Yoon Sora may be the top student in her class, but her social skills are way below average—she can barely make eye contact with someone without breaking into a nervous sweat. Desperate to impress her classmates, she lies about having a boyfriend, then completely panics!

Luckily for Sora, she happens to meet Woo Haena, a rambunctious upperclassman from a different school that's infamous for poor academic performance. The two girls strike a deal: Haena will help Sora get a boyfriend, and Sora will help Haena get into college. But as they try to achieve both seemingly impossible goals, their alliance just might turn into something more . . .

Sora & Haena! has a story by and art by Jackbull. English translation is done by C&C Revolution, Inc. and lettering by Lor Prescott. Published by Inklore (July 14, 2026). Rated T.

Rebecca Silverman
Rating:

Sora may be the top student in her class, but as far as she's concerned, that's because she's the opposite of special. She's only in that position because she studies so much, and she only studies so much because it's a way to avoid having to interact with other people, which she's both bad at and terrified of. Except…she'd really like friends. So much that she lies and tells the most popular girl in her class that she's got a boyfriend.

Haena is Sora's opposite – loud, outgoing, and a student at the worst high school in the area. She basically snatches Sora up on the street when they need one more girl for their group date, and then, in an attempt to calm her down, she kisses her. Now the girls think they can be mutually beneficial: Haena can help Sora find a boyfriend and Sora can help Haena get into college. There's absolutely no way they'll both end up finding a girlfriend out of this, right? Right??

Ha ha, no, they're totally dating and completely unaware of it, and apart from that first nonconsensual kiss, it's adorable…and, more importantly, very reassuring. Although we don't fully know Haena's deal yet – just that she doesn't like being at home – both girls find real validation in each other. Haena believes that Sora can be more than just “the smart girl” and Sora believes that Haena's more than just “the dumb girl from a bad school.” They're opposites but need the same thing from each other, and there's something beautiful in that. Each time they meet up they get a little more comfortable with each other, from Haena starting to think that maybe she can study because of Sora's steadfast belief to Sora relaxing enough to enjoy herself. There's a natural growth to their relationship that's just really nice to see.

Of course, this isn't going to go smoothly. Sora's main rival at school – well, self-proclaimed rival; Sora doesn't really register Jae-in's existence – is busy following Sora around like a psycho grade-obsessed stalker to make sure that their “competition” isn't jeopardized by her actually having a friend. There's also the little detail of the boy Haena's trying to set Sora up with already being into Sora because she doesn't recognize him from Instagram, something she's blissfully unaware of. But the biggest hurdle to their relationship right now is that neither girl seems to realize she's attracted to the other. It's a slow burn friends-to-lovers situation.

If none of this has convinced you to pick this GL treat up yet, I'll just add in that Jackbull's art is very nice, especially if you like your girls big. Haena's not plus sized, she's just built on a grander scale than everyone else – taller, more muscular, curvier. If you're tired of waif-thin ladies in your stories, Haena will make you very happy.

Erica Friedman
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Sora & Haena! is your classic “opposites attract” story. In one corner you got your nervous loner with no social skills and a sudden question about her sexual identity. In the other corner you got your extroverted “bad girl” from a school with a reputation. Having met by pure luck, both have a goal they want to reach, and each recruits the other to help. Filling out our cast, we have a misunderstanding about a boyfriend, a new, tentative set of friends, a best friend with a hot brother (that Sora meets and befriends accidentally in the library), and an obsessed rival, all lined up to cause mayhem.

Luckily for us, both Sora and Haena seem to be decent people who we would like to succeed in their goals. Well, partly. We definitely want Haena to pull her grades up and get into college, if that is truly what she wants. But we don't really want Sora to get a boyfriend. Even as volume one ends, Sora isn't really all that sure about her feelings, because the hot guy isn't making her feel nearly as much *everything* as Haena does.

The comic, adapted from a webcomic serialization, is just a little predictable, but none the worse for that. Both Sora and Haena show both a genuine desire to grow but also take actual steps to achieve their goals. The comedic misunderstandings might be trite, but they don't feel utterly exhausting.

For a Korean GL school-life drama, the ending of which is surely going to be happy (yes, I cheated and read the ending, of course I did), this is an amusingly chaotic opening volume.

Bolts
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A shy introvert getting with an overwhelming extrovert is a tale as old as time. The appeal of stories like this lies in the inherent idea that opposites attract and seeing the common ground that these completely opposed personalities can have. The first volume of Sora and Haena definitely seems to be leaning more towards the former than the latter, but I do appreciate just how much it leans into the extremes of the two lead personalities. Sora is so shy and introverted to the point where she got to high school without seemingly any friends, whereas Haena is just so wild that she comes off more like an Amazon than a stereotypical gal.

That wild personality definitely leads to one or two scenes that cross some lines regarding personal comfort, but I appreciate the fact that the story understands just how goofy this whole setup is. The inciting incident for the story is that Sora basically finds herself in a lie that she ultimately did not need to make, and is now employing the help of a random girl who dragged her into a different unfortunate circumstance for the sake of turning that lie into a truth. It's very forced and manufactured, but I'd be lying if I said I didn't get drawn into the silliness of it all. This is definitely not a story that takes itself too seriously, leaning more into the exaggerated cartoony nature of how everybody is over any sense of grounded realism. I don't mean there are any fantastical elements present, but rather the story seems to execute some degree of self-awareness of the premise, letting the character art and facial expressions really highlight just how archetypal some of these characters are.

I love the design for Haena. Leaning into her being a wild child that didn't even consider the fact that she would need to study to get into a good college was funny. While I'm not sure I buy the romance between the two leads after this first volume, I do buy their friendship and the chemistry they established by the second half of this book. It's cute with a couple of funny moments sprinkled in. The problem is that I have seen better stories with this premise, and I worry that the exaggerated nature of everything will only take things so far if it inevitably gets more serious with its plot points. Maybe the series will continue to keep this tone beyond this, but for right now, it's an OK story that definitely isn't reinventing any wheels.