I stumbled upon the webcomic by complete chance and was instantly pulled in by the first chapter's introduction of this story's take on magic. A lot of sci-fi series that I've read have tended to be uncomfortably overwhelming at the onset, so I enjoyed and appreciated this series's "how we got here" approach to showing the gradual changes the world has undergone in order to reach the place it is at in the story. Though the idea of controlling magic through apps sounds ridiculous, the author has managed to make it believable and even conceivable by depicting sequences of cause and effect, introducing problems that arise with the free use of magic and then showing how the government remedies them by creating restrictions. This is all done in the first chapter, ensuring that the reader is relatively comfortable with the physics of this alternate future before heading into the story. Suffice to say, this whole setup felt very real to me, and so I have to give the author props for that.
As for the actual story, it's intriguing and high-tension but also thought-provoking and psychological, asking the reader to think before judging. This series presents a beautiful example of "grey and gray morality," as even the characters admit that they are merely doing what they believe is right as opposed to acting in accordance with some universal ideal of good and evil. It's this dynamic that makes the story so interesting. In essence, this comic is everything Death Note should have been but wasn't. Whereas Death Note floundered under the direction of a bad writer (who even admitted in an interview that he didn't care about the issue of conflicting moralities despite basing a series around the concept), this manhwa flourishes under that same principle (there's even a Death Note reference within the comic).
The protagonist of this story, Detective Kim Hyunook (who, for those who are curious, looks very much like the lovechild of Roy Mustang and Lin Yao from Fullmetal Alchemist ^.^; ; ) , dismisses the idea of real-life heroes, postulating that the desire for power and a pull towards absolute justice are entirely incompatible. He himself pursues justice - this is obvious in his devotion in revealing the truth behind a schoolgirl's alleged suicide. However, in that same case, he fails stop himself from using his power and status to verbally and sadistically torment the culprit, revealing a very human part of himself in doing so - that he is so enraged by the girl's murder that he inflicts unnecessary suffering on the man despite having "served justice" by apprehending him. Furthermore, the story's antagonist, the serial killer Crimson Robe, is shown to have a sensitive side - and is, in fact, very broken - despite what the ruthlessness of his crimes projects about him. In particular, his guilt at
having brutally murdered the young man he thought was responsible for the schoolgirl's suicide before realizing that the video that supposedly drove her to kill herself had never been spread after all
reveals him to be an actual human character with genuine emotional disturbances rather than an idealistic sociopath. These two characters seem to be incomplete yin and yang to each other, and it'll be interesting to see how they develop and change in the coming chapters.
So yeah, TL;DR: So far, this manhwa has an intriguing premise with likable, complex characters and a suspenseful but quite profound plot. The art is beautiful, a pleasure to see in full-color. I also must admit that I liked all the references to Korean pop culture that were thrown in (i.e. one of the characters' fathers is seen watching the k-drama Boys Over Flowers and a case is named BEAST after "that old idol group" xD). For now, I definitely recommend this one!
Edit in response to bludvein: I would like to ask you the same question. Also, could you kindly direct my attention to the errors in my review so that I might go about correcting them? I follow this series as the chapters are released, so there may be some inaccuracies with regards to particular details I may have forgotten between waits, but really, if there is something I wrote that is "just plain wrong," I would very much like to know what it is. In regards to your question about who the protagonist is, the word "protagonist" is defined as "the leading character." As the story is mainly told through Detective Kim's POV, I think it's safe to assume that he is the main protagonist. Of course, a work can easily have more than one protagonist and be told from multiple POVs, as has been demonstrated in certain chapters of this webtoon, but I don't think I'm at all wrong in what I said.
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