Phones are perfect for sending messages, snapping photos, and most importantly, talking to your friends. One thing Su-ae didn't account for, however, was that her phone would be able to talk back.

Su-ae discovers that Jellypop, a flip phone stored in her locker, is sentient—and Jellypop has a lot to say about Su-ae's love life. High school romances are never easy, and Su-ae's relationship with her nonchalant boyfriend seems to be going nowhere.

Lacking the charisma of her step-sister Ra-im is one thing, but seeing the growing sparks between her and Minu just adds salt to the injury. It's up to Jellypop to help Su-ae navigate the peaks and pits of teenage love, and finally get the high school love story she deserves! . . .

Operation: True Love has a story by kkokkalee and art by Dledumb. English localization by WEBTOON. Published by WEBTOON Unscrolled (July 28, 2026). Rated T.

Rebecca Silverman
Rating:

Sometimes starting in medias res works. Other times, you get cases like this story. Operation: True Love opens with the revelation that heroine Su-ae can apparently look through her flip phone screen and see how much love a person will get in their lifetime, followed by the fact that her score is a big fat zero. That's definitely intriguing, not to mention reminiscent of one of my favorite comic series, Miki Falls by Mark Crilley. But shortly after this, the story flashes back in time, and we never get back to the whole “I can see love meters on my outdated cellphone” plot. Instead we're mired in Su-ae's frankly kind of miserable life, and that's not a lot of fun at all.

Su-ae's problems mostly stem from her boyfriend, Minu. He is, to put it mildly, a jerk. Even his friend Eunhyeok, who has a habit of staring at Su-ae, can't believe she'd bother dating his friend. But when Minu sees Su-ae talking to Eunhyeok, he gets jealous, so there must be something there, right? Even Su-ae realizes that this is flawed logic, and that's before she sees her adopted sister Ra-im smooching Minu in the classroom. Which is after she's seen Ra-im going after Eunhyeok, but before she's seen Ra-im putting the moves on Dohwa, the hottest guy in school at karaoke. Someone's life is a bit of a mess, and I'm not sure it's Su-ae's.

While this has more love geometry than I've seen since Marmalade Boy, the bigger issue is that the narrative feels very jumpy. Even when we're moving chronologically, the story feels awkwardly paced, and it certainly doesn't help that so far no one but Su-ae is remotely likeable. We do know that Ra-im may come by her issues honestly, and it looks like Eunhyeok may not be so much under Ra-im's spell as he is a decent human being with an awkward demeanor. I'm moderately interested in seeing how all of this pans out.

But you know what I'd really like to know about? The sentient flip phone. Yes, one day Su-ae finds a flip phone in her locker that seems to be, well, sentient and keeps sending her weird texts. It also sent her tons of pictures of Eunhyeok looking at her in class, and apparently later this will be how she can see everyone's love allotment. It's a neat device, but it's drastically underused in this volume, as if the creator wasn't entirely sure how they wanted to incorporate this story element. The result is a remarkably disjointed book.

If I found volume two in a library, I might pick it up. I am at least a little curious, and I like the art. But that interest is fighting with my literary sensibilities, because this really does feel like a mess – and not one that will be easily cleaned up.

Bolts
Rating:

Have you ever wanted to reach into a story and strangle the main character because they just refuse to get out of a toxic situation? That is how I felt for the first couple of chapters of this story, where a young woman named Su-ae Shim, who does not feel like she deserves any love, puts up with one of the most neglectful boyfriends I've seen in quite some time. It ends up taking a crazy situation for her to even consider breaking up with said boyfriend, but the overall premise about her supposedly cheating on said boyfriend ends up undermining what a lot of that progression is supposed to entail. Overall, this leads to a very confusing story on its own, and that's not even getting into the weird supernatural conceit.

Su-ae Shim finds a weird flip phone that knows everything about her, constantly antagonizing her about her poor life choices. Ultimately, I would argue that this main plot point doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things outside of maintaining some sense of a supernatural mystery. Su-ae Shim thinks that the phone messages are coming from a specific person, but the story is really vague about whether or not there is a practical or fantastical component to these messages. However, the story focuses so much on the teen drama that there were moments where I honestly ended up forgetting that this phone even existed since it doesn't exactly create any narrative momentum.

This is a weird series. While I definitely appreciated some of the messy teen mellow drama, I wasn't sure what exactly I was supposed to be hooked on or drawn into. I didn't care about the main character because she has so little respect for herself that it's hard to root for her. I didn't like any of the side characters because they are either jerks or blatantly deceitful. I didn't care about the mystery of the flip phone because it didn't matter, and while there are occasional inspired moments of art direction, the presentation is pretty standard. This feels like a story that had a lot of potential or had a rough draft of ideas, but had no idea how to develop any of them. Or worse, this felt like a story that was figuring itself out as it went along instead of having any genuine plan. Nothing has any engaging buildup or momentum. I'm just watching characters talk to each other about the unfortunate situations that they themselves refused to get themselves out of. This is trashy in all of the worst ways, and I don't think you're missing much by avoiding it.