Original story by 서귀조 (Seo Gwijo)
Art by 맵찔 (mapzzil)
Manhwa adaptation by 단명 (Danmyeong)
Production and distribution: Kenaz
Ten Ways to Get Dumped by a Tyrant is a story that follows a 20-something year old woman who transmigrates into the body of Scarlett Arman, the villainess of a fantasy novel who is ultimately executed by her fiancé, Charleon Kalior, for harassing Cherla Diel, the original female lead of the novel and love interest of Charleon.
The manhwa storyline begins just after the official engagement of Scarlett and Charleon, where they are first set to meet at an imperial ball that officially introduces them as a couple. The female lead, with her understanding of the fantasy novel’s plot and the memories of the original Scarlett whose body she inhabits, determines to escape her estranged family and break off the official engagement to avoid dying by the hands of Charleon, who is characterized as the brutal and cold tyrant of the empire. What follows is a series of attempts by Scarlett to embarrass herself and Charleon, thinking that if she acted crazy enough her fiancé would finally dump her.
Ten Ways to Get Dumped by a Tyrant follows a tried-and-true formula of the romance-fantasy genre in the world of Webtoon (or manhwas in general). So, it was of no surprise to me when—upon being recommended the story by Webtoon—I saw that the story has 29.5 million views, 540.6K subscribers, and 470 super likes (at the time of me reading).
It’s a story that is very easy to get into. The romance is sweet, and the humorous and optimistic nature of the female lead is infectious. I laughed a lot while reading this story.
In Tagalog, there is this word “kilig.” It’s a bit hard to translate but it’s akin to the feeling of butterflies one might get witnessing something romantic in nature. It’s a bit like a thrill or a shiver that runs through your body completely unrelated to anything scary, and in fact, there’s a whole lot of warmth. Well, that is exactly the way to describe the dynamics between the male lead and the female lead of the story. Nakaka kilig!
Not to mention, the artwork is gorgeous. The outfits of the characters were so cool, and the male lead looked scrumptious!
While I understand that a lot of people razz the Webtoon/manhwa art style for being generic, I personally don’t dislike it. Of course, beautifully rendered characters and scenery does not equate to a good story. Nonetheless, it certainly helps to have attractive artwork in a primarily visual storytelling medium.
That being said, while there were many things that I enjoyed about this manhwa, there were also quite a few things that made it a bit difficult to follow the storyline. Oftentimes, I was even left feeling dissatisfied with the story.
One such issue that I had, although it is a considerably smaller matter and most likely just a personal preference, is the character names. I’m used to seeing really creative names when it comes to reading anything in the fantasy genre. Still, I struggled to recall the names of the main cast throughout the story, including the main leads. It wasn’t even because the characters had particularly difficult names. I just felt like the names didn’t quite fit. The male lead, Charleon Kalior, just did not have a name befitting his character design or persona. Scarlett Arman, while not the most difficult or unique name, did have an extra “t” to the spelling, which threw me off (although I considered that it may be a translation issue). There is even a key supporting character, a high priest of the sun deity, who is referenced by at least two different names throughout the story (i.e., Baba, Barsha) with no proper explanation or introduction.
Moreover, Ten Ways to Get Dumped by a Tyrant is a story set in a fantasy world. Although the term “fantasy” might imply that the rules of reality or the concept of what is or isn’t realistic need not apply, I do believe that each element of the story and its world still needs to be believable. With Ten Ways to Get Dumped by a Tyrant, there are simply too many instances where the story struggles to maintain believability mostly due to the lack of clarity and poor pacing. One particular example is the magic system of this novel world in which the female lead has transmigrated. The magic system does not seem to have clear rules and is instead introduced to simply set up convenient ways for the main leads to succeed.
In this story, the gods of the world had passed down powers to their chosen descendants—the Arman family, gifted the power of prophecy, the Kalior family, gifted the power of travelling dimensions, and the Lashael family, gifted the power of luck and preservation. Blood-related members of each respective house receive a blessing of power, but the amount of power within an individual is dependent on the strength of the vessel. This means that power from the gods will choose its host according to the person’s inherent capacity to wield said power.
In Ten Ways to Get Dumped by a Tyrant, we are introduced to Charleon Kalior as a swordmaster and a sage who wields his powers as the sole descendant of the Kalior family masterfully. Scarlett Arman, despite the transmigrated soul that inhabits her form, seemingly has no trouble learning and using her power as someone who is not only an Arman but also as someone with Lashael blood ties. We never get to see the characters, who are still quite young considering they are in their early twenties, grow into their magical powers and learn how to use them in a way that doesn’t hurt themselves or others. All the characters just seem to grasp everything expertly even at first attempt. While I understand that magic and power is something that can be inherited in this world, it still would have been nice to see Charleon grapple with his strength and develop a bond with his holy blade (or holy sword, whatever), or to witness Scarlett receive visions for the first time and learn how to balance the weight of each prophecy.
One other area of weakness in this manhwa is the pacing of the story. While the beginning was quite funny, the ending felt rushed and anticlimactic, with so many explanations of the world, the lore of the gods, and the motivation behind each character’s decisions being all dumped in the last ten chapters, quickly turning the story from a funny lighthearted read to a convoluted story about gods and power. Also, there was far too much build up to the introduction of the demon god only to have a corny and anticlimactic showdown between the protagonists and the villains.
It was actually quite confusing for me to follow at some point, and I found myself reading the same chapters at least three times to better understand things. Even then, I couldn’t quite comprehend certain elements and resorted to checking the comments of the Webtoon story to see if anyone else could better lay out the events that took place. Instead, what I saw were comments expressing the confusion of readers who were suddenly given a barrage of exposition to untangle.
So, I know for a fact that I wasn’t the only one struggling to keep up!
Frankly, I think the world and the story line was just a bit too complicated for the team or the chapter count.
There was far too much left unexplained, and whatever explanations were given just seemed to be injected into the last ten chapters without much concern for whether it was the best way to introduce the information. The characters lacked emotional depth (which sucked because I really wanted to like them). Scarlett’s humor and happy-go-lucky nature loses its charm when it isn’t interspersed with moments of emotional vulnerability and grief for the life she once had in another world; Charleon’s strength and stoicism loses its appeal when it isn’t given the breathing room for mourning his loneliness or for the anguish felt at losing every opportunity to love.
Show us the man who has lost so much only to be given the weight of responsibility for an empire that brands him tyrannical.
Don’t let the characters get away without any sort of struggle. If I have to struggle in my world (albeit for mostly economic reasons) they should struggle in their world too!
Make no mistake, I ate this manhwa up like a starved Victorian orphan. There is potential to the story. But for the level of production that Ten Ways to Get Dumped by a Tyrant seems to have, the story was a wee bit lacking.
Overall, I would give it 2 out of 5 cups of coffee—decaf. Because that’s the amount of coffee I drank to finish this story (over a span of three days, that is).
(P.S. I hate that the em-dash is now supposed to be a tell for AI writing :(( I love my em dashes. I even know the keyboard shortcut! On a mac, that is. Anyway, this review was also published on my Substack, where you can find more of my writing.)
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