핸드메이드

HANDMADE

MANGA

STATUS
COMPLETE
VOLUMES
Not Available
RELEASE
December 25, 2022
CHAPTERS
85

DESCRIPTION

An 89-year-old grandma passes away and wakes up in a totally different world as Grana, a teenage maid at Viscount Winston’s estate. Grana’s kind soul and her natural talents for needlework and other crafts quickly win the hearts of the Winstons and the other maids. But in this world, her skills seem somehow related to magic! As Grana makes fast friends with the young heir to the viscountcy and explores her unexpected abilities, what could possibly await her?

(Source: Tapas)

CHAPTERS

REVIEWS

suflors
50/100
An otome isekai that's only passable at its best parts, and falls off massively after timeskip
I started reading Handmade because I was incredibly fond of the idea of an old woman being reincarnated into a much younger person's life, if this is what leads you to come to the manhwa as well, I cannot recommend it all too much.

Sure, during the first handful of chapters the manhwa is what it says on the label, a story about a maid who is much too wise for her age doing very old-person-esque things such as cleaning extremely well, sewing, etc., but not only does it stray from this already pre-timeskip, after the timeskip, it devolves into fairly boring romance and the most half-assed and obvious love polygon I've ever seen with incredibly simple magic . . . competitions speckled in between, with the final one being the only one I remember being an actual proper fight that actually means anything.

In fact, the post-timeskip feels incredibly rushed and in general does not feel like an ending until it suddenly is, which leads me to believe that it was never intended to be the finale, but due to likely having poor ratings, ended up being the finale anyway. Characters are introduced during it that do feel like they should have a bit more going on, and maybe develop into actual proper antagonists instead of being just minor roadblocks to the simple ending of "the couples you knew were going to pair up paired up".

On top of this, the manhwa doesn't look very good. I was ok with the art before the timeskip because at least the main character, Grana, looks cute. But after timeskip, they make her grow her hair longer, and she no longer wears maid attire (because she was revealed to be the legendary "creation mage" and now she's a big deal Mary Sue so she no longer gets to do maid stuff and instead is practically a noble), and in general just does not look as cute due to her redesign.

Now, I don't want to only rat on this manhwa, so I will try to cover a few things i did enjoy about it. As I said, the protagonist being an old lady reincarnated as a younger person was interesting, and it was utilized in a way throughout the entire work that I was somewhat fond of. I am not versed much in how a 90-year-old Korean woman of today would likely be living, but Grana had lived in an arranged marriage, as an illiterate person. She also wasn't very important in her past life, I suppose, but I cared little about her randomly becoming the most important woman in her new world. However, I did quite enjoy seeing her learn to read and found it somewhat heartwarming to watch someone who is (in soul, at least) so old get to learn something so useful and new to them at such an age. It was also decent seeing her be able to actually fall in love with someone, but less was done with it, though it did feel like they wanted to do more. She told the male lead to just date her for a while and not jump straight into marriage because she had never done dating in her past life, but seeing as they obviously got married, and she more or less never had eyes for anyone else, it kind of just felt shallow.

Anyway, that's about all there is to say about this manhwa. Go read something else unless you are incredibly starved for whatever it is I just described. Honestly, I would give recommendations, but I think if you read just about any other otome isekai that catches your eyes, you will probably have a more enjoyable time than you would reading this.

This manhwa only gets a 5/10 from me because I liked the stuff prior to the timeskip enough that if it stayed the same it'd be like a 7, do keep that in mind.
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