The romance subplot of How to Fight is terrible garbage
This webtoon would be way better without the unnecessary romance subplot. Not even gonna be nice about it. Everyone falls in love too damn quickly. It was okay at first since it seemed like it was just for comedic effect, but this shit is getting ridiculous. I'm not gonna say anything about Mangi, since he was supposed to be a simp from the start & I can't take that from him. But seeing characters like Wangguk and Bomi that seriously fall in love within a day or less, now that's a joke. It's not even a crush, they think they're in love. Like falling in love is ok I guess, but there was no build up with Wangguk, it just came out of the blue. And it's weird how he immediately fell in love with Rumi the first time they talked, this guy was even willing to kill someone to protect her after that. It just seems completely out of character.
Like isn't this the guy who doesn't care about anyone and would do anything to survive?? He just saw her pretty smile that one time and decided that he wanted to protect her with his life, even forgetting about his sister. I feel like this was added only because if he didn't feel attached to her he wouldn't do shit to help the Yoo Hobin Company, since he only cared about his & Gyeoul's safety.
The development is either too fast paced, non existent, or most of it happens off screen. Oh and adding a random ass harem and one sided crushes just to hurt the characters for no reason. There's literally no point in it if the story makes it obvious who's gonna end up with the main character from the beginning, it's easy to do the math. This just makes me feel pity for the other characters, like seriously. They don't have a chance, why did Taejoon even turn them into simps??? Not just the girls, they even pulled that "in love with my childhood friend" cliché on Moonsung at the worst time, it didn't even contribute anything to the plot. He got the most cliché rushed backstory, and honestly the finding Samdak's identity arc was just useless. TJ had us going around in circles when he could've written a better reveal. Logan was basically rendered a background character there to make the readers assume stuff, and the bitch fight over some girl? It wasn't even impressive. I really thought these two characters would become more important, but they were thrown out the window immediately after 😪
I also have a problem with the readers arguing about ships or whatever, some of y'all are straight up contradicting yourselves in the same sentence. I get that the author has this thing where he clearly sets up two characters to end up together, but the readers fall for this teasing and treat the characters, mostly the female ones, as property of the male they want them with. "Gaeul should date Jiksae because Hobin thinks of her as a sister and he likes Bomi" if you're gonna use that logic, does Gaeul feel any different about Jiksae from how Hobin does about her? Jiksae only has a one sided crush and everybody's acting like he 'deserves' her.
Also for some reason the girls always fall for the guys because of their oh so amazing personality, but the guys are always like "woah she's pretty, I think I'm madly in love 😳". Amazing writing. Hobin started liking Bomi just because she was pretty and he seriously thought about confessing to her the first time they hung out.
And now I'm gonna get to Bomi, which in my opinion is the worst character in the whole webtoon. The main problem is that the only reason she exists as a character is to be Hobin's love interest. Literally has no important role than that. It's funny to me how people think she is a good character when her whole being is based on being the protagonist's future gf. There are 2~3 scenes where she kinda affected the plot but she didn't even do anything, she just made Hobin feel like he had to protect her. She doesn't really care much about anything other than Hobin, in every scene she's in it just has to do with him, even when he doesn't physically appear there. Apparently her and Moonsung are friends but when he went to visit her after 2 months of not seeing each other she immediately tried to leave to text Hobin, what an amazing friend. Every time she's with him she just can't shut up about Hobin. She just constantly disappears and comes back when it’s convenient for romance moments.
I was surprised to see that a lot of people bandwagoned on having a positive opinion of her after her backstory, which was nothing but underwhelming. It's just a spoiled kid going through a preteen phase like everybody else, what's so good about that? She probably would have turned out the same way even if she hadn't met Hobin. The only thing that I got out of her backstory was that Hobin had struggled a lot in his life.
I would see a few people calling her sus or saying that they didn't really like her because she had no important role, but they immediately changed their minds about her after her story. Her story doesn't change anything other than giving us the reason why she's so obsessed with Hobin. Was it really that serious for her? She seriously stalked a guy all day, had only one short conversation with him, and concluded that he was her first love??? How the fuck does she expect him to remember her?
It would make more sense if after seeing how hard his life was she would change her world view and see that some people have it worse than her, but instead this only affected her dating preference.
They literally just had one short conversation where he lectured her and after 3 years she still "loves" him. Even started working at McDonald's just because he worked there too, when she could've just talked to him. She probably worked there for some time without even talking to him until he was about to quit. That's weird. And as soon as they met after the backstory, Bomi was already acting jealous and possessive when she found out Hobin had a female editor. It's always Gaeul for some reason, how come Bomi hasn't seen Rumi's pranks on Hobin, aren't those way worse? Plus she was being a bitch in chapter 35, where she cursed Hobin out and almost slapped him because he was taking Jiksae to a restaurant instead of her. She always gets pissed at the smallest things when Hobin causes a harmless misunderstanding or does something she doesn't like. If the roles were switched I bet people wouldn't think it's cool. "They're still teens" isn't even a good excuse for this kind of behavior.
Her entire relationship with Hobin is immature and obsessive. Not just her, Hobin actually followed her on a school trip, just because Yeonwoo was next to her in a group photo. This mf even thought about putting laxatives in the guy's drink because of that. And it was supposed to be funny or something.
It's even shown that these two obsessively text each other about personal things in their lives such as what they're up to, at what time they fall asleep and who they're with, to the point Bomi felt cheated because Hobin didn't tell her that he was gonna hang out with his friend(who happens to have XX chromosomes). They're not even dating, why does Bomi expect him to tell her everything? Can't tell if it's too much trust or a complete lack of it. That whole misunderstanding between them dragged on for too long and they made things overly dramatic when they could still text and call each other. You could just skip that part and the story would still make sense. Their relationship is not cute at all like a lot of people like to say.
In general Bomi just seems like a joke to me. It doesn't even feel real how she has everything perfect in her life. She's the odd one out when you compare her with the other characters' internal and external struggles. You see all these well written characters that had to fight and work hard to even live a decent life and then there's this,, drop dead gorgeous girl from a rich family who goes to a fancy school and has guys turn around to look at her and compliment her beauty every time she's in public. She has faced no hardships that are worth mentioning, other than being too pretty, if that even counts. The most interesting thing that has happened in her life is meeting Hobin. The female characters are generally outshined by the male ones but at least the other three have desires, interests or things they're working towards, like Rumi wanting to be a beauty YouTuber, Gaeul who edits and is passionate about MMA and Gyeoul who wants fame. Bomi doesn't even have something like that, all she does is like Hobin.
I could explain her whole character with this:
I'm not even saying Bomi is a bad person, there's a difference between a bad person and a bad character. She could've been written better, but I'm convinced that she has already reached her peak. She's just a copy of the standard love interest in every other story. Gyeoul is a far more interesting character in my opinion, and I'm glad that she hasn't been included in the shitty romance subplot(...yet 😟).
Conclusion: Taejoon give me the script