Goong is a Shoujo, Romantic, Comedy, Drama dealing with the all-too-familiar arranged marriage set-up but in an unfamiliar Korean monarchy setting. So you can expect your characteristic shoujo romance in the forefront, but with political ploys, betrayal and power struggles in the background.

First of all let me say… this is an amazing manhwa where the author brings forth an interesting question for its plot, “what if the Korean monarchy wasn’t just a memory but still an active part of society?” This plot is able to bring forth a number of issues that have rarely been dealt with before in a shoujo manhwa such as: social status, ascension of the throne and the true power of the monarchy. With that said, Goong is still like most Rom/Coms where the main focus is on a typical girl named Chae-Kyung, whose forced into a relationship she had no intention of being in and into the royal family. The romance side of this manhwa is entertaining nevertheless it suffers from unnecessary stalling, where the smallest issue prevents any romantic progression resulting in “back to square one” syndrome.

Just as the story contains numerous stereotypes; some of the characters also fall into the category of the shoujo stereotype. Take the 3 main characters for example: the heroine Chae-Kyung is one of those fairly naïve ‘hates him but falls in love with him’ kind of girls, then the male protagonists; Shin who enjoys teasing our heroine & Yul who showers our heroine with affection to form your much loved/hated love triangle. However unlike most manga, the author uses these stereotypes to her advantage for the comedic aspects and also adds a whole another layer to the characters to give them much needed depth. Unfortunately no matter how relevant the supporting cast is, some eventually go from being a necessity to an annoyance and the Eunuch is a perfect example of this.

On a plus side at least the artwork is almost without fault, because just from looking at a page you can tell how much time and effort the author spent researching and such to ensure the Korean monarchy look is just right. Everything from the hairpins to the robes look exquisite and the characters are nicely designed to go with all this. The only reason why this falls short of a perfect score is that the jump from this gorgeous look to the comedic look is far too great.

Overall Goong is an exquisite manhwa that effectively deals with your typical shoujo romance and your not-so typical monarchy plot quite well. Good thing here is that it faithfully incorporates all the royal customs & etiquette of the Korean monarchy however both the scanlated & official Yen Press release can be a pain to read, since there’s a tonne of Korean terminology to get used to. At least this doesn’t ruin the experience but what does is the unnecessary comedy and the random shounen-ai moments that are just thrown in to appease the fangirls. So in the end fangirls would love this to death but even if you don’t fall into this category (like me); as long as you come into it with an open mind, you’re bound to find something good out of it.

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*SPOILER-FREE*

I believe the downfall of this manhwa was its poor characters, repeated plot structure, and an extremely drawn out story which quickly became boring.

The beginning of the series was actually really cultivating. Although there are many stories of forced marriage between royalty, I quickly warmed up to this one. I saw huge potential and since there were many chapters I was expecting a great plot with a lot of character development. But I was wrong. Around halfway through the story I noticed that I became very agitated and annoyed while reading this. I couldn't figure out why. I continued on. Eventually I figured out that I began to hate every single character. All the characters were whiny little bitches who had no backbone. They ridiculously continued to make the same horribly stupid mistakes again and again. This would not be a problem if it was one or two characters, but it was the whole cast. I have to give props to Hyo-rin for becoming my most hated character that I've ever seen. Even with these horrible characters the series still had a chance to succeed. If there had been only 50 chapters the manhwa could have been great. Instead the plot dragged on repeating the same plot ideas over and over again to the point of me not even wanting to read anymore. As the story dragged on I began to hate the series more and more until I got to the conclusion, which I thought was horrible.

This manhwa was a huge disappointment and I honestly wish I had never wasted my time reading it. I would definitely not recommend it to any type of reader.

Story- 5
Art-8
Character-1
Enjoyment-6
Overall-5

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