Strawberry Seafoam

VibeCheckAug 11, 2026

I’ve been looking forward to reading this one for a whiiiiile. The author’s later webcomic Vampire Magicka did lessen my hype for it a little, but I was still excited to finally read it! It’s a flipping mermaid magical girl series with gorgeous art, how can I not be interested? What do I think now that I’ve read it? It's really good, but…… actually, that statement fits a lot of my opinions on the webtoon. The best part of the webcomic is easily the colors. It’s incredibly pretty to look at… but due to the outstanding quality of the visuals, it's easy to notice many nitpicks that pile up over time. Some episodes have a thin line on the side of the page that isn’t erased, some speech bubbles are incomplete, there’s even one time where a previously drawn character was reused and resized in a later panel, making it look really pixelated. While I think Strawberry Seafoam is prettier than Vampire Magicka, the latter is far more polished. The character designs are cute and the phantom ink monsters are pretty cool… but the characters also have this doll-like quality in which their expressions are kinda static and their movements are stiff. The underwater world is also beautiful and I like how it takes place in a magic academy. I also really enjoy the French influences and all the cute underwater foods made for the webtoon. Still, I have some gripes with the worldbuilding, like why some sea creatures are kept as pets despite being capable of communication, and why there’s no explanation for why paper works underwater. It also has a big missed opportunity to explore the relationship between the surface world and underwater world. It does start to do that during the final fight, and it's a nice touch, but it really wasn't as deep as I would've hoped. The characters all have insanely creative and visually stunning powersets, and I like how each of the main girls' fighting styles relate to different schools of art. Unfortunately I'm not as impressed by their writing. Frasei has some decent one-liners, but she doesn't have an interesting personality. I like Rouge's arc in trying to return to her passions while there's a lot of pressure for her to be a top student, but her early repeated thwarted attempts at telling Frasei about her curse do get kind of annoying. I like Bijou’s whole growth as an artist, but there isn’t much to her character otherwise. I did find Soleil annoying at first, but she did improve over time. Most of the villains weren't that interesting too. I am kind of irked that all of Luisant's growth and betrayal was all done while the girls didn't know he even existed. The story is serviceable, but it’s pretty standard all things considered. It really does feel like style over substance. Despite my issues with it, I still find the series good. The fight scenes are awesome, the finale was climactic, and I can't stress enough how beautiful the art style is. It still has many criticisms I can’t just ignore.