Up until the end of the first season, this manhwa was keeping itself together well, the main character becoming entangled with gang life, starting as a loser who lost it all and slowly becoming a hard-working loser who's starting to earn his life, making friends, training, protecting who he holds dearly and earning his pay.
Unlike most Japanese mangas, this manhwa established itself focusing more on the youth gangs, rather than the school, comparable to either the Tong/Blood Rain series or Bakuon Rettou, however, unlike, for example, the aforementioned Tong, which is also korean, To Not Die completely blundered it's switch to the more serious aspects of gang-life in the second season.
Instead of actually establishing the gang as an entity, it became just the background character for the main-characters and their hero friends. Their gang, even if more of a "companionship of homeless kids" (what small local gang isn't) than a part of the mafia, is the front line of goodness, always protecting their kids and their community against the comically evil villain gangs, which, if you hadn't notice how evil they are, love kidnapping old ladies, promoting prostitution, redistributing drugs and being sadistic for the sake of it. The main character, the lovable hardworking loser, suddenly becomes a jacked calculating monster, as if all the korean cultivation, cheat code, OP character manhwas slowly poisoned this work, becoming no different from all the kortrash you've ever read. The fights are boring, the villains are awfully written, the friendships bland, and the setting is uncreative.
Finishing up, as you can see, I do not like this manhwa, especially as a lover of the delinquent troupe, and To Not Die started very well, which made all the more sad, not to say that koreans can't do delinquent works, the whole Dokgo/Tong/Blood Rain series are one of my favorite manhwas ever, and Bal Jak is a classic of the genre, however, this one, just ain't it.
