I saw that there was a top list for the socalled "Korean Mangos" or "Manhwa" and while i normally don't trust MAL's top list, i started the top rated one Bastard and finished it in a relatively short time.
Bastard has a simple premise, a father likes girls so much he wants to kill them and his son is his accomplice despite not wanting to be it he drags along since Jin (the Son) is afraid of his father. After yet another murder he gets punched to crap by a slave of the big bully of his school (Manny), he is a very weak boi, but is saved by a transfer student who he falls in love with, the problem here is that this transfer student named Kyun Yoon is the next target of Dongsoo (the father), and thus a very fast paced thriller,with interesting Characters and some silly plotholes is born.
The police basicially doesn't care the first half of the story, since they kill at home it should be pretty obvious that the police would investigate the victims last place, but they for some reason don't even bother. Yet again this could be overlooked but the amount of plotholes and stupid plot convenient moments really showed over time, Dongsoo is following his son pretty god-damn often despite being a CEO in a big ass company and a famous murderer, he also has the ability to teleport everywhere.
The Characters are, pretty well written and unlike most Manga they show rather Humen reactions to disturbing shit, yet while this is a good thing and also the trauma of Jin is again a good thing, the Characters sometimes overreact so much its just edgy and pretty dumb.
The most problematic Character in the story is in my humble opinion Kyun, she got her own story but most of the time she is just used as a reminder that Jin has indeed something to loose.
The art is no the best but the panel structure is great, the same panel with only slight differences to show Character reactions or to show that time passes in the story is great, yet while the Characters look pretty neat i found that the backgrounds looked...rather shit.
Its hard to go into detail on the Characters/story without spoiling things so here...
SPOILER WARING
Ahhhh father-son relationships are wonderful, Bastard is basically that, a story about a rather complicated father-son relationship, i'll get to that later.
While i found the Characters to be overall kinda well written I have a big chunk of complaints about them, Manny is the big bully of the school but later trains Jin to get stronger simply for the sake of his father. The back and forth of his Character was pretty nice to read, showing off as a bully but being "friends" with Jin after school, yet after he lost his legs and finds out that the only person to care about him is Jin and to some extend Kyun. Afterwords Jin tells him about his father and Manny therefore sends this black guy after him, he proofed that Dongsoo his a murderer but also that Jin is his accomplice,later the black guy discovered that he abused Jin and shouldve told Manny, if not it's dumb if yes It's pretty dumb that Manny still wants to avenge his family with Jin, he knew he got abused and that he was the only person to still care about him yet he wanted to smash his legs. Still this is the biggest Character/writing flaw with his Character and i still think he is to some extend well writtin.
Jin and Dongsoo are different caliber, tho. Jin thought of Dongsoo as an enemy since his last memory before the accident that made him so weak is his father standing at the edge of the roof, he thinks that his father wanted to kill him if he is not useful anymore, later on he suddenly remembers (for plot conveniences of course), that he and his father killed for fun ever since he was young. He had the same "Demon" inside of him but through the accident he suppresed the so-called "Demon" and altered his memories, so he can blame it all on the bad daddy. That is of course a nice idea but evokes some problems, why would his dad if he cares so much for his son traumatize him, he knew that he is not the same as him but still. Some might say thats cause he is a psychopath, but no one is born a psychopath or at least not a mass murdering one, i wouldve loved some reasoning why Dongsoo killed all those woman but got none. At the end there is the end of the story, which i find rather problematic Jin forgave his father just because he remembered that in his childhood he had fun killing woman and Dongsoo starts chilling just because his Son forgave him, telling him everything. He kills himself knowing he has no "beast" as a Son, but if this is what he hoped for, why even try to traumatize the own son, why not trying to hide his killing and then knowing for sure that his son is safe. If we on the other had got more background childhood information on Dingsoon this could've made sense, but we got none, so this was rather odd and felt quite dumb, just for the sake of a happy end.
My last major criticism would be the middle part, it just developed the completely obvious romance and got some development on both Jin and Kyun, yet about 2/3 through the story Kyun felt like a silly mary sue always doing the right, forgiving and underdeveloped Character, yet after the middle part arc she got a bit better developed. The female killer was, again, only used for the arc to develop Jin and Kyun, she had some kind of story wich felt rather superficial but still for what we got understandable, to some extent.
END OF SPOILER
Final Verdict/TLDR:
6.1/10
Its not the greatest thriller but it has enough heart to let me forgive some of the silly things. Very captivating with a little downfall of quality in the middle, it recovered fast enough and kept me engaged. Its ok to hate on it if you really can't stand the stupid moments but its also oki to love it if you can overlook some of its silly moments. I highly enjoyed this rather quick Korean thigy and would recommend it to everyone searching for a fast pace edgy thriller.
If you wanna hate on the review pls go do so, i would love to hear some other opinions on the story, of course stay friendly. Thats all i had to say, stay healthy and kill your chicks you cheecky Bastard, have a nice day ;)
