Cherry Blossom After Winter
Scratches an Itch
Tropes: unrequited love, childhood love, high school, college life, tsundere
Unrequited childhood love stemmed from a misunderstanding could now blossom into something more as Haebom and Taesung navigate high school, college and life. I know I'm going to get hate for this review so please be gentle. This manhwa was probably one of the very first manhwas that I've ever read, and it was probably what reeled me into this genre. The first time I read it, I remember loving it. It's a feel-good fluffy story with all-round green flag characters and many cute and wholesome moments. It is a very lighthearted read, not much angst surrounding the plot and the characters were lovable. Overall, it was engaging enough for me to continue reading and it piqued my interest enough for me to want to explore more of the genre after. But the second time I read it, after many years of reading many many other amazing manhwas, I almost couldn't finish this. I couldn’t remember most of the plot, which seems to suggest how forgettable it is, but even then the story is very predictable and at parts boring. The conflicts were driven a lot by misunderstanding tropes, and then treated rather superficially, so it felt really low stakes. The characters, while still wholesome, were one-dimensional and flat. MC is the timid sweet (but spineless) type and ML is a somewhat tsundere type but that's all there is to it. They really weren't given much character to begin with so naturally there wasn't much to their character arcs either. The shift from shounen-ai to yaoi felt very jarring that the tone of the story felt disrupted. I think this definitely contributed to my difficulty in finishing this and I've seen such pivoting done much better in other manhwas. However, giving credit where it's due, the art is beautiful, and it definitely gets brownie points for all its legacy. Cherry Blossom After Winter is perfect as an entry-level gateway story into this extensive world, but it definitely leaves a lot to be desired.
