With more people reading manga and Webtoons (aka vertical scroll comics) than ever before, Beat’s Bizarre Adventure gives three writers an opportunity each week to recommend some of their favorite books and series from Japan, Korea, and elsewhere. This week we have high finance romance, a WEBTOON blast from the past, and, once again, institutional sexism.
Love by Mistake
Writer/Artist: Qiaoyao
Platform: WebComics
Top finance reporter Sylvie Jaine recently had her heart broken after she caught her boyfriend cheating on her–with someone richer and with all the necessary connections that would further his career. Determined to get her revenge by becoming her ex’s step-aunt, she targets her ex’s girlfriend’s young uncle, the famed CEO Stefan Yard. She never expected to fall for him… nor did she expect the cold and distant Stefan to like her back.
Love by Mistake’s plot isn’t original, especially if you’ve watched enough Chinese dramas. You know where the story’s headed within the first few chapters. That’s not necessarily a weakness, though, so long as there’s something interesting and new happening. Qiaoyao balances out the manhua’s melodrama with moments of humor, like Sylvie’s exaggerated reactions, and by representing each character via cute animals (a stoic lion for Stefan with round glasses to match and a fluffy fox-rabbit hybrid for Sylvie). The side characters are also memorable thanks to a secondary romantic storyline that comes in later.
The romance is a slow burn with Sylvie trying everything in her dating playbook to make Stefan fall in love with her. The two don’t get together until several chapters deep; when the truth of Sylvie’s deception is inevitably revealed, Stefan’s agony and heartbreak is so much more palpable because you can see how quickly, and hard he fell for her. The angst hurts, especially when you can see just how much they’re suffering from Sylvie’s betrayal. Luckily their separation arc doesn’t last too long.
The best part of Love by Mistake is its artwork. I found myself having to catch my breath because of how beautiful the characters and background artwork were. If you’re looking to read something aesthetically pleasing, Love by Mistake has you covered. — Hilary Leung
Room of Swords
Writer/Artist: Toonimated
Platform: WEBTOON
Last year I read a comic by the lovely duo Julian and Tara a.k.a: Toonimated. In my end-of-the-year mentally drained state, I thought to myself, “why does that name sound so familiar?” Suddenly a wave of memories flooded into my mind from the beginning of my WEBTOON journey in 2019. AHA! Now I remember, they made Room of Swords!
This webtoon was one of the first series I subscribed to all those years ago. So what makes this series so special? Originally published from 2017 to 2022 on WEBTOON, this series follows Gyrus, a man pulled across time and space to a mysterious planet with a black sun. He must endure a great trial alongside other warriors and find the Room Of Swords. Some will live, some will die.
I find the art in Room Of Swords to be reminiscent of Noriko Katou and Hideki Ishikawa’s style in the video game Mega Man Legends. Add influence from Hayao Miyazaki and Bryan Lee O’Malley, and follow with uneven imperfect line art texture and interesting use of watercolor brushes to color in the art. The brushes blended on top of each other creates a burn effect, giving the illusion of depth as it creates darker colors. It is used very sparingly, as you can tell where parts are intentionally devoid of color to create a rim-lighting effect.
This webtoon has such a strong visual identity with its intentional use of bright and saturated colors. Even though the story takes place in such a hostile world, its style fills me with a sense of nostalgia for older anime from the 90s like Dragon Ball. I also love how the story switches perspectives between various characters, so that it isn’t just told exclusively through Gyrus’ point of view.
Room Of Swords is worth a longer review down the line. Thankfully, Toonimated are re-releasing the series on CANVAS where it can be read for free, with some additional tweaks to enhance the visuals and story. Now would be a great time to check out this classic series and see what I am yapping about.
May your 2026 be kind and eventful IN A GOOD WAY! — Justin Guerrero
Gene Bride
Writer/Artist: Hitomi Takano
Translation: Kristjan Rohde
Adaptation: Hayame
Lettering: Neal Formy
Cover Design: H. Qi
Copy Editor: Leighanna DeRouen
Proofreader: Jenny Mott
Production Designer: Christina McKenzie
Editor: Suzanne Seals
Publisher: Seven Seas
Being Ichi Isahaya is an exercise in frustration. Film directors comment on her looks instead of answering her serious questions about their filmographies during interviews. Pedestrians masturbate while watching her jog in the park. So when a man named Masaki Masuhito visits her workplace to give her chocolates and insist she is his “Gene Bride” from middle school, Isahaya is convinced he’s a creep. But Masaki reminds her of something she’s long forgotten: her former classmate Enami. Ichi teams up with Masaki to find out what happened to her. Along the way we learn that Ichi’s world is a much stranger place than we initially assumed.
Hitomi Takano’s Gene Bride is published in Feel Young, a josei magazine responsible for spotlighting comics geniuses like Kyoko Okazaki, Moyoco Anno and Tomoyo Yamashita. What the series reminds me of most, though, is 90s shojo artists like Yumi Tamura and Reiko Shimizu. Just like in Tamura’s comics, Takano’s heroine Ichi is an earnest young woman struggling to overcome impossible odds with courage and grace. Despite being a high-powered editor and interviewer paid a living wage at a film magazine, the kind of job that makes underpaid critics like myself howl in envy, Takano gives her just enough grit to convince as a real person. Small details like the way she dresses in and outside of work do a lot to put the reader in her headspace.
Masuhito is a fun character to follow as well, even though I haven’t quite pinned him down yet. He’s the exact opposite of what you’d expect from a shojo or even josei lead. He can’t read the room and it’s hard to imagine him sweeping Ichi off her feet. But just like Ichi is frustrated by the norms that she is expected to perform as a woman, Masuhito doesn’t fit into the mold of a typical guy either. He makes an effort to listen to and learn from Ichi even though there’s a lot he doesn’t know. At the same time, Ichi keeps trying to get a read on Masuhito’s personality only to be surprised again and again. It makes for a fun dynamic that doesn’t fit neatly into what you’d expect from a series like this.
The end of the first volume switches into Shimizu territory with a twist that re-contextualizes everything the reader thought they knew about the series they are reading. Which raises the question, how do you review a book where the slow build-up to the genre-changing stinger is the point? Well, the themes remain consistent, and the characters remain the core of the book. The main difference is that Ichi’s fears transform from subtext to text. What if the arbitrary rules and institutional sexism terrorizing us in reality had a face? What if it infected the air we breathe? Gene Bride is not subtle, as Tamura and Shimizu were not subtle. But we do not live in a subtle world. — Adam Wescott
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