Jaehee and Dai’s encounter set the tone for a violent, dramatic and romantic story; on their first meeting, Jaehee gets a glimpse of Dai’s ruthless personality and finds himself inexplicably attracted to him, Dai to follow suit soon after. However, the story seeks to make a much larger point than the usual “Opposites attract” or “You’re everything I’m not” line. The way Dai’s irreverent dialogue acts as an anchor and a pause to Jaehee’s more metaphysical and deep contemplations is greatly satisfying, and one of the reasons their dynamic is just so compelling to read about.

Little poetic text fragments can be found scattered throughout the manga and give it a slight distinction when compared to other Josei or Boys’ Love stories. These can definitely be analysed and connected to the storyline, but they are also left ambiguous and undefined, so that each reader can assign them their own meaning. We each read them slightly different according to our beliefs and personal experiences, much how Jaehee and Dai interpret the world aroud them according to their lives’ stories.

The role women and girls play in these books is particularly interesting. They are surprisingly integral to a story that is so closely focused on the main couple, and Let Dai being a Boys' Love manga makes this somewhat of a feat. Almost all female characters have significant development and deeply constructed personalities that aid the plot and help get messages across. Eunhyung’s story mainly tackles the long lasting effects of being sexually abused, but it does so in a nuanced and compelling way, focusing on the development of one’s charcter, the feeling of not belonging, isolation, Independence, friendship and family, describing a unique coming of age story. And all of this by a supporting character! On the other hand, her sister Yooneun illustrates the feelings of yearning, rejection and unreciprocated desire. There is also Jahee’s mother, whose relationship with her son goes through a great deal of falling out and reconciliation, and finally the acceptance of his son’s sexuality as well as his own way of life.
Though, the character which deserves a special mention is Mrs. Crangela, an angelic, devoted and seemingly perfect teacher at Dai’s school. Naturally, as her very antithesis, Dai quickly turns to hating her, how she is so unnaturally devoted to her studets which in his eyes, she shouldn’t be so caring about, how she preaches good manners and kindheartedness through the word of God, her sick obsession with fixing the worst behaved kids. Crangela serves as the perfect means through which the author may (and does!) convey Dai’s rebelliousness and fierce desire to reformulate society. This gave us an absolutely extraordinary quote, which still stands to be one of my favorite of all media:

“Even God punishes people for their faults, but you try to embrace everything with love?”

The great deal of work Su-Yeon Won puts into the construction of the character’s families is very much worth noting. In this aspect, Let Dai dabbles in a little bit of everything, showcasing a great variety of family dynamics. From Jaehee’s single parent household and the struggles that entails, to Dai’s cold and unaccepting family which leads him to treasure his grandma even more who, in his eyes, is probably the only, truly good person around him. It also delightfully explores the great strength family ties can have, with the lovely family Naru, his parents and siblings make, who help each other through their hardships. And it even explores, through its secondary and tertiary characters, aspects like domestic violence, or some parents’ obsession with keeping unrealistic appearances at the cost of their own bond. Many stories fall into the trap of using dysfunctional families as a cheap workaround to giving characters dimension, or as a device to keep the plot running, but Let Dai incorporates it wonderfully, and rather than serving as a justification to Dai’s reckless behaviour, or merely as a tragic backstory to pepper in some drama, his family story accompanies his development and gives it more nuance.

Let Dai is a wonderfully written and stylishly drawn work about the cruelty of the world and the aching of youth. It masters being dramatic and heartfelt, while also being funny and stoic, and it flows between these feelings at a perfectly addictive pace. The author’s passion for life is evident at the turn of every page, but it shines wonderfully in the afterthought, at the end of the last book:

“Then, we shed the naive tears of youth… but we’d lived so excessively, and felt so much passion and fury, that we barely had any tears left.

And in some ways, we did love youth… how it was intermittently strange… annoying… and muddled in sweat.”

Final notes and afterthought.
I was seriously thinking “Am I giving this story too much credit?” the whole time I was writing this review. But flipping through my quotes copybook (where I write down all my quotes, naturally, as one does), I realised it was full of Let Dai. This is probably the manga that I most urgently need to reread. It wasn’t that long ago, but almost three years is definitely enough time for me (and most) to slowly forget about things we read, and lose the love we had for them initially. Except for those reads that impact you so deeply that they linger in the back of your mind for years, and which you love more and more as time passes. This is one of those reads for me. I found my terribly written notes from when I first finished reading it and was surprised at just how little my mind has changed about Let Dai since then, and when it did change it was only for the better; I remember the reasoning behind every idea I jotted down.
And I found my old folder with manga panels I used to save or screenshot from poorly scanned uploads on the web! And I saw that I had even saved the summaries on the backs of the volumes… I truly enjoyed reading every single word these books had to offer.

This is such a unique and compelling story; truly view changing if you let yourself be moved by it.