YASUNEUN JUGEOYA HANDA

DESCRIPTION

CHAPTERS

REVIEWS

• 

  Julyfire

  46/100
  You Expected A Dark & Engaging BL Webtoon, But All You Get Is Vapid Pseudo-Psychobabble

  CAUTION: REVIEW MAY CONTAIN SPOILERS. READ AT YOUR OWN RISK.

  With the breakout popularity of "Killing Stalking," there have been more and more dark heavily-themed BL webtoons entering the fray to ride its wave of success. I have to admit, I enjoy the disturbing ones far more than the usual smut-filled garbage that makes up the majority of the BL genre. At least they usually have some semblance of a plot that manages to hold my interest long enough to care about what will come next. However, I definitely don't condone what happens in these twisted, messed-up stories, especially not if these fictional events had occured in real life. It's just that it takes far more thought and creativity to properly execute a horrifically wrong tale than a fluffy, light-hearted one with zero stakes, so I enjoy that break in tedium more than I should, perhaps.

  "The Beast Must Die" is one such webtoon that's trying to ride the coattails of "Killing Stalking" and its ilk. We get our obligatory psychopath killer who is the dominant partner, and the useless, weak male lead who is completely swept up by their murderous lover and his undefeatable charm. No matter how disturbed they are about their evil inamorato, they do nothing to stop his killing rampages. At the best of times, they're passively sitting by, and at the worst of times, they're acting as willing accomplices in his wicked acts of homicide. Still, despite the indisputable problematic dynamics of this kind of relationship, it's very effective as a vehicle for setting up a morally wrong, yet curiosity-inducing plot for what will happen next when these two types of characters try to function as a unit together. Basically, it's like a car accident that you know 100% is going to happen, but can't look away from. And while that may turn off quite a number of people, I personally have no qualms about looking on as a quizzical spectator to see if this doomed pair will make it out by the end in a way that makes cohesive sense.

  At the start of the webtoon, we are introduced to Kirin, the effeminate male lead who's trying to figure out the identities of the rapists who drove his beloved sister to suicide. He quickly latches onto the charmingly handsome Kang Moo, who is suspiciously convenient to locate and is part of the secret club that Kirin knows is definitely responsible for his sister's death. At this point, he's pretty sure Kang Moo is one of the rapists, but he pretends to be his male lover to gain access to the rest of the members. However, to gain membership into this exclusive clique of rich and influential guys, he must be willing to offer up his body to all of them. He's distressed because he's never slept with a man before, much less so many at once for his first time, and Kang Moo offers to perform the lesser of two evils, which is to have sex with Kirin while the whole club watches him do it. Although he hates the idea of being forced to do something so degrading and shameful, Kirin ultimately goes through with it because he's just that dedicated to figuring out the names of his sister's rapists.

  I do have to commend the author for the first sex scene of the story, because it doesn't romanticize the forced rape at all, which most BL artists usually fall into the trap of doing. It's clear that Kirin is mentally anguished and hates every single moment of it, but it's something he's resolved to do, because he will get revenge for his sister, no matter what it takes. You can sympathize with his character here, and he doesn't magically love it and fall in love with Kang Moo right afterwards, which is another commonly disturbing thing I see happen in BL all the time. Instead, he goes to the hospital to get Kang Moo's semen analyzed to see if it matches one of the DNA samples that was found on his sister's body. Despite going through such a traumatic and humiliating event, he maintains most of his composure because of how laser-focused he is on finding those horrible monsters who raped his beloved sibling.

  But after such a good show, the evil club members have gotten a small taste of what a shame-filled Kirin looks like, and they all want a piece of him. Indeed, they quickly make plans to lock him up somewhere so that they can all rape him too while Kang Moo is away. Surprise, surprise, our handsome hero comes in to save the day, and Kang Moo interrupts their nasty "fun time" before things go completely south. Yet this marks a significant turning point in the story, where Kirin becomes increasingly reliant on Kang Moo, to the point that he's no longer participating actively in hunting down the people who brought about his sister's death. It is Kang Moo who orchestrates a grand, elaborate scheme which brings down every single member of the horrible club that he had helped to create. All Kirin does is to sit uselessly on the wayside as his psychotic male lover eliminates all the villains one by one like dominoes. It's like he's been reduced to a puppet who's had its strings cut, and he only moves whenever Kang Moo needs him to. Usually, it's for sex, sometimes, it's to manipulate him so that he unwittingly helps Kang Moo in whatever he's trying to accomplish. Kirin has lost all his agency, and despite momentary, fleeting thoughts about his current situation, he does nothing about it.

  The most significant thought Kirin retains in the later chapters is how much he hates being the pathetic object of Kang Moo's sexual release. He feels like he's losing his masculinity by letting Kang Moo do whatever he wants with his body. He feels feminine, and is disgusted with himself. You see, Kirin is undeniably straight, and he only went along with Kang Moo so that he could gain access to the elite membership-only club. With all the people who he wanted to get revenge on either dead or behind bars, he no longer needs to play this charade with Kang Moo, right? Wrong.

  Kirin is now tied together with Kang Moo as being possible suspects for killing the last member of the club who had just recently died, although both of their testimonies claim that it had been an accident which had taken that poor young man's life. The detective who knows what Kirin has been up to knows immediately that this is not the whole story, and begins to suspect the pair of lovers. He's not the only one though, and both the police and private investigators hired by the affluent families of the members of the club are starting to crack down hard, trying to get them to break. Naturally, they focus most of their efforts on Kirin, who's clearly the less dominant partner, in more ways than one. Kang Moo needs to keep him on a tight leash to make sure that he doesn't run away, doesn't break under the pressure, and most importantly, doesn't betray him. Their relationship becomes increasingly strained, and it's painfully clear that Kang Moo is abusing Kirin in almost every way possible to make sure he doesn't escape from his tight grasp on him.

  Kang Moo asks if Kirin loves him, and brings up the "Suspension Bridge Effect," pointing out that may be the reason why Kirin is sticking so closely to him, having mistaken his physiological changes for the feeling of being in love. Perhaps the anxiety and fear of being hunted down is causing the heart to palpitate like it does when one is in love? In psychology, the term is "misattribution of arousal" which is the effect of confusing the common, often-shared symptoms of negative emotions such as fear, for those of romantic arousal. Kang Moo tells Kirin that he should think it over, because he cannot trust someone who doesn't have his heart dedicated to him, and to him alone. The only person he needs by his side is someone who will never betray him, he has absolutely no use for a person who can't even tell the difference between being scared vs. being in love. Kirin ponders this question posed to him for about 1.5 chapters before inexplicably declaring that he is most definitely not experiencing the "Suspension Bridge Effect" with Kang Moo, and that it is something much deeper than that. What it is, he cannot put a name to, but he will never betray Kang Moo! With that, the final nail slams on the coffin that is Kirin's story.

  Now we enter into Kang Moo's perspective, backtracking to how he managed to pull everything off so perfectly behind the scenes while Kirin was dithering around with his enemies. Many things beg to be suspended into utter disbelief, as he executes an overly-complex scheme to take down all of these evil rapists, often relying on his heroic plot-armor and everyone else acting like complete idiots so that they could play a role in his god-like strategy. Can we take a moment here to point out that being a psychopath, even a high-functioning one like Kang Moo supposedly is, does not grant you omnipotence? If that were case, I would think that people like Ted Bundy and Jeffrey Dahmer would never have been caught. Psychopaths are human, just like everyone else. They make mistakes, and things cannot completely go someone's way, even if it was perfectly calculated. You can check out the case of Leopold and Loeb, which is a perfect example of this.

  It's abundantly clear that Kang Moo, and not Kirin, is the main star of the story. He is an unstoppable character that has no flaws whatsoever, err... besides being a psychopath. No, that's simply unacceptable, because with the way the author wrote him, you'd think that it was a strength, regardless of how often they try to point out how abnormal Kang Moo is, and reminding us that he's a serial killer. That's due to the overwhelming amount of other positive traits that Kang Moo has been imbued with -- he's extremely handsome, to the point that even villains are lusting after him, he's highly intelligent, super rich, possesses a wide assortment of skills, and is also physically strong. Hmm. Where have I seen that before? Oh right, he's Edward Cullen. The only flaw with Edward is that he's a vampire, you know? Substitute blood-thirsty monster for psychopath, and you're golden!

  In short, we end up with two flat-as-pancakes characters as our protagonists. We have the bland Kirin, who loses his agenda after the revenge is complete, and is reduced to a mere prop for the second half of the story, and the flawless Adonis Kang Moo, the psychopath lover, who pretends to hate the former, so that he can turn the tables on another crazy guy. Kirin becomes so irrelevant that he's simply acting as a chess piece for Kang Moo to play so that he may get away with multiple counts of murder, blackmail, assault, battery, etc. It's very obvious that Kirin is not the real main character of this story, and it's not even due to the skewed power dynamics between him and Kang Moo. His role just keeps shrinking to the point that it really doesn't matter if he's still in the story or not. He gets some tiny little moments sprinkled in here and there as an afterthought, just in case we forgot about him, but Kang Moo is the true golden goose that makes up the core of the story. This is again confirmed in the author's note, since they stated no one would want to read a story where the main character is a psychopath from the get-go, and they had to ease readers into the perspective of the psychopath after conditioning us to like him from the perspective of Kirin. That's very sly, and I don't appreciate that at all. You're forcing people to like an otherwise unlikeable character because you've set him up to be the ideal mate for the false male lead.

  It becomes even more problematic as Kang Moo is protected by the thickest of plot armors, and not a single character here came even close to wrecking any sort of havoc on his amazingly perfect plans of killing everyone in his path to seemingly protect his lover. I couldn't say that any of the villains of the story succeeded in scratching that heroic armament of his. And then, even more unbelievably, no one is punished for their actions in the end, besides the rapists who already got their just desserts, courtesy of Kang Moo. I don't feel that a happy ending is correct in this scenario, but that's what the author wanted. They were extremely adamant about it, too. I think the remarkably bitter episode of "Criminal Minds" with Frank and Jane was far more believable than what was presented here.

  Let's move onto the main talking point in the title of this review, and the title of this webtoon. "The Beast Must Die," it's brought up several times in the course of the story, but what is the beast, exactly? You'd wish it's some cleverly disguised symbolism like the eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg from "The Great Gatsby," but no, it's just a heavy-handed attempt to force down some more nonsense psychobabble down our throats. The beast is the psychopathic tendencies that bubble within Kang Moo, because it's wild, uncontrollable, and when it rampages, it will kill everything in its path. Does the beast die? No, because Kang Moo is still alive, and when he's alive, it means the beast is, too. That brings us to another question, was the beast tamed? The author would probably argue in favor of a "Yes," but I'm going to go with a solid "No." While Kang Moo feels something for Kirin, it's not going to last, as least realistically, with the way it unfolded here. He initially felt lust for Kirin, but he soon got bored with it, when he discovered how much more fun it is to feel someone's life get crushed under his fingers. Knowing the exhilarating taste of murder, there's simply no way that he can find another more acceptable substitute which will stop him from killing again, so no, Kirin didn't tame the beast. He didn't even manage to rein him in in the first place, when the first murder happened just next to him, in the dark of night.

  By letting things progress the way it does in the story, I would say that this webtoon romanticizes psychopathy just like other popular media out there, even if the original intent was to avoid doing so. This is not a serious exploration of how someone who is wired differently from other people can be changed by the power of love. Although the overall tone is somber, it introduces the concept of Kang Moo being able to change far too late in the story for it be believable, or to actually make any impact. He points out that being in a relationship with Kirin weakens him and ties him down, and there's only two things he can do about it, which is to either break it off to reclaim his freedom, or accept it as it is. Let me add that there's always a third, and much more difficult option, that the author conveniently forgot about, which is to compromise and actively change yourself for the better. Nope, let's brush it all under the table because Kang Moo doesn't need to change at all, he's perfect the way he is, serial killer and all, because yay, he's chosen to stay with Kirin! Applause!

  Such a happy ending is unwarranted. As I've said, Kang Moo has already killed, and there's nothing else that could possibly prevent him from killing again, unless he's either dead or in jail, or incapacitated in some way. Kirin plays zero role in keeping him in check. Why? Psychopaths are driven by boredom. Whenever they're finding life to be tedious, they'll seek out more and more dangerous things that can excite them. This is actually addressed in the story, but the author seems to forget what the consequences of this will be. Being a thrill-seeker, Kang Moo will undoubtedly murder again, but will Kirin stand by him as his psychopath lover kills an innocent human being? Will Kang Moo get tired of Kirin, and kill him to prevent him from talking? We don't know.

  What I do know is that psychopaths greatly value trust and loyalty, which is the only reason that they can and will form lasting relationships with others, but Kang Moo hasn't shown any real signs of feeling that way about Kirin, other than Kirin proclaiming that he'd never betray Kang Moo. It makes me doubt the entire basis of the story. I don't believe Kang Moo loves Kirin, he's only interested in him for the time being. He used Kirin's sister's death as an excuse to exact justice on her rapists, because that's an easy way for him to exterminate the evil pests and get close to the object of his current interest at the same time. Kirin has shown himself to be an unequal and lacking partner in their relationship, and there's nothing left which will hold Kang Moo's attention away from killing, not even the sex, which Kang Moo himself has said that he's gotten tired of. The author's note basically confirms that they don't have a firm grasp on the medical or psychological side of their story, besides what you see in popular media all the time, which is why this webtoon ended so unrealistically. The whole psychopaths-have-no-emotions thing is a myth. Actually, they do feel certain things, they're not robots, but it's very muted, and they feel no empathy for others, which is a reason why they become so dissatisfied and frustrated with their lives, due to the inability to easily attain the experience and the joys of an enduring, meaningful relationship.

  The art in this webtoon is really good, it was already fine in the beginning, but gets better and better as the artist worked more on this. You can see significant changes in the quality if you looked at the first chapter vs. the last chapter of the story. The panelling was quite standard, other than it minimizing the amount of blank white space that is usually prevalent in most webtoons. This means that each of the panels were either very wide or very long, allowing the artist to fill them in with all sorts of details that would not have been able to fit otherwise. My only major complaint about the art is that it suffers from Same Face Syndrome, where everyone looks the same, except for Kirin, who is distinguished by his sandy hair and the mole under his eye. That's a sign of lazy character design, which is a problem when you can't tell who is who. Even Kang Moo looks like a bunch of other characters, since they all have black hair and black eyes, with the same facial shape and features.

  I will be reading the side stories that will come in the future, but I don't have high hopes for them. Besides, an author who can't even communicate everything they want to through their story alone is doing a poor job as an author, in my opinion. You shouldn't need such a lengthy author's note to explain yourself, and you shouldn't need padding chapters to finish off what you started. But I appreciate the effort to try to bring some quality into the BL genre, at the very least.

  Update: As if to further illustrate my point in how the author doesn't know much about the psychology of psychopaths, or just regular psychology in general, one of their author's notes hammer it home. They claimed they made a mistake coloring one of the bonus chapters because and I quote, "Psychopaths don't dream in color, they rarely dream and it's usually in black and white. I have this fixed in the book version." Uhm, no! This is hogwash bogus propagated by people who didn't understand psychopaths in the olden past and has since been debunked, FYI. While it's true psychopaths don't dream as much due to lacking certain connections in their frontal lobe, when they do, they usually dream about traumatic experiences or what you would classify as in the nightmares category. And dreaming in black and white or in color doesn't mean anything, as research has shown that the color of your dreams is affected by what type of television you watched growing up. That means people who grew up in the era of black-and-white TV tend to dream in black and white as well, and people in the newer generations who watched color TV growing up usually dream in color. Considering Kang Moo's age, he should be dreaming in color as well, no? So you had it right the first time, author. Geez, it only takes a tiny bit of research about your subject material to execute your story here, and you've failed at that by trying to sound like you know more than you actually do. Seriously, this is why author's notes are just wholly unnecessary, they only make things worse.

  Update #2: It is not true that psychopaths have a poor sense of smell. The study done in 2012 which claims this is a load of BS, they simply asked people to sniff random things and then asked them to identify what they smelled, after the participants took a quick assessment to score their psychopathic tendencies -- it's not a professional diagnosis. Bear in mind that it takes extensive consultation and vigorous testing to finally reach a definite conclusion of whether an individual is a true psychopath. A psychopath's sense of smell is as good as or as bad as any other person, but what is true is that their olfactory memory association is poorer than that of a non-psychopath. This means they are unable to retrieve what a smell they've smelled before might be, because they don't tend to attach any particular meaningful memory or emotion regarding a certain smell, which therefore leads to the appearance that their sense of smell is poor. For example, when regular people smell coffee, they associate it with the smell of waking up in the morning, but psychopaths don't, so they need to tell themselves what the smell is to remember it for later if asked to identify the smell again in the future. It is also true that psychopaths have great tonal acuity, and this is because they rely on it to tell lies and manipulate other people by judging their intonation and oral delivery.

  Update #3: Oh boy. Honestly, these side stories are just making me dislike this webtoon more and more. You know the expression, "flogging a dead horse"? That's what the author is doing. It would have been perfectly fine to end the story where it was supposed to have ended, back in Chapter 60, despite the numerous issues it had, as I've stated before. However, the author wants to milk some more money, and that's where you lose your readers. It happened to J. K. Rowling. As an author, you really need to know when's the time to let go of your characters, because they've reached the end of their journey. If you can no longer tell a satisfying story, because there is no more to tell, then don't tell it. You'll just be hurting all the good things that came before, because people have short-term memories and they'll only [strongly] remember the most recent thing they've read, so you should never end on a sour note. I just don't understand why this author here insists on showing us this nonsensical relationship between Kang Moo and Kirin after they've already had their unbelievable happy ending, and it's not even a small bonus short story, it's a long, ambling leading-to-nowhere plot line about how Kang Moo is now a skilled forensic pathologist working to catch killers, and he's still happily in a relationship with Kirin. Except now and then, he'll remember how arousing it was to kill someone, so he engages in risky violent behavior and fantasizes about strangling people. While I'm sure this is realistic, what is not realistic is how he doesn't get help for his psychopathy. This is clearly something that real people who are rated high on the psychopathic scale will struggle with, and I wish that the author would address this seriously. If you feel like you pose a danger to the people around you, and to society in general, you need to reach out to get therapy. Kang Moo, who is supposed to be near omniscient, should know this. But he does nothing to deal with his issues, keeping his supposed partner in the dark about everything, and working in a field that obviously will trigger dark desires inside him. It's not healthy. And the author tries to explain it away with "Kirin knows Kang Moo's nature, and he's ready for it". Uhhhh, no. He clearly doesn't have a clue, because Kang Moo doesn't talk to him, and he doesn't actively persuade him to see a therapist, and they don't move out of the country to live in a place where people don't know them so they can live more inconspicuously. Kirin's answer to Kang Moo's psychopathy is "Let's have sex!" and even in fiction, you can't buy that as a solution. Sex is not magic, and it won't cure Kang Moo, it won't turn him into a normal person, and it won't sate his lust for murder. It's not a replacement for medicine and mental therapy. And now, we see Kang Moo finally break, as he tries to unsuccessfully strangle Kirin while they have coitus. Gee, who didn't see that coming?

  Update #4: Finally. The webtoon is officially finished. Thank god. I honestly didn't see the point of the unnecessarily long side stories, other than to make more money, and to have an excuse for Kang Moo and Kirin to have sex everywhere. Oh, the psychopath issues? Who cares about that? It's all swept under the rug after a round of magic sex! Why does the author even bother, honestly. I have a feeling they just wanted to add extra dimensionality to their otherwise standard Stockholm syndrome BL story, despite barely understanding psychopathy themselves. And they insist on psychopaths not being able to feel love, so that's why Kang Moo is only in a pseudo-romantic relationship with Kirin, in that he's just pretending to be under Kirin's control, when it's actually the other way around. No. While it's true psychopaths can't feel love in the traditional sense, they CAN love in other ways -- namely, a sense of fierce loyalty and respect for someone they find who is able to peer under their ever-changing mask and is able to accept them as they are. This is its own form of "LOVE," and they can slowly learn to be more empathetic to people they truly care about. Sure, it's not all roses and daisies, but you shouldn't discount psychopaths as people who are unable to feel any positive emotions at all. It's important to note that romantic love will wane and die eventually in most couples, so the fact that Kang Moo has found someone he supposedly trusts like Kirin could be a sign their relationship will endure the test of time, IF the author had been aware of what the crap they were writing, instead of the BS we get here instead. Of course, everything leading up to this has been problematic, so take it what you will. I would suggest throwing the entirety of this plot out the window and start fresh, if one were to write something similar, but with a more realistic and less insulting + glorified view of a psychopathic mind at work, in order to capture the complex relationships that form around them.

  

  Here, Kirin says something to Kang Moo, and they smile. The author is a lazy butt who wants you to use your own imagination to fill it in, but come on, it's pretty obvious what it is. It must be something along the lines of "I love you," and not something like "I want to eat a cheeseburger," alright? Or if you want something darker, "Let's go out and look at some dead bodies together?" Nope. And herein lies the major issue that I've mentioned before. Notice that Kirin says, as agreed is the most likely option, "I love you," and Kang Moo doesn't say anything in return. This is a red flag in most relationships, if you don't return someone's confession of love. But it's all ok, right, because Kang Moo can't "love"? No! I've already explained that isn't necessarily the case. They CAN, but not in the traditional sense. So Kang Moo should have freaking replied in some manner, in his own words to express his feelings towards Kirin. The author's probably patting themselves on the back for their "nuance" about Kang Moo's lack of reply, but this is stupid in so many ways.

  And then we have this winner of a final panel which perfectly encapsulates everything wrong about this story.

  

  Yeah, two perfect naked guys embracing each other as they gaze out the window of their multimillionaire dollar apartment, enjoying the seascape in front of them. And of course Kirin has no pants on, because he's the weaker vulnerable one who must always be up for sex if Kang Moo wants it. It boggles my mind that every time after they've had sex, Kang Moo has clothes back on, or at the very least, underpants, while Kirin is always buck naked. Kang Moo can't even be bothered to help Kirin put his boxers on for some small bit of decency. Selfish prick. And those are Kirin's words, saying he's a "tamer" because he's controlled the "beast" that is Kang Moo. Just delude yourself into thinking that, idiot. Even the author says this is not true. And what kind of tamer has no underpants on? Most tamers have more gear than the beasts that they're trying to control. From a literal sense of the word "tamer," not the metaphorical, as Kirin is implying, but I think the point carries over, regardless.

  Overall Breakdown:
  Characters: 2/10
  Story: 5/10
  Art: 8/10
  Lore/Worldbuilding: 3/10
  Enjoyment: 5/10

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