Bones

That was absolute garbage of the highest calibre… or the greatest, satirical Manhwa in history. I can't deny, there's probably something here. It's the story of a kid in one of those gated worlds with ranks on who is born with certain abilities that give them status and power. He has an ability, regeneration, at the cost of the area becoming magical bone. It hurts, it hurts so much every time, but it's an ability. Here's the edgy ass twist. His mom is paralyzed by bullies, who then throw him into a red gate, known to be impossible to survive. Immortal kid comes back as abone monster, killing ensues. We've seen it, millions of times. The protagonist suffers every living moment due to a piece of garbage who puts him in that predicament. This story isn't planed out to touch that with a purpose, or a meaning, no, “Bones” is an artistic exercise in suffering. “Bones” is a question, “how far can we go?”. How far can a story go until it runs out of suffering? How can a story go so far up its backside, that we can see its head again? It's maddening that this exists. The peak of schizo stories, the highest love letter to insanity, all with an artistic flair that I can't deny exists. “Bones” captures the essence of talent in artistic visual style, and its combination with the most terrible, edgy, violent writing you can imagine. It's like the author was genuinely masturbating while writing this. A boner of pure revenge, and meaning to suffering from our main character who enacts the highest of sufferings to the world until it all collapses into itself and begins anew. It gets to a point where you can even call it unique, from being so bad. So edgy, so far, so brutal, so great-looking, so weird, and stupid, so brilliantly dumb and exaggerated. If someone asked the author about his intent, and he said it was satire, I'd believe him in a heartbeat. The story never agrees with its main character, it never agrees with the villains when it all crumbles away in the story, it only looks at everything from omniscience. I read a terrible edgy story recently, but that one agreed with the characters, and it seemed to reinforce that their horrible actions were right. “Bones” feels like it criticizes everything it's portraying. An avant-garde webtoon with the intent on questioning the reader for even engaging with the material. Usually, the victim's revenge on the bully is the whole story. This is more about the bully being the only one who can come to terms with his horrors, and try to change so he can beat the main character's quest to end the world. Does anything even matter in the end? No, it truly does not, and it makes sense. The story never took a side ultimately. The bully can't stop this thing, for as much as he changes for the better, and accepts his horrible perspective. It denies even the bad guy his good, it denies the good guy his bad, it denies the witness ignorance, it denies you, the reader, of any semblance of meaning. “Bones” ultimately is about every single side of the story being so skewed it makes no sense. Suffering is inherently irrational. The ones doing it, the ones receiving it, the ones looking at it, the ones who could, or couldn't stop it. Suffering makes no sense, and the idea that we're watching eternal suffering for every single character with no meaning, has some sort of… meaning. Why did I read this? Why did it keep me reading? It's such a short story, too. Quickly done, quickly over. It doesn't overstay its welcome, it does its weird-ass thing, and goes away. The author clearly didn't intend to stay here too long, and maybe, just maybe, it was all satire. It could, and if it is, an amazing job. If it's a satire, 8/10. If it isn't, 3/10. Average? 5.5/10. I'd recommend it, even if it isn't satire, it's fun to read it as a terrible Manhwa.