Lookism- Webtoons Review

Lookism- Webtoons Review

Viktoria Zarate, Writer

Hello Wonderful Readers! I am back with another Webtoon Review because I have nothing to write about and Webtoon is currently curing my tremendous boredom. If you don’t know Line Webtoon is the American sister website to NAVER Webtoon, a webcomics app created in South Korea. It has countless webcomics ranging from action, horror, romance, comedy and so much more (with the bonus of being FREE!!).  If you didn’t know I did another review called Nice Meet You and if you interested in me blabbing of a cute RomCom comic link here. But the comic I am talking about today is…uh not that. I don’t mean that it’s bad, not at all,  this comic is now my top 3 favorite comics of all time, period. I don’t think anything will come close to how amazing this comic is ever.  But if you’re expecting it to be like the last comic I talked about, a cute, cheesy comic then you will be completely wrong. Strap in readers I am going to show you the legendary comic called Lookism.

Lookism | WEBTOONLookism is a South Korean Comic written and illustrated by Park Tae-Joon. The story is about is high schooler named Daniel Park (his Korean name is Hyungseok Park but I am using the English version) who gets constantly bullied for his ugly appearance. He decides to exchange schools for a fresh start where once again he fears he’ll be bullied again for how he looks. Once he starts to have no hope, he wakes up in a different body, but this time this body is physically strong, tall, and handsome. Now, he has 2 bodies! His old body and his new one.  And every time Daniel goes to sleep in one body, he would wake up in the other body that was sleeping. Discovering this he goes to school with his new body and he learns how different you get treated solely based on your looks. In Korea, Lookism (or the action of discrimating against a person purely based of how ugly or beautiful they are) is huge issue and is a huge theme within the comic.

Old V new | Lookism AminoOne reason why I love this comic so much is the art style. At first, when you read Lookism it doesn’t look bad but not good either. The author tried to go for a realistic art style but over the years the author changed it for less realistic style which was the right choice to make. I am going to show you the main character in the old style and the new style as his old body. The one on the left is the old style and the one on the right is the new art style. The art really looks really good, it really looks nice and clean and the art at the beginning soon will start to get better over time. Every character design is unique and distinct for every character. I am not an expert on how to describe how great artwork is but the art is impressive. This comic is a drama but it also is an action series for having so many fights. The fights in this are fantastic, they all have such great attention to detail in every fight. And the author utilizes many different fighting styles to make the action even better. There are boxing, wrestling, Mai Tai, Brazilian jiu-jitsu, Karate and so many more different fighting styles. They all stem from seeing different combinations of attacks from different sides and it is cool to see real-world fighting styles. In a way it adds a sense of intensity to the fights, and grounds this comic which can get a little exaggerated

 

 

Another reason why this comic is amazing is because of the characters. My God these Characters! I can’t stress enough how these characters are fantastic. Every character that is in this comic has importance to the plot, no character in this comic is useless in any way. All of the main characters who are friends of Daniel are all very likable. They all have such a charm to them and every character has a unique relationship with each other and it makes every interaction entertaining to read. All the characters get character development, in one way or another and this just makes them even more likable. Daniel starts as a character who was a very scared little loser who used his other body as an advantage to get him out of trouble. Later on in the comic, he soon realizes his faults, tries to improve himself, and doesn’t want to always rely on his new body, he soon becomes a character you want to root for in the end. There are some characters who reverse a stereotype that make them more realistic. There is this one character that I absolutely love and her name is Zoe. She starts off as a regular popular girl who uses her looks to impress Handsome-Daniel but later she becomes a really good person who wants to help any way she can, including Ugly-Daniel. She is a great character. Even the antagonist characters are amazing, as you get to understand how they got to where they are which makes them more sympathetic. It makes the people not all monsters but real people. And if they become heartless monsters, you at least get to understand how they became who they are.

I highly recommend this comic to everyone because I feel like it doesn’t get enough attention as it deserves. This comic has a great art style, a very interesting plot, and fantastic characters that anyone can enjoy. This comic is on Webtoon and it is still ongoing with over 300 episodes. I know it is a lot of episodes but trusts me, this comic is worth every single one.