YMMV / Surviving Romance

• Americans Hate Tingle: Seyeong Jin is very loved in Korea because of her cute design. However, western readers are a lot more hateful of her because they are a lot less tolerant of her Psycho Lesbian personality.
• Awesome Art: Done by the same person as The Makeup Remover and even with the drastically different genre it shows. Fans noted that despite the nightmarish and occasionally even gore-y subject matter the art still holds a certain innocence to it.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Given the huge amount of cast members, it isn't surprising that some of them got a lot of love despite their lack of screentime:
  • Even before she got focus, Rina Song is very popular with her badassary. Her popularity then exploded when she actually got attention and the story further explores her crush on Minwoo. She ultimately placed 3rd on the Season 1 popularity vote and 3rd on the Season 2 popularity vote.
  • Mihui has been fairly popular since early on, largely due to her positive attitude and always supporting Chaerin. After the reveal that she is the Unknown Extra, Mihui's popularity skyrocketed, to the point that she was placed 1st on the Season 1 and 2nd on the Season 2 popularity vote.
  • Jihyeon is extremely popular due to her Ho Yay-fueled relationship with Chaerin and tomboy design. She was placed 2nd on the Season 1 and 1st on the Season 2 popularity vote despite having severely less screentime and plot importance in Season 2.
  • The unnamed art teacher, who's revealed to have sacrificed herself in each loop by locking herself up with all the infected teachers in the teacher's office.
• Ho Yay: Given the huge amount of the main cast are girls, as well as the main focus of the series being Chaerin building relationship with them, this is pretty much inevitable. Beside the canon attraction of Seyeong to Chaerin (and later the original Chaerin), we have:
  • Chaerin's focus on finding the Unknown Extra borders on romantic at times. She treats the Unknown Extra with as much care and thought as she treated her love interest Jeha. After the reveal that she is Mihui Yang, the Ho Yay doesn't let up.
  • Chaerin and Jihyeon's relationship in Season 1 is very romantic-coded, with several shots of them bonding are framed as if they are flirting. Jihyeon's Viewer Gender Confusion does not help. In Season 2 their relationship is much more aloof, but this trope comes right back in when Jihyeon regains her memories.
  • Shinbi and Juri are very romantic-coded, especially in Season 2, with the two of them constantly worrying about each other exclusively. When the two of them regain their memories, the symbolic tear in the class roster picture at the end of each chapter connects the two of them together.
• Rescued from the Scrappy Heap: Minwoo was NOT liked early on for being associated with the killing of the Unnamed Extra and general jerkish attitude toward everyone else. It wasn't until he starts interacting with Rina that the fans start to warm up to him.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: Seonyeong Kim has the least amount of focus and screentime in the entire cast. Her skills of being the provider of weapons parts do not give any focus on her at all, and her specialty of being good at creating traps and weapons overlaps with Shinbi. Her reason to trust Chaerin was also not revealed until Season 2 and even then it was given focus in 2 panels. She also has no special relationship to anyone from the main cast.
• Viewer Gender Confusion: When Jihyeon's face was first revealed, a large portion of the readers thought she was a boy, due to her pixie hair cut and lack of breasts, and had to be reminded that Chaerin is member of an all-girls class. By the time Juri's face is revealed, the readers have caught on and this trope is averted.
• The Woobie: Chaerin Eun. Suddenly finding herself in the world of a romance novel, where the only person who isn't a featureless shadow is the male lead, it makes sense for her to delude herself into only focusing on her romance with him. When the zombie outbreak starts she dies hundreds of times in fruitless attempts to avoid it, until she loses all hopes and almost lets herself be taken by the zombies. Her former life as Huisu Kim wasn't much better. Being a 28 year old college student friends and family were constantly pushing her regarding her future, which unwittingly worsened her depression and ultimately led to her suicide.