Webtoon Spotlight

Spotlight#64: Self Q and A

Hello all, Donniedarko 15 with a rather exciting entry. Since it's been a while, I thought it would be cool to share some of my webtoon thoughts with you. 

Artist

If we go with my overall favorite artwork for an official webtoon, I'll bite and say that it's Yongjie Park. If anyone has seen the God of Highschool anime, I'm just going to say that the manwha is just as if not more beautiful. It can be over the top but sleek at the same time. It does give an elegant modern look to famous mythology figures or fight scenes. 

And when the gifts get symbolic, believe when I say you're going to be making freaking wallpapers all day. My favorite genre is mostly action since I'm a junkie for it and think it can lead to the most pulse-pounding stories. The different uses of action over the years will never fail to get me excited. 

On the flipside, I think that romance is my least favorite, if only because very few stories I've found have been about healthy yet enjoyable relationships. Still, I've seen a lot of good ones webtoon-wise (Always Human, Down to Earth).

Reading List

My webtoon reading list is stupidly long and redundant at times, so I'm going to be pretty brief with only a couple of them. Tower of God, My Giant Nerd Boyfriend, The Four of them, Dustinteractive, Room of swords, Safely Endangered. Waffles and Pancakes, Murrz, Elecced, MyDeepest Secret, Acception, live with yourself, Adventures of God, Odd girls out, Boyfriend of the Dead, Small world, Let's play. Bluechair, yumi cells, Age Matters, Elf, and Warrior. Unordinary, Mage and Demon Queen, My Dictator Boyfriend, Hardcore Leveling Warrior, God of high school, Urban Animal Lookism, Blood ink, Lore Olympus, Solo Leveling.

I plan to read The Boxer, Scorching Romance, and True Beauty.

Favorite Characters

My favorite characters in webtoon are Gray Yeon (Weak Hero), Mori Hui (God of Highschool), Frankie (Noblesse), Dog Man (HIVE), and Hardcore Leveling Warrior Zack (Lookism). Besides Mori Hui I and Zack, I like all of these characters because they are scummy in a sense. Almost all of them are brutally efficient to their enemies and give them no mercy. 

But to counteract this, most of them are probably the sweetest thing to their allies. The balance of light and darkness between these characters is just endlessly fascinating to me, and I wouldn't change a damn thing.

Overrated/Underrated Webtoons

To be a special little snowflake, I'll put in 2 different overrated webtoons: Noblesse and Solo Leveling. I don't hate both these webtoons, but I do have significant problems with them that'll described here. When it comes to Noblesse in general, I noticed very clearly that it suffers from a pretty ridiculous formula. 

Villain shows up to target some weak, innocent people related to Rai; a minor character gets a cool scene to be badass while remaining relatively useless. Rai or Frankie usually show up and wreck the shit of the incredibly bland villain of the week and wash and repeat. 

As much as I do like Noblesse's focus on different characters, I don't like how a lot of them don't get many real wins until the end, which makes most of the characters' achievements and development feel skin deep. I also think the villains were all incredibly disappointing given how the Union's presence is so significant. We could get somewhere if the heroes had more losses and more wins for minor characters with a better focus on the Union.

Solo Leveling is weird since I get the entire point of having an op protagonist who doesn't struggle. That said, a part of me kind of wishes that he did have more struggles, implying that Sung would start enjoying the life and death fights more while showing more intelligence in his fights.

 It would also be I also think the side characters can have a little bit more impact to feed into how powerful Sung is. Remember that these aren't hard rules since I believe the ant king was where my rules would not have worked out.

On the flip side, an underrated Webtoon is Soul Cartel. It honestly has one of more exciting worlds in manhwa as the Underworld grants a fantastic set of unique locations. The characters are somewhat bland, but the fights are overall incredibly entertaining, and the art is fantastic. The presence of human evolution and improvement of oneself also isn't remotely a bad thing either. I wish it gets more love and attention from the masses soon since I do think people.

First/Favorite Webtoon

The first serious webtoon I ever read was When the Tangents Meet. Effectively it was a cute romance story between the cynical Landon and the airheaded Rachel. Honestly, for one of my first romances, I thought it was fantastic. Unlike other bad boys, Landon at least acknowledges his shitty behavior and seeks to move past it. The supporting cast is also pretty impressive as they do also give many exciting dynamics to the 2. Landon and Rachel have some cute reactions. I do like how they are an overall comfortable couple to be around. It isn't the best webtoon, but it was a good one.

My favorite webtoon is GOH. It probably has the best action of anything I've ever seen. Beautiful characters and an exciting world. Excellent art and so much more. I've talked about it before, so I'll just leave it at that.

My biggest disappointment in a webtoon is Girls' of the Wild. Overall, the series is pretty enjoyable, but I will admit that the fights don't feel very interesting given how most of them are heavily regulated. Another bad thing to note was the romance. I know that the series was going to be somewhat romance-related. However, I still find the drama to be very scripted, even for this genre's standards. The fact that I'm supposed to feel bad for DalDal, a woman who from day one asked this random dude to marry her and kiss her effectively, is ridiculous by my standards, and I wish it were acknowledged more. I think romance works best when we understand all sides, and I don't think this series did well.

Tough Characters

John from Unordinary, for me, is a tough character that has gone through a lot. But, unfortunately, people often paint him as nothing more than a psycho. Imagine living in a world where you're constantly bullied and put down by something you couldn't control and then gaining a power that makes your opponents get hit with what they've done to him. 

And the minute you follow through with trying to abuse the same system that abused him, he was punished for it, becoming the thing he hated and resetting. No matter what you have to say about him, you must admit that most men would fall into this despair. But, unlike most characters, he is a man who's experienced the weak and strong sides of this society and tearing him apart. 

Epilogue

Overall all I've got to say is thank you for all the support I've gotten through these months. 2020's been hard, but it's nice to know that almost everything I've put out has gotten supported. I can't wait to see where this road leads. I don't think I could ever be a curator, but I'll still try my best to support this amino however I can if you ask. Other than that, this is my Q and A. I hope you enjoyed it.