Suicide Boy (6)

This one was something. I saw the title of it and said, "Alright what the hell is this."

I don't know how I feel about this comic! I liked it, but also I felt weird reading it because it was subtly horny and you could TELL. Which is very confusing especially since it's supposed to be talking about serious stuff like self-harm and depression. Like I would be reading it and enjoying it's strange dark humor, but then there would be random really suggestive stuff happening to the main character who is a suicidal TEENAGER and I would feel super gross. Somehow I read the entire thing through to it's up-to-date issue, because I really wanted the main character to get better and you know, have character development with the friends he made, but there's something off here. I literally just googled the title and suggestive pictures of the main character came up, I don't know how I avoided this until right now since whatever I saw was much less obvious, but there you go.

It was like watching a train-wreck. I genuinely wanted something good to come out of it, but you can tell it's someone's wet fantasy which is... so uncomfortable. It did have it's merits though, which is why I wanted it to get better.

A suicidal high schooler boy named Hoo-ni, who has no money to even pay rent, tries to kill himself in various ways because his mom passed away and is left with a gambling debt from his abusive father. Even that statement is a lot. He never succeeds because he doesn't think anything through and can't commit. He eventually becomes friends with the landlord's son (whose a middle schooler name Surim) and the kid who's at the top of Hoo-ni's class (a stoic tall kid named Jaehoon who only cares about school) and they eventually make Hoo-ni less depressed to the point where they start to not even talk about Hoo-ni's suicidal tendencies anymore. Jaehoon, who's really smart, stops only caring about himself when he realizes Hoo-ni cuts himself in the bathroom after being bullied in school, and starts to help him get away from the bullies. They form a highly unlikely friendship, which Hoo-ni is comically awkward about since he doesn't really have any friends, and he helps Hoo-ni get his grades up. Surim is an outgoing kid, who supposedly looks like a delinquent since he has piercings and blonde hair, makes Hoo-ni realize there's good people in the world and is just a good friend. The three of them hang out together and Hoo-ni is a lot happier. There's a fourth character who I guess is a self-insert of the author in some ways because his entire plot point is that he's a 15 year old child prodigy who makes manhwa for a living and uses Hoo-ni misfortune as his inspiration for his new comic. That's it. He just uses suicidal Hoo-ni so he can use the stories he tells for plot of his comic. 

He's a dick and he gets called out by Surim and realizes that he's a shitty person. I hate his character. I hate how the author of the comic made this character a shouta who got a drastic design change halfway through his screen time to look more feminine and slutty. Why??? Why was this character necessary to put in? The whole story could've maybe been a bit more passable without this character being portrayed like this. He could've had a redemption arc where he just became a better person, but no. You had to be horny about it. HE'S 15 AND HE'S THE MOST SUGGESTIVE I HATE IT. Thankfully the manhwa hasn't gotten far enough to give this character more screen time, so we were saved there.

I'm so upset because I genuinely liked where the story was headed and then this character happened (amongst other weird things but) and I don't even know how to feel. At least it was entertaining, I guess.