Love is an Illusion is an omegaverse manhwa about Dojin, the dominant alpha, and Hyesung, the recessive omega who was misdiagnosed as an alpha. This story is rushed, messy, and chaotic. During a chance meeting, Hyesung has his first heat, an omegaverse pheromone scene happens, and the plot is born.
Characters: 4/10 – At first, all the characters seem interesting with complex backstories. Dojin is introduced as the typical cold, arrogant alpha type. He hates omegas and is isolating to the audience. He has someone who follows him around named Heesoo. It’s never quite clarified who Heesoo is to Dojin, a friend, assistant, secretary? He attached himself to Dojin because he was nice once and has never left Dojin’s side since. Hyesung is our bratty omega. In the beginning, Hyesung believes he’s an alpha, so his standoff-ish behavior is understandable. However, that attitude grows intolerable as the story progresses.
Dojin’s opinion of omegas is quickly changed after meeting Hyesung. He has one other interest in music, but it takes a backburner almost immediately. His backstory is never really fleshed out as more than a surface level issue. Dojin becomes a doormat for Hyesung’s every wish. It’s not clear why Dojin likes Hyesung. He states because “you’re just… you”, but Hyesung is such an abysmal person I can’t understand the reasoning. Other than loving Hyesung, Dojin serves no real purpose to the story.
Heesoo is by far the most interesting character. He serves Dojin like a personal assistant would. He becomes a sort of antagonist against the main couple’s relationship, but I found him to be the only voice of reason against the otherwise chaos. He has interesting goals and reasons for what he does. Heesoo was enjoyable because he was as frustrated with Hyesung as I was.
Hyesung is a bottom of the barrel loser. He cannot make a decision for himself, constantly going along with whatever anyone tells him. The only decisions he can make are wildly disastrous or self-harming. Hyesung is spoiled and snobbish. He uses Dojin like a credit card and never apologies for it. His behavior is excused away because “recessive omegas are stupid”, but that is just a crutch to enable his behavior. Despite his tragic backstory of abuse and neglect, Hyesung is a spoiled brat. His backstory came up once in the first half and was left open-ended. There was no resolution there. It’s more likely there for Hyesung to have an excuse for being such a terrible person at every moment, and that’s just poor character design.
Plot: 3/10 – This story is rushed. Character beats hit way too fast. Plot points are used to progress the story faster than necessary. Characters are dropped because the story progresses faster than arcs can be resolved. Things are constantly left unfinished, leaving the reader with whiplash each time another story beat happens. The characters never have time to grow and breathe. Story just keeps happening around them, and much too quickly. Hyesung suffers from this the most. If the author allowed Hyesung more time to just exist with Dojin, they might have been a better couple. It’s difficult to describe why this plot is so rushed without spoiling major beats, so please skip to the next set of * for non-spoilers.
***spoilers for chapters 20 and on***
Dojin and Hyesung have a sexual relationship right off the bat. Hyesung ends up getting pregnant in chapter 20. Hyesung immediately wishes to abort, but Dojin insists on carrying to term. Dojin wants to use this as an opportunity to keep Hyesung from fleeing yet again. Hyesung writes up a contract stating: Hyesung will immediately hand over the child to Dojin, Dojin will pay him 50 million won upon the birth, and 30 million won in the event of a miscarriage. Dojin immediately signs the contract. Heesoo is in disbelief, as am I. Hyesung spends his entire pregnancy leeching every cent Dojin is willing to spend. Their relationship makes no progression. Hyesung is described as a tsundere, but the dere part of Hyesung is blatantly absent. Hyesung runs like a startled cat at every opportunity, and that never really changes. Eventually, Hyesung gives birth, refuses to look at his child, and then promptly disappears. Season two is only 10 chapters long, and yet it goes from Hyesung being missing, to the couple making up with Dojin’s family. In 10 chapters, the main couple “reconciled”, met Dojin’s family, Dojin proposed and was rejected, Hyesung ran away and tried to sleep with a random character from the first chapter, found out he was bonded to Dojin and would die without him, came back to Dojin for the umpteenth time, and made up with Dojin’s family. It was here I stopped reading. I skipped several chapters to breeze through the rest and found more of the same. At some point, they got married and yet Hyesung was still as emotionally distant from Dojin as he was in chapter two. For as late in the story as chapter 70 out of 100, I expected a little more character growth. By far the most egregious moment was the accidental bonding of our main couple. Omegaverse is convoluted and it’s up to the author to shape it how they please. However, forcing two characters to magically bond without their knowledge or consent is just contrived.
***end of spoilers***
The characters of Love is an Illusion never grew or developed. I think the fast pacing of each monumental story beat stifled this. Characters were forced together by convenient plot points, not because they grew to love each other. Their relationship was strained and painful to watch. Despite the interesting artwork, the story just couldn’t hold its own. It’s possible several of my issues with this story were resolved in the later chapters, however it’s not worth waiting for. You shouldn’t have to read 75% of the story before things get good. Overall, this is a disappointing read. I don’t recommend this. Unfortunately, the smut wasn’t particularly well done either, so I can’t even recommend this as a pleasure read. Overall, just pick something else. There are plenty of other stories with decent plot points and decent smut scenes if that’s all you’re looking for.
