GEOMEUN INGAN

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  Julyfire

  50/100
  "Dark Mortal" Suffers From A Bad Case of "Death Note Syndrome"

  CAUTION: REVIEW CONTAINS HEAVY SPOILERS FOR "DARK MORTAL" AND "DEATH NOTE". READ AT YOUR OWN RISK.

  Oh dear, yet another webtoon I'd never thought I would be writing a negative review for, but here we are once again. Sometimes a series starts off with a great big bang, but then somewhere along the way, the writer lost their inspiration or the trail of the story's plot, and the ending is just a big meh. I dub this phenomenon the "Death Note Syndrome," because that's the iconic example of this in fiction. It is not a compliment.

  Here's my criteria for this literary affliction:

  • Extremely promising first half, often culminating with a death of a key character AKA the first climax.
  • Lack of significant conflict by the second half's middle.
  • Destruction of previously carefully crafted characters, important relationships, and key worldbuilding posts in favor of the main new goal of the story. This includes inconsistencies with the character's behavior, lore, and gaping plot holes.
  • Protagonist takes a backseat, letting other more boring characters take the spotlight for no apparent reason.
  • Rushed ending that feels wholly unsatisfactory.

  If I could rate "Dark Mortal"'s two seasons individually, I would give Season 1 a 8.5/10 and Season 2 a 3.5/10. Yep, that's how rapidly this story declined in a span of 35 chapters. All the plus points of the first half of the story are not enough to excuse the trainwreck that happened in the last half. Due to the recency effect, I'm obligated to judge this series more harshly, just for disappointing me with every aspect of its abysmal second season. It's not about how you start, it's about how strong you finish. Pulling off a great ending makes all the difference.

  The story opens with a seven year-old boy whose whole family perished in a fire. His name is Gangnam. He is the sole survivor of the apartment fire that claimed the lives of his parents, but he didn't escape completely unscathed. He was blinded in both eyes and suffered horrible burns to the left side of his face, permanently disfiguring him. An old man passing by had heroically barged into the flames and rescued him from certain death. He tells Gangnam to let him know if he ever has a hard time, and he'll try his best to help, should he ever need it. The resilient child replies that he is okay, and he hopes his parents are happy, wherever they are, and wishes they don't worry too much about him. The old man is surprised at the boy's courage and mental fortitude for someone so young, and he tells him he believes that he will be able to overcome what life throws at him.

  The old man's prediction proved to be correct, but he'd never have guessed that Gangnam isn't alone, even though he's just recently lost his entire family. He has a small black blob who he's affectionately named Kkamjang that only he can see, despite being blind. Kkamjang serves as his friend, tutor, and seeing-eye blob to guide him through his everyday life, so even with Gangnam's vision impairment, he can function relatively normally, all things considered. However, this doesn't resolve all of the troubles Gangnam faces when he has to interact with other people, who react to his burned face with disgust and horror. Some of them shun him, and some of them bully him. He faces all of this with a forced smile, determined to make the most of a bad situation. Unfortunately, this only creeps people out even more, as they're unnerved by his unflinchingly calm attitude that persists no matter what sort of obstacles they throw at him. People fear what they don't understand, and that is Gangnam in this case. He becomes increasingly isolated, and the bullying gets worse.

  During one of the episodes of particularly nasty bullying, the old man who saved Gangnam from the fire saves him once again. He hesitantly asks if Gangnam would like to be his family, and Gangnam accepts, becoming his adopted grandson. Gangnam lives a relatively happier life with his new Grandpa and Kkamjang, and several years pass. He has just entered high school, but not much has changed in terms of human behavior. Vicious bullying from his peers is still one of the major sources of grief even now. Whilst lying against the walls of a deserted alley, badly beaten down and in pain, Kkamjang coaxes Gangnam to finally acknowledge that life is hard for him, and if he does, he will grant him power to change his life. This is where the main story really begins.

  It's long been suggested that Kkamjang is not a figment of Gangnam's imagination to cope with intense loss and tragedy, but rather, a real being that is able to influence the world around him. Imagination is only capable of producing results that are permutations of one's existing knowledge. You cannot imagine what you don't know. Kkamjang knows many things, and often keeps them a secret from Gangnam, leaving him in the dark about his true intentions. While Kkamjang often acts cute and silly, there are moments that hint at something much darker belying his innocent-seeming nature. It makes you think of Kyubey from "Puella Magi Madoka Magica" -- is he actually sinister entity moonlighting as a kawaii pet? Such as when he surrounds Gangnam with tendrils of darkness, telling Gangnam let go of his stubborn refusal to admit to himself that he is indeed struggling. Once Gangnam has done so, Kkamjang swallows his body with the black goo, which restores vision to Gangnam's eyes, as well as removing all the burn scars on his face, effectively converting him into a totally regular teenage boy.

  You may call this a cop-out, as I've seen others do, since this eliminates Gangnam's primary source of conflict as well as failing to explore the impact of his disability on his mental and emotional health. Although this seems to be the case, I would point out that the existence of Kkamjang eliminates most of the obstacles blind people face, so the realism of his condition was clearly not the key focus here. In my review of "Under the Oak Tree," I lamented at its insensitive depiction of the heroine with a stutter as unrealistic at best, and nefarious at worst, as it conjured an image of a damaged woman who needed to be "saved" by her handsome hot AF husband. With Gangnam, I do not feel the same sense of disgust at the magical hand-waving away of his blindness. In "Under the Oak Tree," stuttering served solely as a character trait to force pity points from the reader whenever she opens her mouth, but in "Dark Mortal," the blindness and subsequent miraculous recovery have some redeeming factors in that it is not, and never has been, the defining trait of Gangnam's character. It is his inner strength which defines him, and his coping with a sudden blindness due to an accident is a source of that strength. Additionally, the cure is pivotal to the plot, so I will give this some leeway in terms of believability in what the story wishes to tell me.

  I've also seen some people mention that this makeover of Kkamjang's raises a very problematic issue, which does rear its ugly head almost immediately later on. Gangnam was shunned and bullied because he looked ugly due to the burn scars. As soon as he gained back his normal face, he and the Grandpa move to another location to restart his life in a place where no one knows them, and hence, don't know that Gangnam used to be frightfully disfigured. This allows him to meet people without triggering the initial visceral fear of him and he quickly makes friends with several classmates at his new school. So, here we have to address the elephant in the room.

  The webtoon suggests that Gangnam would have never been able to befriend anyone if he hadn't been beautified by Kkamjang, and if extrapolated to apply to real life, its message is that ugly people would not be able to have any friends. You must look beautiful or at least not unsightly, to have people see and accept you as a person, a fellow human being. Otherwise, you are destined to be forever alone and isolated from society, much like Quasimodo was in "The Hunchback of Notre Dame." This is a hurtful implication to people who are self-conscious about their looks, who are born with some sort of physical imperfection or disfigurement, or those who, like Gangnam, have suffered trauma or an event that has irrevocably altered their appearance. All of these cannot be helped, it's not like a person chose to look the way they do. Stories should try to make more of an effort to promote body positivity, not shame people into believing they are less lucky than others who are more attractive than them, and therefore having a slimmer chance at happiness.

  I would say the best way to correct this probably unforseen bad messaging on the author's part is to either leave Gangnam's face alone, and only correct his blindness, although it wouldn't make too much sense with the lore, as I will discuss later, or not have him scarred in the first place. If one is simply looking for an excuse, or rather, I should say, reason for Gangnam being bullied at school, his blindness is enough. Children can be very cruel to people who fascinate them in a sickly curious way because they are so "other," as seen with the bully from "A Silent Voice," who viciously targets a girl simply because she is deaf. Even with Kkamjang's help, there are still ways Gangnam's blindness will be manifest in a visible form to others, which will in turn, raise both an understandable fascination with his disability as well as a sadistic desire to see him suffer, depending on the individual in question. Perhaps the author just wanted the visual factor in order to cement the fact that Gangnam is worth pitying, which I'm leery of forgiving if this were indeed the case. He's already suffered enough, we don't need him scarred on top of that if you're just going to magically disappear them later in the next two chapters. Regardless, it makes little sense to solve the issue of his burned face in this manner, if it needn't be there at all.

  After being flipped over by this little debacle of questionable insinuations about the not-so-hidden requirement behind forming successful new relationships, the story rights itself up, proving to be a very enjoyable read. Gangnam has three major friends in his circle now, the brother and sister martial artist duo who live next door to him, and a foreigner girl who was his first love. He also gains an ally in a school delinquent named Jang Seoho, who will prove to be important later. Despite their relatively peaceful and cheery hangouts together, the group of friends constantly find themselves in the thick of trouble, and mysterious violent incidents keep cropping up around them.

  When Gangnam digs deep to investigate the source of their constant new grievances, Kkamjang's existence takes the dark turn as was foreshadowed from earlier on. Gangnam actually had a brother, who died because he was involved in an experimental scientific project called the "Dark Mortal Project," named after the black shapeless dead people entities who were killed and converted to be used as shields onto which potential life-threatening injuries are transferred from its users. As a result, the user also gains enhanced physical strength and speed, faster recovery abilities, and a faint notion of attaining "immortality," as these Dark Mortals can be easily replaced if one is used up. Dark Mortals can also be used to stave off a deadly illness, like terminal cancer, which is what Gangnam's brother was afflicted with.

  However, because Dark Mortals are fueled by grief and anger at the unfair loss of their lives, all users must wear a ring which will serve as a limiter on the Dark Mortal's powers. If the ring is taken off, the user will surely die, because the Dark Mortal will overwhelm them instantly. So it is easy to identify if someone is a sponsor of this project simply by looking at their hands. If they're naked, they are innocent. If they wear the ring, it's time to fight! Woohoo. Why they couldn't wear this metal object on another part of their body, I don't know. It's not like the Dark Mortal is contained in one finger. And why must it be a ring? It could be a nipple piercing -- much safer, since people don't generally walk around their shirt off. Well, except in fantasy martial arts manhwa filled with impossibly buff men and their 16-packs. I'm getting off track.

  With this revelation, we learn that Kkamjang is also a Dark Mortal, albeit he seems less bloodthirsty than the others, since Gangnam doesn't need a ring to keep him at bay. But there's another more sinister Dark Mortal inside Gangnam, and whenever this one surfaces, Gangnam's eyes turns green and he experiences frequent black outs, as he is no longer in control of his own body. There's quite a lot of interesting plot twists and turns, slowly revealing bit by bit the shady history of the Dark Mortal Project and how it lead to not only his brother's death, but it was the primary reason Gangnam's parents were killed in a staged accident, because the secret could not be unleashed publicly to others. Gangnam's brother possessed a unique ability to control more than one Dark Mortal at a time, even without using a ring. The researchers attributed this to his sheer willpower and strong desire to live, which obviously runs in the family, as Gangnam has this trait too. Later, we find out that the Grandpa who had saved him was no innocent bystander, he was also actively involved in the Dark Mortal Project. In fact, he's the one who introduced the idea to Gangnam's brother in the first place, and he has felt guilty because this project has led to the death of many people close to him.

  In the climax of the first season, Kkamjang's true identity is revealed. He is Gangnam's dead brother, Gang-geon. He wiped out Gangnam's memories of him to protect him, and he's been by his side ever since, continuing to watch over him and act as his guardian blob. He's also been the one to keep the Dark Mortal dubbed "Green Eyes" at bay, which is one of the strongest of all the Dark Mortals in the project, because he has the ability to control other Dark Mortals, and thereby the humans that possess them. I have to say, I was not the least bit surprised by this twist, because I saw the trail of clues leading to this, which I believe was intentional on the author's part. It wasn't aiming for a dramatic out-of-the-blue revelation, but more of a "Oh, I see, no wonder!" moment. If you look back, you'll notice how Kkamjang gets noticably jealous when Gangnam calls the next door neighbor "Hyung," meaning "brother". The way Kkamjang looks after Gangnam is overtly familial, and his fierce sense of pride of Gangnam is something only a family member would express, not a friend. In the final confrontation between Gangnam and the man who killed his family, Kkamjang sacrifices himself so that Gangnam can absorb all the Dark Mortals and defeat the enemy. At the same time, his Grandpa is killed, and dies right in front of him. In one fell swoop of cruel fate, Gangnam has lost his entire family yet again. This concludes Season 1, with the future looking very bleak, a Dark Mortal-infested Gangnam resolving to become a monster to destroy the creator of the Dark Mortal Project. To defeat a monster, you too, must become a monster.

  It's important to note that the first season of "Dark Mortal" is far from perfect. It suffers from many common laughable stereotypes of shounen style tropes, like the convenient boosts of power, the Chosen One heroes, and the unstoppable power of nakama. I recall one person describing this webtoon as the result of a 13-year old's wet dream, complete with cringe-worthy edginess and glowing color-changing eyes. While I wouldn't go that far, I admit that "Dark Mortal" isn't trying at all to set a new bar for this genre, which is a bit disappointing, to say the least. What it does do well is entertain, and I stayed up all night binge-reading all of Season 1 in one sitting. The plot is compelling, and makes me want to keep reading more, despite its flaws. The relationship of Gangnam, Kkamjang, and Grandpa was the keystone to the story's foundation, as it's becoming increasingly rare nowadays to see stories focus so heavily on platonic relationships. While several girls had a crush on Gangnam, romance was put off as a side note, because it wasn't important. What is important is the mystery of Kkamjang, a character who has been present since Chapter 1, and the uncovering of his true identity was as satisfying as putting the last piece of the puzzle together, neatly tying many loose ends together. By the conclusion of the first arc, I was wondering how could the author possibly top this off. When a series reaches a memorable climax that is subsequently guided to a such a clean finish, you begin to fear that the author has already pulled too many good tricks out of their sleeves too fast, and they'd have nothing left to show for the rest of the story's runtime. And so, we now have "Death Note Syndrome."

  Kkamjang is easily the main reason why Season 1 of "Dark Mortal" is such a good story. And it's not because I have a soft spot for him, because of how cute he is. Ah, who am I kidding, I've written a blog post about how much I adore him. I've taken so many screenshots of him for use in text conversations, because there's so many moments of him doing everyday things that are both universally applicable and heart-warming, please release some stickers of him... Alright, alright, in all seriousness, while Kkamjang has high marketability, which I'm sure the author is aware of, he's not just a simple mascot. He's a big part of Gangnam's life, and also was his whole world, when he was a blind boy who had nobody else. Kkamjang is a friend, a confidant, a mentor, a guide, and also Gangnam's compass. Their relationship is symbiotic and comfortable, often filled with silly banter that can only be found amongst two people who really understand each other. No one else knows Gangnam as well as Kkamjang does, not even Grandpa. The decision to wipe out Kkamjang from Season 2 is the crucial impetus as to why the series deteriorated as quickly as it did in the second half.

  Oftentimes, a good story is based on the backbones of a strong relationship between two characters. You want to see how they interact, influence, and change each other. Characters are less defined by their individual traits, but rather a gestalt of all their interpersonal connections that come into play as conflict arises. Some bonds will be broken, some will be formed. In "Death Note," the iconic relationship is obviously the one between Light and L. They are simultaneously enemies, but also friends. In another world or parallel universe, where these events hadn't occured as they did here, they could have been the best of allies, but fate has pitted them against each other. Only one can live, and the other must die. The mental tug-of-war between them drove the story forward at a nail-biting pace, because you wanted to see who would be the victor. Will it be Light, or will it be L?

  However, this painstakingly meticulous weaving of their relationships to lay out the crux of the story is the same reason for "Death Note"'s eventual undoing. Once Light killed L, he had absolutely no one to fill in this empty space left behind, and this is precisely why Light becomes a shadow of his former brilliant self in Part 2. Near and Mello are not even close to being called suitable ghosts of L, even if they supposedly match him in intelligence. Again, this is why a character's central traits are not as important as their relationships with one another. Light has no emotional ties to either of these two successors of L, and he lacks heart and conviction to fight as hard as he did previously. He's already mentally given up subconsciously, he just doesn't know it yet. He becomes uncharacteristically sloppy, and this leads to his own demise, which I saw from miles away.

  In "Dark Mortal"'s Season 2, we see the same exact thing. With Kkamjang's death, as well as Grandpa's, Gangnam has essentially given up. What is it that he gave up? His humanity. The once kind and caring boy who'd step in to protect both friends and strangers without any hesitation is gone. In his place, we have an amalgamation of Dark Mortals and an empty shell that exists only for vengeance. The reason for this drastic change? It turns out having no emotions grants you the ability to control several hundred Dark Mortals at once, with the help of Green Eyes. He also has a Red Eyes that is the more skilled fighter in his cohort. At this point, Gangnam is nigh unstoppable. The stale Chosen One trope rears its ugly head again. Gangnam is so special that he can control tons of Dark Mortals without the dead giveaway ring, allowing him to masquerade as a normal human. He posseses a special Dark Mortal that everyone is afraid of, and it has the ability to puppeteer people after he comes in contact with a Dark Mortal user, making his job even easier. He has no need to worry about ANYTHING at this point, because the enemy doesn't know he exists, doesn't know he's coming for them, and doesn't know that all the sponsors are being mind-controlled. Wow. Can you guess if he's going to succeed? Well, duh, do you even need to ask? And that delinquent guy called Seoho I mentioned several paragraphs ago? He also has a special Dark Mortal that can fight super good, so he's got Gangnam's back, Jack.

  After murdering a bunch of people, or at least beating them half to death, Gangnam and Seoho take over the entirety of the Dark Mortal Project's group of wealthy sponsors. This is completely nonsensical to me. They should just go after the evil director, because that's the guy who caused this whole mess in the first place. His existence means that there will always be more Dark Mortals, as he's the creator of them. Wouldn't it be the logical step to eliminate him first, and then root out the sponsors later? It's not like the director posseses some OP Dark Mortal that Gangnam needs to cannibalize all the other mini ones to defeat him. It's not a video game like Pacman, alright? Instead, I believe their rationalization was to make him suffer as much as all the humans who died for his project suffered. Some sort of poetic justice hogwash, I'd say. This is a flipping shounen webtoon, just go beat him up. Why are you trying to change genres now, when the series is halfway over? Sure, Gangnam and Seoho beat up some other evil Dark Mortal users along the way, but there's no sense of urgency or danger, seeing as how stacked they are. It's precisely when a story starts to milk things out and have a drawn out plotline with little to nothing happening and absolutely zero stakes, that's when you know the author effed up.

  Oh wait, there was also some tidbit about how the investors would flee at the first sign of trouble. So? It's not like all the investors killed people to get their Dark Mortals, some of them are probably innocent. This intense burning desire for revenge should be targeted to one person only, whom the location of IS known. There hasn't been enough evidence to suggest all of the other people involved in the funding of the project are evil, so there's no reason to take that stance. It is still not a priority, no matter how you swing it. It would have made more sense if they didn't know who the director was, what he looked like, and where they could find him, so then and only then, would they need to hunt down other sponsors to dig him out. But that can't happen, because the director is Seoho's father. Unlike Gangnam, Seoho doesn't have amnesia, so he knows exactly who he should be looking for. Even better, the mountain came to Mohammed -- the director shows up at their high school, happily calling him his son, like he hadn't personally killed his own flesh and blood ten years ago for the sake of science.

  At some point, the author regretted the decision to kill off Kkamjang, so guess what? He's baaaaaaaaack. I would throw confetti, but I stopped myself, since I knew it wasn't going to be implemented well. Now we have the typical K-Drama trope of amnesia, and Kkamjang doesn't remember anything about himself, nor about Gangnam, nor about the Dark Mortals. He's regressed to a baby-like state. I mean, he's still cute and all, but what's done cannot be undone. The relationship between Kkamjang and Gangnam, the pillar stone of this series, is crumbled to dust. This is like bringing L back from the dead, except he's a shinigami now. Uh, say what? Such mixed feelings. You're happy he's back, but this revival doesn't change the story. So take it out! Bad storytelling alert!

  Even with Kkamjang doing more silly antics in the background, the tone of the story has changed. Gangnam has changed. He can't even smile anymore. His personality is gone. Kaput. I no longer cared if he failed or succeeded. My emotional investment in this series died with Kkamjang's first death. Oh crap, I'm getting ahead of myself. Ahem.

  The attention then randomly turns back to Gangnam's group of friends, remember them? The girl next door still has a crush on him, her brother is working hard to prepare for a professional boxing tournament, and the foreigner girl, who is the only person to like Gangnam back when he was scarred, thinks that Gangnam is in madly love with her. She confesses her feelings to him, and he returns them. Is this really the right time for this? Seriously, this boggles my mind. Even Green Eyes asks Gangnam WTF is he doing. You know there's a problem when the most inhumane Dark Mortal questions your actions. Oh, and Seoho has an unrequited crush on the girl crushing on Gangnam.

  Now you know how messy everyone's relationships are, we can move onto how the author plays at raising the stakes, having the bad guys come after the ordinary friends of Seoho, but not with Dark Mortal users. Instead, they hire some newly released prison convicts to frighten Seoho's love interest. Errr, why? Shouldn't you just go after your victims yourself, since you have a Dark Mortal? It's not like they knew how OP Gangnam was, and therefore were afraid to confront him. They have absolutely no idea the extent of his powers. Anyway, the martial artist girl beats up her normal thug attackers, then her professional boxer brother beats them up some more, and no one goes after the foreigner girl who is the only one who can't fight for shit. Man, the villains are useless idiots.

  Blah blah blah, some more nonsensical and unexciting crap happens, and finally, mercifully, we're close to the finish line. We are launched into this weird tangent of Green Eyes's backstory, and the creation of the original Dark Mortals that made no sense whatsoever. So it turns out his whole village was wiped out à la Kul Elna from "Yu-Gi-Oh!,' elucidating why he hates humans so much. I'm convinced at this point, the author had an acid trip of watching too many horror movies, because we have a masked man with glowing green eyes, covered in bandages, making countless masks like he's possessed. When he finds everyone else gone, all of them taken away to be turned into Dark Mortals, he starts to eat the masks one by one, and he's grinning with a bloody mouth by the end of this freakish display. Then he explains he made himself into a Dark Mortal with his mask-eating powers and bloodlust. I am at a loss for words. I honestly don't know what I just read. So I'll pretend I didn't see it.

  In a last ditch effort to draw cheap sympathy from us, Kkamjang is AGAIN killed off. Jeez, poor guy has died a total of three times. There was some very forced contrivance about how only Kkamjang can release all the Dark Mortals from Gangnam's body to free them from their bindings to the mortal world or some such other BS that I have no patience for processing, because the established lore has gone to the crapper at this point. There's some attempt at pleading for a different outcome on Gangnam's part, thank god, he regained a shred of humanity back when it counted most, I suppose. Green Eyes says either Kkamjang must die, or Gangnam will become a Dark Mortal too, which essentially means dying. Then Gangnam says he can do the same thing back in Season 1, but Green Eyes says he can't, because he's not SPECIAL anymore, since he has emotions now. Oh great, so being an emotionless robot gives you super powers, good to know. Oh, and Kkamjang got all his memories back. D'awww. Look at the mad rush to remake the same scene of the first season with Deus ex machina. Gangnam tearfully says goodbye to his brother one last time, and while this moment is slightly touching, my annoyance at the awful quality of the entirety of the second season made my heart turn to stone, and I wasn't all that sad to see Kkamjang go. His last death isn't even about him, it's about Green Eyes. Just keep reading, fellow human. Let's get a move on, he says.

  With Kkamjang's sacrifice, all the Dark Mortals are now liberated from the fleshy prison of Gangnam. So we see Gangnam and Green Eyes and Red Eyes confront the fallen director at last, they all punch him with the Dark Mortals through his chest, and they make him wear each and every single mask that Green Eyes has created. What is this unhealthy obsession with masks, author? Green Eyes even makes a mask of Kkamjang and Grandpa. How cute to remind us that better characters used to exist before you. After the director's been punched full of holes and had his face rubbed raw by putting on thousands of masks, the Dark Mortals all disappear, leaving only the masks behind, which now serve as a graveyard-like memorial for all the dead people who had vanished mysteriously over the past couple of years. There's a freaking time skip, because of course you need that in a shounen series, and we learn how all the barely existent couples are now happily married or somesuch ridiculous undeserved drivel. Gangnam is now a teacher, and he asks his students to draw their favorite thing. He draws one too, and it's Kkamjang. Yeah, you really had to count on milking out his memory one last time to have the audience ignore all the other BS that happened in the last 35 chapters. Not going to happen. You're insulting Kkamjang, what a cruel thing to do. I'm so done.

  In terms of the art, it's badly good. In which case, I mean that the art itself is substandard, with very simplistic lines and coloring, as well as lack of detailed backgrounds, but the panelling is above standard. The use of multiple similar panels to create suspense is reminiscent of what I see in webtoons by Kim Carnby and Ha Il-kwon, although nowhere near their level of mastery. It's like in those horror movies where the painting is innocuous when the character is looking at it directly, but as soon as the character turns away, the painting's eyes move, that sort of effect. Similarly, this webtoon has many well-drawn scenes that are unnerving and creepy, basically anything to do with Green Eyes, as I'm convinced he's a violent psychopath. Any panels with Kkamjang in it gets extra points from me, because I am not ashamed of my bias for him. I would say Kkamjang is 90% of the reason why I enjoyed this webtoon until the end of Season 1. His presence wasn't able to salvage the abysmal wreck of Season 2, no matter how hard the author tried. I still took a lot of screenshots of him though, so at least I got something out of it.

  "Dark Mortal" is a story rooted in the deep bond between Gangnam and Kkamjang, and the extent of their relationship being uncovered gradually in Season 1 is made it good, though not great. Already riddled with the often overused tropes found in shounen genre media, these problems are further exacerbated after an unmatchable powerful climax and arc resolution in the first half of the series, bringing up more questions than answers as Season 2 progresses. Just like in "Death Note," having a strong first half culminating in the death of a key character irrevocably destroys both the heart of the protagonist as well as the heart of the story itself. Once you've hit your peak, you can only go downhill from there. There is only one highest point in a roller coaster, not two.

  Overall Breakdown:
  Characters: 5/10
  Story: 4/10
  Art: 6/10
  Lore/Worldbuilding: 4/10
  Enjoyment: 6/10

  
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