[Manhwa's Carnot] Cheese in the Trap, Ep. 0-1 review
Cheese in the Trap captures the vibe of an era lost to nostalgia, a vibe very last decade. It’s a rusted digitally-painted style, with oranges and reds serving as the undertones of everything, even the greens. A brief skip to the end of the prologue, we’re introduced to our trifecta—our bad-boy v. good dichotomy and the brown-haired belle stuck in the middle.
No.
Timeless, but no.
There we go.
Seol is the Cheese in the Trap, pivoting between “superstitious” and “carefree” in the same amount of time it takes you to say, “9.4 million likes adapted into a major K-Drama production.” Thank you, WEBTOON’s description section. And yet the art of the almost 10-year-old comic, and these days everything seemingly appearing in the millions and billions, it seems like that doesn’t do its popularity justice. I’m serious about that timeframe, too. Speed readers likely made it through the total…six finger-swipes it took before our main character swore off all boys in the Prologue. The subtle foreshadowing that her luck could extend into the next year was buried under her pack of things which we know won’t hold because we’ve seen it all before: Head down, study, only the couple of friends—she managed to tick off a bingo sheet of the things every teen says to a parent before heading off to university. Before even a panel of Episode 1 had gone by, her promise was already over, kickstarting the first page of her romance story. Going along with her friends’ berating, characterised by their lack of surprise and more exasperation at her antics, she drinks her way out of coming clean about something — Jung Yu - Mr First Page, appearing when she least expects it to keep the mystery going.
So he’s going to be there when she least expects it. He’s definitely present whenever Seol’s trying to take the top spot in their department but probably doesn’t know she bites the heads of pillows off to will it into existence. Perhaps with the introduction of the third member of the triangle, she can get her fluff revenge. Genuinely no pun intended. The cause of her problems—hinted at being more than just a scholarship aside, I’m hooked in another sense. This Webtoon’s creator, Soonkki, has me reading to see more, but I am cautious. The story has started off slow, like a summer-evening drive, fitting given their holidays have just finished.
What the deal is with Jung Yu, delving into the first 2 out of a granted 4 introductory chapters, perhaps owing to that sense of incompleteness the story hasn’t taken off yet, and how it plans to subvert my expectations hasn’t been seen yet.
Episode 1 had humourous parts, I mean who didn’t like Seol’s mother slapping her around for starters, and the realistic dynamic of friends glad to see the back of you but never truly meaning it.
She makes the same mistakes, missing her opportunity to tell her friends what was wrong and suppressing it again when her mother asked, you do get the sense she really was trying her hardest before the call came that she’s gotten her full scholarship.
Jung Yu has likely pulled his paper for her sake, a show of thoughtfulness that in our cliffhanger will likely see them talk through it.
Where she seems to be at mercy to his whims for now, considering Seol as the eponymous Cheese in the Trap, and the story might just open up from their dinner in the next episode.
Final thoughts:
“He’s always there when she least expects it,” when said again in an adoring manner means you’ve got yourself an ideal partner. 1-0 to Good Boy, who might actually not be very good at all.
If our parents had known we were lying through our teeth about what we would get up to at university, they might have reacted the same way Seol’s mother did when she said she was dropping out.
This post is the first in a series of reviews of Cheese in the Trap. If you’d like to be kept updated on any new reviews, please consider spicing up your inbox by clicking below.
It makes for a good change to “Is this you? IP: 192.168.0.1 has accessed your location from Tromsø, Norway.” Brighten things up with some manhwa instead.
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