CAUTION: REVIEW MAY CONTAIN SPOILERS. READ AT YOUR OWN RISK.
Ok, I'm pretty torn about this webtoon. What it does well, it does very well. What it doesn't, it fails pretty badly. Unfortunately, the negatives outweigh the positives here, which I will explain below.
The good thing about this webtoon is the comedic elements, especially between Intae and his friend Chulsoo. Their relationship is dynamic, and they play so well off each other, with Intae being completely crazy and Chulsoo being the straight man. Their reactions to each other seem natural, even if they're completely over the top, and I did laugh out loud a couple times reading this. You can definitely see that they're good friends, and that they complete each other in all sorts of ways.
There's also a lot of nerdy or wink-wink-nudge-nudge bonus things scattered around, like manga trivia and stuff, which I appreciate. There's a lot of breaking the fourth wall in here, and I think it's done well, because it doesn't try to be serious about itself as a webtoon in those moments. There's references to other webtoons and characters are reading this same webtoon while readers are reading it too. It's realistically incorporated here because a lot of the characters are fans of manga/anime, and they do a lot of otaku-type stuff, like reading or writing doujinshi. Chulsoo is also an obsessive mobile gamer, which I'm sure is also relatable for readers. It excels in presenting a typical high schooler's interests and their school activities, as well as their hobbies. It reminded me a little bit of Gekkan Shoujo Nozaki-kun in that regard. However, unlike that manga, this webtoon tries too hard to be something different, and that's where everything goes wrong.
The bad thing about this webtoon are that it's very unbalanced. It tries to be dark and heavy, with some meaningful message hidden underneath, but it's not executed well at all, and there's zero resolution. Honestly, nothing bad happens to any of the characters, and no one gets punished, even when they should be. The comedic parts clash way too jarringly with the dark parts, and it's not pleasant to read. I had to take a lot of breaks while reading this webtoon because it just didn't hold my interest, and I didn't want to continue reading to see what happens next. I read 89 chapters of this over a period of a week, while I read 141 chapters of "Sweet Home" in one day. It's fair to say that it's neither engaging nor thrilling, so I dragged around at finishing this.
One of the problems of this webtoon is due to the characters. There are maybe only three compelling characters in this webtoon, at least from my perspective. That would be the nurse Ms. Kim, Intae, and Chulsoo. The complete cast of characters is extremely limited, it only shows the same couple of students and two other faculty members throughout, but it fails to develop anyone else in a meaningful way, because they're used as plot accessories. I know the author tried to tack on sob stories to these other characters too, but it just doesn't work. It makes everyone in here seem completely bonkers crazy, and they're all angsty teenagers or disturbed individuals, and how can a regular high school function normally, if that were the case? My rating just lowered even more when I finished the unnecessary side story of the P.E. teacher and the ethics teacher, because I hated those characters from the very start, and I don't care about them at all, but the author insisted on making them the stars in the later parts of the story. Both of them were so cartoonish, like characters you'd see in a kid's show, and not people you'd take seriously. Basically, they were one-dimensional to start with, but the author wanted to correct it by making them more mysterious and angsty, perhaps to add variety to the cast.
Don't even get me started on the bullying plot which takes up about 50% of the story. I didn't care for the bullied kid, because it didn't mesh well with prior narrative of this webtoon, which was a high school kid liking his school nurse, so he pretends (or is he?) to be a psychopath, so he can spend more time with her. Honestly, school nurses are not equipped to handle mental disorders nor bullying, so that whole trail of storytelling just went crashing down. Perhaps it is different in Korea, but school nurses don't really do much, except to give you bandages or observe you to see if you get worse before calling the hospital/your parents in my country.
I thought it was unrealistic that everyone in his class would pick on the bullied kid, for no reason at all. It also made no sense to have the bully seem tragic, so to redeem him of his wrongdoings in the end. Just because you're suffering doesn't make it okay to make others suffer. Actually I think this is even stated in the webtoon, but it doesn't really stray far from this small warning. Eventually, everyone moves on and life is great once the bullied kid moves to another classroom, which is unbelievable. His parents don't press charges or report the teacher to have him fired, since he knew what was going on. Many characters spout a lot of empty words (especially the nurse) about the evils of bullying, as well as musing if everyone is actually a psychopath because they hide everything so well, but it comes off so pretentious and fake-deep that I just couldn't stand it anymore. It feels like this was written by someone who wanted to sound cool and insightful, but lacks the true understanding of what makes someone a psychopath, and what makes someone in need of therapy, if it's a different disorder all together.
I think the webtoon should have just stuck with one genre only, either comedy or psychological, but not both, like it tries to do here. It can't be expected to be both solemnly serious but also ridiculously impossible at the same time, and that's the main problem with why it ultimately fails. Honestly, I haven't seen any manga or webtoon try to be ~deep~ and succeed, because no one wants to read something which sounds like someone lecturing them.
The art style here is very stylized, using bold colors and thick lines, which I think suited this particular webtoon, but honestly, it's not very appealing to look at. Most of the colors are dark and dull, so it's a big downer while reading, what with all the black, brown, and yellow. However, the author made good use of their panels, and the space was used very effectively in webtoon format, especially in the internal struggling scenes, which reminded me of Noragami's ayakashi. A lot of the characters look alike, and no one is especially pretty or handsome, because they all look like cartoon characters, but perhaps that's what the author was going for.
One other thing I disliked about this webtoon was there was way too much LGBTQ in here, it didn't add anything to the story or the characters themselves, and it felt like the author just made literally every other character (especially the minor ones) not straight just for the sake of inclusivity, and that's just wrong. I wish people stopped using sexuality as a characterization because that's not what makes a good character, there's much more to a character than that alone. I did like Intae's sister somewhat, but the romance subplot was out of nowhere, and resolved in the most unsatisfying manner, with the couple dating in the next chapter after they talk stuff out.
The final plot twist wasn't that surprising to me either, since the author did those red herring tricks way too often, with the misleading conversations and cut-aways so you don't know who is talking or who is present in a scene. It gets predictable once you've done it more than twice! In fact, I called it several chapters beforehand, when the climax was approaching.
Overall, I think it's a decent webtoon, but it has many, many flaws. But if you like finding weird references to anime/manga, this is worth a read.
Overall Breakdown:
Characters: 4/10
Story: 5/10
Art: 4/10
Lore/Worldbuilding: 5/10
Enjoyment: 5/10
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