Tikky's Topics (133)

He really needs one. It looks like white seaweed is growing out of his brain.

Kinda kills me here

Here, let me introduce you to Cale, your future Husband - I mean, Headache ... no, actually, both.

The cover and titel of this story made pretty darn clear that this is going to be a story about a toxic as fuck relationship. That little foreshadowing from the first chapter also made a point of telling us that the seme did something to the uke, but we don't exactly know what yet, it must happen a few years later, when they are already out of school and college and working together as planned.
But there's still people surprised about the relationship being kinda toxic.

Cale is so cute. I ship him with basically every male character up to this point. It's insane.

I actually thought about it a while before I could narrow it down to a simple reason. It's that this story takes itself seriously and rightfully so.
You see, most stories with a premise similar to Mercenary Enrollment, especially when they are set in Highschool of all places, use to be trying to be funny way too hard. Most scenes where others would be wondering if that person is normal at all, they would be making jokes out of them. But the problem with that is, that you would need a certain type of character to roll this story. Like, when did this character start training, when he's only 17 now? First: Here, the MC is actually 19, which means they took the liberty to make him 9, an age where you can do shit with children already, instead of starting at 5 or 6, but he still had 10 years of hard war as a training ground in a terrible place. There will be things he doesn't understand, things that he can't handle, but you can't make a joke out of someone that spend years of his early childhood in a pool of blood.
So I laughed a lot during those 27 chapters (as of now), but it never felt forced. Like, when he unwraps a conbini bought Onigiri and doesn't know how, but watches stealthily how his friend does it. And how he's subtly happy about it. Or how the other three have an important talk about their bullying history, while he's indifferent about it. But when his new Onigiri falls out from its wrapping, you see his panicked expression. And of course, he would have no qualms about picking it up off the ground, because that must be something completely natural to him (not to waste any food and not minding a little bit of dirt). All of this makes him believable and it's funny, but also sad, because it tells you about how he grew up.
Like when he doesn't really understand what family is, but always wanted to know, as he had seen hardened fighters losing their heads over their family. He knows they are family and they show him affection he never knew or forgot over time. I might be always joking to myself when he's protective over Dayun, saying »Sis-Con-Senpai, so that's where you were«, but that's just a joke, because it actually makes sense more than anything. He just found this family, he doesn't want to lose it again. As he stated before and the guy who told that SW bitch she shouldn't keep looking into him, he simply wanted to come home.
But that also means, he would have actual fights. There's nothing that would make him think he shouldn't fight back, if others start it. Another thing that similar premised stories were missing a lot. Yu Ijin is a character you can take seriously. He still traumatized by what transpired in his past, his memories hurt him, eventhough he got used to it. Since it became part of his life, it's not the same as PTSD. Because he never left that environment, but had to grow accustomed and strong, so he could stand on his own. At some point, he was the one in charge, even if he couldn't get out - no, maybe he never thought of getting out in the first place, until that certain Hyung met him.
So what I'm trying to say is: Every story begins with a certain question. »What if?«, it says, »What if there was a child, dropped all alone and traumatized, in the middle of an active warzone, trying to survive among a bunch of mercenaries and guerilla fighters?«
There's child soldiers in reality, it's not something that couldn't happen, and not something no one could imagine either. But if you do something like this, you gotta do it right and I think this might be the very first time I found a story to my liking, when it comes to that specific kind of »What if?«

... but I think it's a shame they didn't do a little T/N for Nacht's comment about »a new morning« arriving, while he compared his brother, Morgen, to Asta in front of him. I mean, not everyone would know that »Morgen« is the german word for »Morning«. I actually thought getting that would be kind of important, as the phrase in and on itself seems pretty meaningless, if you don't interpret it like that. Like someone trying to sound deep but coming off as shallow with little to no meaning to it. Seems like a waste of that little wordplay, lol.
What? I said it was random.

You fucking homewrecker, go get run over by a bus or something. Can't believe this fucker. And where does he get off, calling Makoto a pervert and a cheater? Where did you drop your conscious, huh?

Everything about this Ahjussi is thick.

You know, I really WANT to like this webtoon. I really do. And it's not like I hate it or anything - the first season was fine for the most part, even with slight changes. If it hadn't been for that, I would have never found that novel, so I'm really greatful for it, actually! I also like the artstyle a lot - old and new - and even if I'm sad they changed his character design, I do know the new one is more true to the novels description of Soel Jihu. So even if I'm sad because his former stlye had some serious Claire Stanfield-vibes, I understand why they did it. What I DON'T understand, on the other hand, is why people like Ian Denzel don't look like themselves. His beard isn't anywhere near as long as it's described in the novel and he doesn't look like the old, childish Ian we got to know. He just ain't »Like 'em Tiddies«-Material - if you know what I mean. The same goes for Chung Chohong and Edward Dylan. In fact, the only Carpe Diem Member I can really place here would be Richard Hugo. But that's just the tip of the iceberg, when it comes to unnecessary and especially irritating changes.
And I know I have been bitching about this topic already, but please bear with me. I just can't understand why they had to change so many things. It's not just little things, like trying to be more suitable for children. I'm not a fan of it, but I know where they come from. From little changes like Soel-Ah wearing a skirt during the tutorial, which is briefly mentioned in the novel, but would have resulted in some weird involuntary pantyshot when she's sucked into the floorboards by the Phantom in the illustrated version, to bigger changes like Khan, who should have been hanging from a tree, ripped in half, with his entrails hangig down like ropes. Or the more sexual side of this story that the novel indulges in, which includes the fact that on the carriage to Haramark, they didn't lament about the fact that there's no woman with the three of them, no, there actually was a woman. An archer, claiming to be a level three. She gives Hugo a blowjob - in front of Alex and Soel - for money and when they stop at an Inn on the way, they have sex and Soel complaines because he can hear them. It's supposed to show you how raw the culture of paradise has become, especially since earthlings, used to the Internet and Television, arrived there, feeling bored by the limited ways of using their free time. Like the bar the webtoon starts its second season of on, it must be the »Eat, Drink and Enjoy«, which is the main place they gather to drink and enjoy their time, tho they don't even mention it here in the webtoon. He also doesn't visit the Plaza to find the note about Carpe Diem looking for a new member in shining gold. He also doesn't visit Carpe Diem after trying to find some information on them in the aforementioned bar, and ultimately being rejected by Edward Dylan. After that, he heeds Dylan's advice to start off as a porter to gain experience, before he tries to join a group. Doing so, he approaches Samuel about the job as a mule on his expedition, only to find out that Carpe Diem will also take part in said expedition. Everything that happens later, or at least a lot of it, centers around the fact that Soel has already visited Carpe Diem once before, only to be given the boot (albeit a gentle boot). It's fucking important. But they changed all of it.
But it doesn't end there. Just that one scene with the female Lioner? What the fuck happened here? Well, first of all, the second wind he gets here comes way too soon and a little out of nowhere. I understand you would want to make it happen faster to spare yourself the trouble of more panels in an illustrated work, but they could have at least conveyed what happened a little better. Like him being on the brink of having his skull cut in the middle by a fucking axe and rousing every ounce of power, especially his exorbitant Mana, to come to the rescue. So he presses against the female Lioner and pushes her axe back up, ever so slowly, but one can see she's not giving him any leeway, but shaking, trying to push him down, it just doesn't work. So she retreats, very dumbfounded by what transpired. He didn't cut her fancily and he didn't go into some weird Berserk mode, he simply went into his reserves and pulled out everything he had. He didn't overpower her greatly, but simply build up power to hold against her and build it up more to go against her, which happened slowly. That is also fucking important, since the reader here doesn't even get to know where his second wind came from. Or why his spear broke (btw in the novel it does break too, but it shatters alltogether into finger-sized splinters, because of the excessive Mana he poured into it).
Then the whole scene with Flone: Why? Just fucking WHY?! They just went fuck all and changed her whole character by changing up her backstory. And yes, I'm fairly positive that they don't randomly come up with a different backstory in the next chapter as if to say »We just didn't know the truth«, because what they showed already is going against everything from the novel. Her being in the tomb out of her own free will? WHUT? The sage cast the Denial-Spell to deny her every wish, they bound her to her mortal remains, fearing she would ever be able to get away. Because she's a vengeful spirit. And why is she a vengeful spirit, you ask? Because she was BuRIed ALiVe. She was FORCED to do so, because the families worth was waning and they could canonize her as a saintess to boost themselves a little. She hatet and cursed each and every one of them until she died in the coffin, so they needed to deny everything she wanted (to happen to them) and thus, the Forest of Denial was born, being only calm where the core of the spell was placed - right around the tomb. In this one, they didn't even explain how the whole Denial-thing came to happen, but that's probably because it wouldn't make an ounce of sense in this version.
She also stated a lot more clearly how she didn't want anyone to touch anything on the coffin on the left. When they entered, there was one plane and one marble coffin, of which the latter was heavily decorated with many powerful artifacts from the Empire (obviously), and Jihu was checking the color-state of the tomb the whole time, that's how he noticed when Alex and Clara started touching the prohibited goods.
They didn't only rush the whole scene about the ancestral rite, which would have explained a lot and even gave a little sidnote about Seol's father, who taught him how to go about an ancestral rite in the first place. You get to know how he tries to appease her and her toughts are way more warped and insane then they are here. Even with the changes made to safe a few panels, they could have at least taken the original backstory. Of course, she was buried with her husband, why with her father all of a sudden ...? That doesn't even check out.
And if that doesn't suffice, it's still not everything. The whole argument between Clara and Soel was a lot longer and more heated before he dropped the whole »over my dead body«-bomb on her. He had promised the Saintess not to touch her coffin, as everything on the coffin are keepsakes of her family. In this one, it wouldn't even make sense to take Clara out first. Okay, maybe she did also take things, but the relationship between the saintess and Soel wasn't developing here. Flone was eager and happy to meet someone who understood her, so she already liked Soel, but he even put everything back after the first fallout, apologizing to her that they touched her stuff. And when they go out, she wanted to watch him, so she followed him, because he was nice to her. He did it, not only out of fear, but out of a sense of duty, he even promised her to come back one in a while to perform more ancestral rites to appease her in the future, so she wouldn't be so lonely. He did that before leaving the tomb for the first time, so that time is already gone, too. That's why the Saintess liked him, that's why she followed him, and that it how she was able to catch the news of Samuel's team, trying to go back and get the stuff anyway, without the others knowing, while pretending they needed to calm down Clara. As Soel had aggitated her so much, she started crying like a bitch in the tomb and didn't stop even ten minutes later or so. They thought that she couldn't get them outside the tomb's ratio, so they thought they could simply steal stuff and run away with it, but Flone was alarmed, as she had heard them scheming. So only Soel, who was innocent - she heard them claerly going behind his back - could enter unhindered and apologized once again.
As you can see ... none of this should be able to happen in this version. It just doesn't make any fucking sense. It COULDN'T happen, as most factors don't occur in the Webtoon at all. Bitching Clara was a lot more annoying in the novel and she was a driving force, besides Aley and Samuel, so she was murdered in the most brutal way. Here, I don't know if she took something, but why would she be the first to be pulled back, if the Saintess could have prevented Alex from stepping outside first?

Now I know some people might want to say that the autor of the novel was surely involved in the making of this Webtoon and I won't deny that they might have approved, but that doesn't make it good. Like, I once liked Vampire Academy (even if it isn't superb writing, it's still a good series) but the movie played out like a spoof. I thought it was a parody, until I heard that Richelle Mead approved of every decision made while making the movie. Well, that doesn't mean it wasn't coming off as a spoof, it was an inkoherent disaster nonetheless. And this is the same. If the author approved of this shit, fine, but I can't believe someone would write something a great as The Second Coming of Gluttony and then go on to produce this garbage fire of an adaptation.
So far, there are no logical mishaps in the novel, but a ton in this webtoon. And yes, some of these only made themselves obvious because I read the novel and know a better way, but most of them seemed strange long before I even laid eyes upon the novel. Like the Saintess' story. Flone made sense in the original. She heard Seol Jihuu, got food from him for the first time in ages, heard for the first time that she was right in hating those fucks that buried her alive and that it was a terrible thing to do to her. She liked Soel, so she let them in under the condition that they wouldn't touch the left coffin. You understood the whole Denial-spell-thing, as well as how she turned into a vengeful spirit. You don't understand any of that in this version. She wanted to be buried? She wanted to protect someone, that's why there's a denial-spell here? She was buried with her father? They do mention her husband being in the tomb once, I remember correctly, when they consider from whom the note was, but later they say it's her father. Doesn't make fucking sense. Why would she be vengeful then? Because of some graverobbers? So why would she just be fine with them around? And in the novel they say that almost nobody ever made it out of the forest alive, so who would try to rob it anyway, apart from those fools right there? Just like that scene, when he simply had his phone back, right after coming from Paradise for the first time, this just doesn't make any sense. A huge plotpoint is Flone being bound to her remains, because they were afraid of her. Why would she be bound, if it was to protect her? That also makes zero sense.
And just to emphasize: I'm not spoiling anything here. I was only talking about a few of the bigger changes (plotholes and fuckups) that were made and how they affect the story in the long run. But ultimately, everything is said and done, so my info doesn't spoil the story as it is now, since it can't happen the way I know it anymore, it's broken beyond repair in those aspects. As I said: At some point, it simply feels like a different story alltogether anyway.
Maaaaan, that's not even half of the complaints I have, but it's the most urgent shit on my mind. I had to vent that somewhere.