CW // series spoilers
The premise piqued my interest: Two people who had a one night stand meet again years later as a cooking show contestant and a judge. But as I continued reading, it kept getting more and more difficult to keep up with the storyline.
Whenever I can’t follow a story, I wonder if there’s just a natural gap in translation. I’ve read enough manhwa now that I know even official translations don’t always get it right, or that sometimes things just don’t translate well because there’s no perfect equivalent in English.
I’m not sure if that’s the case here, but my inability to fully follow the story is enough for me not to want to continue.
Let’s take a look at a scene from Chapter 12. At first, Gyul and Jeongro are standing next to the trunk of Gyul’s car.
Next panel over, Jeongro is sitting in the car again, shaken up after crying, and he’s told to fasten his seatbelt.
In the panel after that, it’s an overhead shot of Gyul walking around the car to the driver’s seat and dialogue from Jeongro insisting he’s fine.
We get a small panels with car sounds along with more dialogue from Jeongro but then suddenly Jeongro is chasing after Gyul in the car.
Wait… What just happened????
When did Jeongro get out of the car? Did he try to follow Gyul while trying to convince him he was ok? Is that what I’m supposed to assume happened between those panels? And Gyul says after he stops and Jeongro catches up that it “all it took was 3 seconds for [Jeongro] to tune [Gyul] out.”
Who tuned whom out????? What? Shouldn’t it be that Gyul is the one that tuned Jeongro out, hence why he started driving without him in the passenger seat? It can’t be just me who finds this scene hard to follow. It felt disconnected, like there was no logical flow to the actions of the characters and what is shown in the art. There earlier scenes where I also couldn’t follow the events, but this car scene was where I decided it was enough.
I haven’t read many manhwa that have a cooking/food aspect to the plot, so I don’t think I want to drop this one completely. Maybe I’ll give it another chance some day, so this one is going in my On Hold pile for now.
Reading Status: On Hold
Find Off the Plate on Tapas
