it twice within the less than 24 hours it took me to read. The only reason I stayed was for the art which was magnificent. Then there was also the need for closure. To see how this author would try to chummy everything up after so many horrifying events taking place.

The story opens up with the main romantic interest reading a short story written by Haruki Murakami called “On Seeing the 100% Perfect Girl One Beautiful April Morning”. The short story is about a young man who walks past a girl who attracts his attention despite being plain, but he ends up not having the courage to speak with her. This reference to the short story is honestly marks the beginning of a long line of willing suspense of disbelief as the writer of the manhwa wants the reader to believe that Jay is a plain girl who does not stand out at all, and ... the male characters whine about it constantly to the point it becomes annoying. Sound familiar?

Think Twilight... minus the fantasy and supernatural elements of course.

Jay is a plain looking girl... that is, compared to his highness’s little sister. Compared to every other female in the series she is actually gorgeous and breath taking. She is far from what I would describe as being a plain girl, particularly when she ends up having two other guys falling for her. A good portion of the plot involves conflict between the three men in her life. I might as well add that the conflict... or fighting really pushes and the suspense of disbelief, but there are other things. The conflict just doesn't seem real at all.

Where the plot doesn't involve conflict the plot ends up being about how the men in her life take advantage of her, but also do things like keep her safe from the other guys. Yup... there is another comparison to Twilight there... the fact we have love triangles... in this case a love quadruple... and we also have males who are over protective to the point of being abusive... and this time it is three guys instead of the two. We also have a female who can't take care of herself and constantly is whining about how she can't take care of herself.

To be honest though the problems don't end there.

At the beginning of the story we have the main character all weepy because her parents don't want her to pursue art school. That I can understand despite the over dramatization. What I can't understand though is how her school takes away her chance to participate in a big art competition because the other student was rich and going to an actual art school. This is despite the fact the Jay is their top student when it comes to art and she would better represent the school.

Another time the belief is pushed by a system that is able to identify people by their earlobes at one-hundred percent accuracy. For most people the one-hundred percent accuracy would cause some speculation because no system is completely accurate, but instead it doesn't raise any speculation. One of the downsides to identifying people by earlobes rather then fingertips comes from the fact you can reshape the ear and there is also the fact that while we now know that the accuracy rates for ear identification are high, this particular story was written before we really knew how accurate it was.

There is also the fact there comes a point in time when Jay has to give up her painting because of post traumatic syndrome, which causes her hand to shake to much and makes it so that she can no longer do the fine detail she became known for. Can I add here that she is a genius at art too? But back onto the PTSD. PTSD does not cause the loss of fine motor skills. While it is true that she may not have had interest in making art anymore, the fact remains she wanted to continue making art work AND it would have been a great way for dealing with the actual PTSD.

In the long run 100% Perfect Girl is blatant wish fulfillment, and likely not one of the healthy kinds. Despite the beautiful art work the actual story telling is poor due to exaggeration that were not needed as well as inaccurate details. The thing that honestly bothered me the most though was the fact the creator of this particular manhwa tried to piggy back their work on another writers work, a piece that despite it's short length is a far better read then this particular piece.