It all starts with a girl who hides behind a mask of make up. That feeling we all get as "not pretty enough" and how you can even be bullied for your looks, causing long lasting emotional damage.
Wait wait wait. It sort of starts off that way, but it just wants to recap that so you can see Jugyeong (which I'll refer to as Barbie to make it easier on my english native brain) hanging out with some cute boys in their love triangle. As romances go, having the romance of the story be the focus makes sense. There's a lot of tropes that get
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used in romances and this is no exception but besides your main three characters, who cares about anyone else? (genuinely for a romance, that's fine!) Well.... Once the dating begins we start the next phase of the story, self discovery and getting over trauma! But something seems off. Perhaps it's because of how the story is told through a webcomic with limited panels and time? Well, maybe, but stories like I love Yuu, Make up Remover, No Longer a Heroine, Your Throne, Surviving Romance seem to be able to show character development and growth through their stories, and have a whole cast of consistent characters.
Why does True Beauty feel so off with it's story telling?
My problem with the series is the villain of the week trope. There were so many characters that also dealt with their own issues that could have been touched on especially with how long the series is, but there came a point that every introduction I thought "Are they going to be secretly pure evil or a sweet friend who is ABSOLUTELY nothing but a sweet friend we won't see or hear from again indefinitely. We rarely saw the friends, we know barely anything about them. None of these other characters mattered. None of them. Dealing with past trauma, realistically, would mean communicating with people and being able to cope together, but the story just didn't have time for it. It was about the villain of the week. Who was going to make Barbie look like an angel? And who was going to be this cartoony evil person out to get barbie and friends? And then POOF dealt with like a sailormoon villain. On to the next introduction that won't matter.
This happening once or twice would have been fine, but it happened all the time!!! I ended up dropping the series because it was predictable and and not very interesting. I started reading TB because the romance was cute, but after that part of the story ends I wanted to see Barbie develop. As stated before the story just didn’t have time for her to really sit and learn with her friends THEIR traumas and be able to grow with them. The story was just too busy introducing characters that were saturday cartoon evil villains. The story is so long and it’s sad to see how much time is wasted when the IDEA is good! By the end, and all of a sudden, it happens.
****spoilers**** MC accepts herself because of some old ladies SHE JUST MET said "appreciate your youth". Out of all the time spent with characters close to her, constantly not having time to deal with that trauma because she had to fix other people's problems and be this savior for others... she doesn't talk to anyone close to her that can give her the right words to help her approach all this trauma as they'd been watching and growing with her. No. It's some little old ladies that helps it click with her.
After the old ladies, Barbie sees all the people who were like "hey Barbie helped me!" through stories posted online... They squeezed out one last villain, the manager, that ends up being portrayed as 'evil' in the end too. Even though 1. it was her job to get Barbie views, and 2.People mess up. It would have been nice to see at least in the end as Barbie is now out of her “I’m ugly and useless” phase that she doesn’t see everyone as a good guy and bad guy. I just wish they showed the complexity of people since getting over trauma is the main theme (besides the romance which has been on the back burner). It was a romance, but once the romance ended the story kept going, and without the romance being the focus, why couldn't they have just taken their time giving their past characters more love.
So in the end, the romance was cute, and as someone who has dealt with trauma (and also anorexia which they upset a lot of people with their nonchalant approach on how to lose a lot of weight really fast) it felt absolutely frustrating reading this story play out. The only reason I finished was because I had already invested so much time into it, and yes, I did drop it for a long while once I got sick of the villain of the week but picked it back up hoping it would develop a bit more. It did not. If you love the story, I hope you gained a lot from it, but as for me- I just think they really dropped the ball and I hope you can see why I think so.
Oct 29, 2022
True Beauty
(Manga)
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It all starts with a girl who hides behind a mask of make up. That feeling we all get as "not pretty enough" and how you can even be bullied for your looks, causing long lasting emotional damage.
Wait wait wait. It sort of starts off that way, but it just wants to recap that so you can see Jugyeong (which I'll refer to as Barbie to make it easier on my english native brain) hanging out with some cute boys in their love triangle. As romances go, having the romance of the story be the focus makes sense. There's a lot of tropes that get ... 
Sep 29, 2022
Mirai Nikki (TV)
(Anime)
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I'm not done with the show, but at this point, I don't think the ending will change my feelings on my experience of the show's entirety.
Firstly I'd like to say the other reviews made me wonder, is this show worth watching? Battle animes. I don't watch a ton of them, they're super corny or over explain without story reasons to. "Let me tell you my evil plan since there is no way for you to stop it- except for this window of time as I explain. Anyways it was 1894..." I don't give this show a pass on that, but plenty of times the ... 
Sep 14, 2022
Jujutsu Kaisen
(Anime)
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WOOOO I love this Shonen! It's rare to see an anime actually give women respect and power, and part of me saying there is respect is that I saw no sexualization of the characters. Sure, some of the guys talk about preferences but it's extremely tame and doesn't take away from the female cast. Though just because a show gives equal footing to it's ladies that doesn't mean it's a good show-
This still is. The main cast is very like-able with just a few running gags that you can call as soon as they start, the characters have great chemistry and you don't just ... 
Apr 3, 2022
I've been trying to make up my mind how I feel about this series since I started it a little while back and finally completing it today. So let's tackle pros and cons without spoiling anything.
Animation: it can be REALLY bad. Honestly I don't feel like they make too many attempts at hiding the fact they barely have a budget for animation. It can be as simple as showing an image while the characters continue to talk or a chase scene where it's a still image and the characters continue to talk, or an awkward moment where maybe someone should have let go of an ... 
Mar 27, 2022
Lovely★Complex
(Manga)
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I found a version of the translation that flowed very well and helped make this story more lovely than the original manga translation. I read a few chapters of the original and the writing was just so stiff it really took me out of the story, with that said I found myself enjoying the story less and less as time went on regardless of the translations.
The story revolves around a topic that really does bother a lot of people, height. So it was really cute to see a couple not care about it, or even try to work past it to find out that together ... 
Feb 27, 2022
I watched this anime a few months ago, deciding that it was time to finally sit down and watch the ever hyped, very popular, well known, slice of life K-On!
I started off actually enjoying the cute-ness of the show, though very slow and even rarer funny moments, it was good veg out material. You don't think, nothing bad happens, but after 4 or 5 episodes I start to notice, *nothing* ever happens. I sit for a little while longer because hey, it's cute and veg out material isn't a bad thing, I wanna see these girls succeed at putting together a band! The characters ... 
Dec 18, 2021
Brothers Conflict
(Anime)
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This show doesn't really need a review, I know it doesn't. But I decided to go look at my "plan to watch list" and there was Brother's conflict and I then remembered *yes* I did watch it, and yes I did watch the show in it's entirety. Oh boy, where to start?
Imagine you need to sell your romance game. You need to show off what options are available, have a main character who has the personality of a wet sheet of paper with the word 'perfekt wifey' *written on it*. To be completely fair though, I'd probably be pretty confused if I was in her ... 
Dec 2, 2021
Higurashi no Naku Koro ni Gou
(Anime)
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After my initial experience with watching the first few episodes of the show thinking it was a remake and being extremely frustrated with where they decided to start, I found out, it was not a remake but a continuation. So I decided to watch it again, this time finishing it to judge it properly then. I was very confused as to what was going on and why until close to the end. If they hinted at it I didn't catch it. But regardless, did I enjoy the show and did I enjoy the ending? ... well, I didn't hate it. I didn't enjoy this
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Dec 2, 2021
Kakugo no Susume
(Anime)
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My friend received a handful of dumpster diving treasures from her highschool crush that I was invited to dig through and pick which one we'd start with, and I found myself starting with one of the most memorable, horrible, and silly animes that live rent free in my mind to this day. If you're looking for something to just laugh at, this is definitely a good pick. There's nothing redeeming about it, it's extremely sexual for no good reason and yet at the same time those sexual things are morphed into something... This is an awful show, but it's still worth your time
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Nov 11, 2021
This show has sexual assault and pedophilia in it but does not address it as such.
I tried really hard to like this show, there were definitely things I did like about it, but there was a lot I had to push past. Things that I did not let fly when I tried to watch Shield Hero or Death March, I'm talking of course about the sexualization of children. Though Shield Hero had it's own issue of owning female slaves, Death March and Mushoku both have protagonists who are isekai'd away into children's bodies... so even though they're still adults with their adult memories, this is ... |
