Spotlight#111: Ecstasy Hearts

Have you ever gone into something that didn't match your expectations? If you say yes, then it looks like you are about to join my feelings today, I cover Ecstasy Hearts by SilentMaru.

Summary

Anya Shimizu may not be royalty, but she's about as close to it as you can get. As the eldest daughter of the two of Tennis's top players, she has everything she could ever want. Except for her parent's approval to continue the family business, Anya strives to accept, especially when she finds out about her father's apprentice Axel. The two form a brutal rivalry that may evolve further as they take the world stage.

Characters

Anya: our main heroine Anya mostly takes after her mother. She can be tempestuously emotional, fiercely intelligent, and keenly stubborn. However, she is still very young and naive about the world, leaving to Anya often being petty, proud, and easily embarrassed when dealing with awkward people.

Axel: Our resident bad boi, Axel, is Nathan Greene's apprentice. Suffering a traumatic incident at such a young age gave Axel a dark side that shows through his tennis. While on the surface, Axel is childish, flirty, prideful, and impish. Axel's dark side, however, ramps up these factors with a crueler and more sadistic edge.

Ayane: Anya's mother and the former tennis queen, Ayane is a boss in every word. She is prideful, controlling, and often cold to her rivals and husband. Still, she is immensely supportive of her children, protecting them dearly.

Nathan Greene: Ayane's other half, Nathan is fun-loving, goofy, calm, and greatly empathic. Nathan is the main caretaker of Axel and Anya's younger siblings. Through his many goofs and flirtations, though, lies the heart of a deeply knid and responsible man.

Overview

Before we get into this, I need to come clean: making spotlights can be hard for me. Beyond simply reading through what could be dozens of chapters, taking mental notes, trying to figure out a way not to repeat synonyms of "it good," and finding the same webcomic on a website without the daily pass. Every time I post here, I do it in an attempt to improve, even while knowing I've messed up.

When I made this series, I did so to shine a light on the series that I felt needed more appreciation. I wanted to give credit and show respect with understanding of the story to share with others. Yet, at the same time, when analyzing these stories, I also want to have my voice shine through.

It's also never my intent to come off as some grifter who only reads the most popular series haphazardly with a waiting thumbs up. On the other hand, I don't particularly strive to pick up an intentional bad read. That's just an excuse to vomit up negativity. These are borderline my already biased recommendations in which I encourage you to form your own opinion with sprinkles of critque. I should make all this clear before I go in.

Right off the bat, Ecstasy Hearts is one of the most stunning webtoons I've seen visually. Silent Maru's backgrounds are jaw-dropping, and the few symbolic images look pretty. This goes double for the character design with everything. These are the sexiest people I've seen since Unholy Blood (which is a problem for the mostly teenage cast when fanservice hits).

Also got to give props for at least being a more unique romance with the tennis angle at play. Like any sports series, it is incredibly over the top Silent Maru does give a great introduction to the sport's rules and moves. The visual flare carries into the matches as well, having a very frenetic, first-person view that matches tennis's speedy up close nature. They're a blast every time they get a focus on them. However, I think this is where my praise ends.

My cons for this series can best get summarized in three points. First, one is a lot of the initial romance between Anya and Axel isn't my cup of tea. This is crucial since this isn't one of those romances where the other characters have enough star power to distract you.

Without spoilers, Axel effectively spends the first third of the story doing every bad thing in the bad boi book, only to develop later. Except I don't think the series ever did the best job of establishing why the two would change and cause interest in each other. We never know what makes Anya, not like other girls, and Axel gets by on being conventionally attractive.

This doesn't mean I'm against morally reprehensible characters. It's just that when making them, you have to establish enough sympathy, charisma, and reasoning if you want to establish characters/audience to like them. No one directly calls Axel on his bs but Anya. His barely having to go through any real hurdles when it comes to Anya's forgiveness doesn't make me want him to succeed despite his tragic backstory.

Capping off with the series placing Anya's strength and responsibility as a woman on fixing a guy who needs therapy, and it kind of sours their later romance when you think about it. Take it from someone who's been in a toxic relationship before. That's not how it works. It is a shame, too, since there are one of the more playful and flirty ships I've seen.

Though this kind leads to Anya herself, while she isn't a bad character, I feel like she is a massively passive one despite having such an ambitious goal in the series. Ecstasy Hearts has so many different running plot threads and side characters running around with just enough screen time to take space but not get properly resolved.

This wouldn't be as much of a problem if it weren't for how this affects her main goal. Tennis is one of the more individualist sports, meaning I'm expecting a greater emphasis on individual development. However, if ever, we rarely see Anya's doing any strategy and training independently. Most of her time gets spent fiddling with Axel, with many characters watching over and doing things behind her back, biting into her agency. Meaning a lot of her achievements and praise feels lackluster because I never saw her work to earn this praise.

All these factors lead to the biggest problem I have with Ecstasy Hearts. For a story that's tagline is all about tennis, this series doesn't want to focus on it. Barring flashback games and offscreen duels, the webtoon only has four matches to claim, with one getting interrupted. This is a romance webtoon with some rather dramatically dark subject matters (child abuse and sexual harassment) with some hint of comedy.

I wouldn't complain if this series didn't get marketed as a sports series by webtoon. Either way, while reading, I could practically feel these two genres almost fighting for dominance, leaving the story with a very clear will they won't. This shows that the end of the webtoon feels like a rushed mess with several unresolved plotlines and underdeveloped or unnecessary characters begging for another season of chapters.

It's infuriating because I like aspects of both. However, I honestly believe this story should be more focused. It was either an intense sports series birthed from a rivalry between the descendants of great players learning and developing around each other on a global stage. Or a strict romance that focused on two souls pushing past superficial barriers to give themselves the true connection they've desired to help themselves. Then we could have gotten an amazing story either way. But instead, we got this.

Epilogue

All in all, Ecstasy Hearts is the manhwa I have had the most problems with since Girls of the Wild. Yet I'm more frustrated with this series than I ever was GOW because I saw the potential for a truly groundbreaking story. Either way, I don't hold ill will towards SilentMaru. It's clear from the author's notes that she was suffering from stress, writer's block, and other challenges in keeping up her weekly upload schedule. And if there's one thing I will respect from any fellow writer, it's the ability to follow through regardless of whatever complications arise. That's more than some. So nevertheless I say you read and make your own opinion.

At the very least, I don't regret reading Ecstasy Hearts, just like how i don't regret doing all these spotlights back. At the very least, I can go knowing I left the most in-depth review on this series. It's been rough on my sleep schedule, but I think it was worth it. I think these are some of my best spotlights in a while, and I think releasing clusters of spotlights will be what I do. This means you'll be getting quality and quantity for the next couple of weeks. Especially in my bid to get 200k reads on webnovel. So please stay and enjoy the ride. Because this cluster immediately proves that no one knows what's going on underneath the spotlight.