Review: Your Eternal Lies (Completed)

My Rating System:👇🏼👇🏼

https://www.reddit.com/r/webtoons/s/Lwjqgxh6or

Previous Review:👇🏼👇🏼

https://www.reddit.com/r/webtoons/s/4g1e3nVFBf

Link:👇🏼👇🏼

https://coffeemanga.io/manga/your-eternal-lies-online-reading-24/

Your Eternal Lies - Novel: Jeon Hoochi Manhwa Artist: Kkomak (Adaptation)

Genre: Drama, Fantasy, Romance, Shoujo, Adaptation

Whoooo!! Jesus, that took a long time! But I did it! I don’t know how I did it, but I did it! Alright ladies & bugs, thank you for coming back. Thank you for visiting. And thank you for coming back–seriously, I didn’t think you would. 😭 Our next review was requested by Prestigious-Lead9020, & I present to thee, “Your Eternal Lie”. And honestly, it wasn’t a bad read, but in my personal opinion, I believe a female audience is going to gain far more enjoyment with the story than I did; while not a bad story, I wouldn’t say it was my personal favorite. That said, I can definitely see a female reader not only enjoying herself but even calling this one of her favorites. Which is the point of these reviews, so that others can find and enjoy their next big thing.

Also before we begin I’d like to make it apparent that while the story, “Your Eternal Lie” originates in the website called “Manta - Unlimited Comics” I ultimately had to read from “coffeemanga.io” in order to have full access to the story, otherwise I would have had to wait 24hrs for each chapter. Now with all that out of the way, let’s begin.

CoffeeManga’s Rating: 4.5 / 5

Personal Enjoyments: 3.5 / 5

Statistical Rating–

Protagonist: 7.5

Ladies and gentlemen I present to you, Rosen Walker. And for the most part I enjoyed her, she had a good introduction with an overall good personality. And if I had to choose my personal favorite part about her, it would be her backstory. In fact, I would go on to say that her backstory was not only the most engaging, but also the best part of the entire story. However, upon returning from said backstory, I realized both my engagement & my enjoyment of the character lessened and for a long time I kept wondering to myself “Why?” And after a while, I realized the answer was… “Tone”. When writing a story it is imperative that the overall tone of the story remains consistent, however in “Your Eternal Lies” case, the tone from the backstory and the present day was radically different, going from psychological depth to light-hearted party. I was less invested in the present day Rosen and more for her past version. Another issue I took was her hype. At the very beginning of the story, we are told that Rosen Walker is an escapee of not One, but Two Maximum-Security Prisons & that she is highly intelligent. Whenever I hear the term “Highly Intelligent” or “Super Intelligent” my golden standard for such reputation is Light Yagami from Death Note, and given such reputation from her two Maximus Security Prisons and the effort in both her introduction & build up, I was led to believe that Rosen Walker was such a character. & I’m not going to lie 2 you Gee, she didn’t meet the hype. Heck, I could give her a ladder, & she still wouldn’t meet the top, & this is rock-climbing, With The Strap!! So ultimately, I gave her a 7.5 meaning, “I really like her” but I definitely don’t love her.

Deuteragonist: 6.5

(Ian Kerner(Connor) will be used for both Deuteragonist & Antagonist since narratively, he is the second most important character & the character who’s ‘role’ goes against the protagonist’s will)

Alright brother, I ain’t gonna lie to you. I’ve seen multiple love interests in my day, for both girls and boys, & honestly…. you ain’t it. You just ain’t. Now I won’t be talking about his personality since everyone has their own preference, instead I’m just gonna say it’s not my favorite and leave it at that. However in regards to writing, relationships, and overall dynamics… Where’s my bat? Since we're doing this, I might as well grab Alfonso from my previous review, and compare and contrast the two love interests. I’ll say this much, in terms of writing Ian Connor is superior. But in regards to relationship / dynamics, Alfonso is breaking his legs for me. Ultimately, while Alfonso may not be complex or even deep for that matter, it’s what he brings to the table as a love interest that gives him a higher rating. Without him, Ariadne’s development would not only be stunted, but probably would’ve taken a radically different turn after a certain “death”. In the end she didn’t needed revenge but rather validation, for someone to tell her you are wonderful, you did good, you were amazing, you are a smart, intelligent, creative, and love…. “You are appreciated”. Remove Alfonso & you radically change the story because you radically changed Ariadne. However, remove her backstory, & Rosen doesn’t actually changes. She herself even admits “repeatedly” that Ian‘s best quality, is his good looks. Yes Ian‘s writing is better, but as a love interest he himself doesn’t provide much and while it may sound a little harsh, if he were replaced with the “Blonde Banana” both the story & the outcome would remain the remain the same, since both men go from mistreating her, to wanting to end up helping her. In the end, when all is said & done, complexity does not equal superiority. I’d rather have a simple character that does his job excellently, than a complex one who does his job poorly.

Antagonist: 4

I’m going to keep this one short and simple. Ian Connor is the second character I’ve met (in recent memory) who is both the love interest and the antagonist of the story. With the 1st being unanimously agreed to be one of the greatest characters in fiction, and after reading the story myself I am not gonna be that one guy who says otherwise just to be “different”. If the chair is red, it’s red. If the grass is green, it’s green. If the banana is rotting, it’s rotting. If the fact is a fact, then it’s an absolute fact. Next to her, Ian might as well be a stick figure and nothing would change. Not only that but she’s one of my top 10 favorite characters “in fiction” while I could never say the same for Ian. Sorry brother, but you just saying it.

Side Characters: 5

I had initially felt indifferent towards the overall cast with the exception of my discontent with the “White Banana”–4. However because of his development it ended up being a 5. Good job 👍🏼

Plot: 6.75 -> (7)

Alright, so because the story has two seasons or sections, what I’m gonna do is give each section a rating and then find the overall mean or “average” between them. I’m doing this because there are multiple stores that are broken up into different seasons, arcs, or sections, and for each section/arc I give my personal rating. This is accomplished by adding all the ratings together then dividing it by the number of sections there are, then rounding it to the nearest whole number, or half number. In other words… 6+7.5=13.5➗2=6.75 -> (7)

Season 1: 6

Season 2: 7.5

Pacing: 5

It was never too fast or too slow. 👍🏼

Worldbuilding: 3

I will not be talking about the novel but strictly the adaptation. And in terms of what I could see, the story mostly takes place in a boat. When we leave the boat through backstory however there seems to be a little bit of confusion. The common people are dressed almost as if they’re in the Pilgrim era, but we’re then shown planes, and cadets wearing modern-day military clothing. Then at the beginning of the story one of the early themes presented to us was sexism towards women and yet near the end of season one, said theme was tossed aside & forgotten as we are shown multiple girls attending a military school within the very same area almost like a normal high school. Not only that, but one of the main characters in said school was a girl who was never shown once struggle with such themes. This is a consistency error for both the themes and worldbuilding; again I have not read the novel but rather the adaptation that was presented to me. Personally, I believe the sexism was traded in for prejudice towards witches since the story goes out of its way to tell us that these powers and abilities can only be inherited by women. And that everyone, women included, fear and resent these powers.

Consistency: 5

OK this one hurts. But this is actually one of the weakest aspects of the story. Whether it’s in its theme, worldbuilding, DIALOGUE (more on that later), or its shifting of tones, this is not its best quality. Also, though I’m not entirely sure due to its early dialogue, I believe and one of the translations I read, there is a massive consistency error with Ian Connors character. In chapter 4 I believe, it is stated that early Ian Connor was overly emotional and saw someone, one of his female classmates I assume, & was advised that he should stop talking and simply listen so that he may answer calmly and appropriately, stating that he was overly emotional. However this was eventually retconned because we are then shown Ian’s childhood & that, he was always quiet and reserved.

However! I will counteract this whole statement with another! Think of it like this. You open the door to find your date on the other side, & you're immediately blown away. However, while you immediately love what you see–I, your chaperone, see all the little nitty-ditty details. His shoes are unpolished. A nail is longer than the rest. His watch has scratches. & there’s a spot on his hair he forgot to comb. Case in point, I “Have” to search for these details! However, you don’t. So if you go into this, I can easily see a majority of you loving this story.

Dialogue: 6

Alright. Here we are. The second biggest hurdle. I’ll say this off the bat, muscle through that beginning. I promise you it’s going to get better. The dialogue will improve. Guaranteed! 👍🏼 That being said, it actually isn’t the stories fault, but rather the translators since the story was originally Korean.

Also, both the dialogue & sudden shift of character response at the end of Ch.62 was disgustingly generic, and though it elicited the correct emotion the author wished for, still came off as annoyingly unnatural. However due to it happening only in this single chapter - or in recent memory - no points will be deducted.

Themes: 7

Sexism: 7 Abuse/Mistreatment: 10 Survival/Struggle: 7 Mental Health: 8.5 Societal expectations/pressures: 7 Abortion/Killing: 3

Most of the themes the story tackles are pretty good, however since most of you are obviously staring at that last one, I’m going to of course delve into it a bit more.

First & foremost, let me get this out-of-the-way for those of you who are wondering. Regardless of my personal feelings I did not rate this lowly due to any emotional reasons, but rather the lack of effort in addressing such topics. As for emotions, that falls entirely to each individual & how they themselves personally respond/feel to such topics.

Second, when I was going through this story I realized that the story showed “the taking of another’s life” repeatedly. Whether it’s the death of cadets in the army, the death of an entire town, the death of women with abilities, or the death of children yet unborn, “The taking of another life” was a theme continuously shown to us. “The taking of another life,” translating to “Killing” = Google Definition: “The act of causing Death.” However, the story made no effort to truly delve into these topics & simply use them as “Things that just happened as a result”. They do cause a bit of psychological trauma for the characters, but the topics themselves are never fully explored. Especially abortion, a topic you could write an entire story centered around. Ultimately, the girl in question has a panic attack that lasts about 5 to 10 seconds, then proceeds to merks the child herself. And we never come back to this topic ever. Again. Ever.

Overall score: 56 (E)

Personal Enjoyment: 3.5 / 5

Coffeemanga’s Rating: 4.5 / 5

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WHOOO!!! Man, what a read! I’m not gonna lie to you, this one took a bit of work. But I did it! And despite the rating, I’ll say this much. Between this and my last review, I’d have to say “Your Eternal Lie” is the better written between the two. I know, I know, a little contradicting based on the scoring–I should know, after all once the score was totaled and I looked everything over, I re-looked & recalculated everything over several times just to make sure I didn’t make a mistake.

And so here’s the question, if I genuinely think this is the better written story, why did it get the lower ratings? Well in order to find the answer, I had to compare & contrast the numbers and after a while, I found the culprit. In the end, it was ultimately the consistency that did this story in.

The best way I can compare the two stories is like this. There are two roads, one has a lot of large holes clearly seen & visible. While the other looks nicer, but still has a lot of bumps the moment you start driving through it. Ultimately though, they are both wonderful stories and if you ask me which I thought was the better story, I’d have to say this one, just don’t nitpick at all the little details like me and get through the beginning few chapters and you’ll find yourself in love with a story adapted by a passionate fan.

Time for the verdict! Should you read, “Your Eternal Lies?” And my response is: Go for it. Power through the beginning and you’ll enjoy the rest. You can find the link to the story at the top of this post: hoping this link still works. 😅😭

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Coming Soon: (to theaters…😁)

Aw, come on man! I need all the cheese!

For the next review, I’m going to do something slightly different. There’s a Tower of God’s YouTuber I used to follow & about 2 years ago he started a tower of god inspired DnD that I really enjoyed called Tower & Gods. So I’m going to do a review on their first arc since I haven’t finished the next Manhwa. That’s said, even though the story is inspired by a WEBTOON, I’m not entirely sure if the mods would allow it or not. So in addition to the review, I will also be adding a small mini-review of a story still in its very early stages, or one of the stories on canvas–I’ll call this, “SPOTLIGHT”. Hopefully it’ll help new story-tellers kick off.

Anyways, that’s it for now, the next review should be scheduled to drop in FIVE DAYS, which should give me more than enough time to relax: cuz my fingers need recovering. So Friday August 2nd. See you then! 👋🏼