Blooming Sequence

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Do you ever feel that yuri/GL as a genre doesn't take itself seriously enough, especially in Korean webtoons? Usually a GL series consists of a couple schoolgirls living in a blissful, bubbly world where love is love and nobody's ever bothered to worry about the concept of sexual orientation. The characters get into an alternating series of cute and melodramatic moments for our entertainment, a confession in the final chapter wraps up the series, and we all go back to the depressingly-less-cute real world.

But Blooming Sequence isn't like that. It's a rare example of a yuri series with adult characters living in a realistic world ... who actually bother to communicate with each other. That's right, no dozens of awkward misunderstandings that could be solved with 2 sentences, no pages and pages of "will they or won't they?" before a rushed finale, no magical world where sexual minorities are just accepted by society. Our main characters Seowoo and Hayoung are intuitive, reasonable human beings, acutely aware of each other and able to reasonably interpret each others' feelings. They are aware of the heterosexist nature of the world around them, they are aware of their own sexual orientation and the consequences of it in their society. To me, that alone makes this series something special.

But realism is not all it has to offer. All characters in this series are deeply flawed, each dealing with their own personal deficits and difficult pasts. The plot itself is about the characters, especially the main couple, overcoming their pasts and growing as individuals and it's handled excellently. Seowoo's lack of self-confidence and inability to push for what she really wants, Hayoung's difficulty opening up to and trusting others, both of these problems play into each other and the resulting character growth leaves us with a beautiful but mature relationship that is engaging to the reader. This coupled with the fact that the art is above average in quality for a webtoon with lovely character designs and style means I definitely recommend it and give it an 8/10.

Where should I start ... well, at the end of the 1st season the author says that this is supposed to be a fluffy GL story, but this is definitely a drama, I mean one third (if not more) of the story is dedicated to one of the MC's ex., then there's toxic parents, trauma, lies etc., doesn't sound very fluffy to me.

Unfortunately the story is too short, it only covers 1 years worth (+ some flashbacks) and as usual with manhwa of this type and size it doesn't go very far, only as far as it needs to to draw a conclusion, no ... marriage here (is that a spoiler? webtoons never go that far so it should be OK).

Except for Seowoo I didn't really like the rest of the characters, 4 of them are just so deeply flawed that they should probably just jump off a bridge or something and spare me their BS.
I'm also getting a anti-men vibe, I mean except for some of the background characters the rest of the more prominent males where all pieces of garbage, but it's not like it's unrealistic.

I guess I should talk about the art, well it's average at best (at least it's not as bad as Wann's), corners were definitely cut, but it's also easy to ignore since it's not distracting, the massive gaps between panels are definitely annoying though.

And lastly, same-sex relationship offer many unique advantages and disadvantages (story wise), but except for the fear of coming out basically none of them where used, such a waste.
The author really didn't spare much effort on fleshing out the story, but this seems to be the default level for webtoons, at least for those with less than 100 chapters.

So in short if you are looking for a short lesbian romantic drama you will probably like this, just don't expect anything to deep or detailed.