Lookism

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Honestly really loved iti, it was really simple at the start but then the storyline got kinda murked by the side characters which was fun at first since i liked the factions and stuff but its such a deviation?? that i feel like its long, mixed with the author really wanting to do something else but was limited by how the storyline was where he couldnt progress by normal worldbuilding means. But that really doesnt take away from the fact that it was a good read.

The artstyle is actually good, it gets better but i find myself rereading and liking the beggining of the story ... more, like around 50-200 chapters or so. I put the manga on hold for a while after the whole factions and GD revelation with the CEO so i can only imagine the newer characters and plotpoints introduced into the story.

The premise is objectively interesting. but i didnt get what i wanted. Clearly many swaths of people did get what the wanted. I just dont understand the prolific existance of thug manhwas. every fucking manhwa that i read (that is set in modern wold excluding hunter type shit) evolves into an thug manhwa. Is there reason? Thez fight one guy, he calls some guy upper in the food chain and so on. always the same formula. The commentary on "lookism" is very surface level. It points it out so ...obviously? It feels like it is spoon feeding us the social commentary." wow they are mean ... to the fatso but completely different to the looker" no shit thats the whole point. I would have loved it if i ´t where to have more relationship focused drama and not the gang wars. Also the guy has 2 bodies but we gonna ignore that?

well it is apparently good and i have a thing for giving it a real chance, reading it till "it gets good" but what i find was just more nonsensesical fights.

PS checked the last chapters (550 or smth) and they still fighting. Mainm character is no where find tho, couldnt find him in the last three chapters.

I am more so disappointed by this manhwa because I have been told for so much time about how great the manhwa is and I decided to wait for the adaptation. I also read quite a bit of the manhwa after finishing the anime so my point later point still stands.

Lookism is a bad piece of media. It tries to have a moral message, but fails in every way imaginable.

The main message is that the world is vain and treats you differently based on how you look. This is presented by showing us how the MC is bullied in school, before he gets ... a new body and suddenly becomes popular.

Now first of all, what is this message supposed to be?? That it is alright to be ugly? I don't get it.

Throughout the series we are supposed to think that behavior is more important than looks and that it is unfair for people to be judged by them, but this makes no sense.

The morality in the show as the npc characters see it is something like.
Ugly- hated by all as if they were demons
Bland/normal- ignored
Beautiful- everything they do is saintly

Do I have to explain how childish this is?

Later in the series it is explained that the reason the main character was so fat was due to his diet (his poor mother somehow managed to get enough money to feed him immensely).

So if he had a better diet, he would have been ignored and hence not bullied. How is this a lesson?

Even later there is this rich girl character that I won't spoil her name, she basically grades people with an inverse scale of what I put above, as in beautiful people are evil blah blah....

And she thinks that ugly people are somehow nicer? Just because they're ugly? Supposedly because they have two compensate through personality. The show acts like she is in the right...

Like sure, they make her be partially proven wrong by being impressed with how the beautiful body of the MC acts, but this only means that she will be proven right when she learns of his two body state. I have to state that at least up to the point that I read he's beautiful. Body is the only handsome nice person that she met. Delusional.


Secondly, on the MC being bullied thing, It doesn't make sense. It's just so over the top nonsense with how cruel they are...
And the fact that he gets bullied right after moving to the new city... How is this a lesson that people are vain? Doesn't it just mean that he is cursed?

Besides, in a way the manhwa proves that it was right for him to get bullied as a punishment.



This might sound strange, but the main character is a horrible human. We are shown how badly he treats his mother despite her hard work. He doesn't only wear the skin of a pig but he has the mentality of one. He picks on the week just like his bullies (in this case, someone lower on the hierarchy being his mother). How are we supposed to care about him?

The first episode the webtoon tries to portray him as some kind of good person, or at least the only good one in his school, but that is not the case.

And then he gets a new body with no explanation and no effort.

He gets to have perfect looks and ultimate strength with no effort. Later it is proved that he doesn't even need to do sports to keep his shape. He can eat the same horrible diet and still keep it. But he still does sport as some kind of proof of effort? To show that he is a good person? Doing something that helps you with literally nothing? All that time he could have further spent on training his fighting skills, but he gets them for free( with no effort) just like how he got his body.

Why does the manhwa portray effort in such a bad way? To make the main character bs his way out of conflicts through techniques he learns out of nowhere (I will explain in the third point) or a biology that isn't a human's. His body works on the notion that all his muscles are trained to perfection and he somehow has natural instincts to ignore techniques that bypass brute strength. And this is barely explained. I swear some Isekai protagonists make more sense with their powers.








Thirdly, I think it is disingenuous how the manhwa portrays looks.

The moral of the story would like to say that behavior is more important than appearance and that the main character would not have gotten as popular as he did if he had his normal body despite doing the same actions, but that isn't a fair comparison.

80% of the "good" things the MC managed to do in his "good" body could have only been possible in it. A big deal of he is popularity came from his physical prowess, something he didn't have to practice for.

It is bullshit for his body to be perfect and to be able to beat everyone with no skill nor technique. The author brings up this abominable idea that the main character can learn moves on the fly just from seeing them once or that he can dodge masterfully because he got beat up so much in the past. But those are cliches and make no sense. It is explained that his intelligence is the only thing that wasn't affected through the swap. So how is he such a master at learning fighting techniques? People don't realize how much training and practice comes before talent in martial arts.

You can't just learn this stuff by getting beat up because if that was the case all street thugs would be MMA world champions.

It is illogical for someone who supposedly had a terrible diet based on cheap food and scraps (so an undeveloped the brain), someone who didn't spend any time learning in school( so double times an undeveloped brain), to become like this. He biologically doesn't have the capacity for it.


I am taking so much time to write this because I have had this recommended to me as some sort of philosophical work about morality and how our society functions.

It is clear that it is the early work of an author as it reeks of naivety and inexperience. Maybe it gets better later, but I doubt it. Even if that is true, a story becoming "good" after 400 chapters is preposterous.

If you want a moral piece of art, this is not it. You have nothing to learn from it. It is just a delusional interpretation of how the world works made from the perspective of a hateful person.

If you want an action flick with delinquents, this is also not it. There are a ton of power ups and whatever. Nine peaks and clover are much better delinquent mangas or viral hit, weak hero of you like manhwa.