The Devil's Boy

The Devil's Boy (악마의 소년) is a Korean Supernatural, Horror web manhwa published by Lezhin Comics. It was written by Kirin and illustrated by Jihyun. It was inspired by the classic German Folklore legend about Faust, and the archdevil, Mephistopheles.

Plot
An 18 year old high school student named Jungho, is viciously bullied and humiliated by delinquents and bullies like a dog while all of the students including his classmates ignored him. As he keeps trying to take his own life injuring himself, an archdevil named Mephistopheles casts a spell that exchanges the injuries to his bullies and offers Jungho, magical powers that he uses to kill his tormentors for revenge along with his soul being exchange. As a result, he spends the rest of his time torturing his tormentors with his powers from the archdevil in a form of a kitchen knife that he used to injure himself from said knife and transfer his injuries to others. But, Jungho should know one thing in this cruel world. As he realized he is but a pawn to a much larger game played by angels, demons, and exorcists.

Why It Sucks

 * 1) Similar to the manga/anime, Death Note, the manhwa has the generic "deal with the devil" scenario along with the "my life is worse than a living hell" trope where an innocent protagonist is consumed and corrupted from the power of the devil's bargain, but that takes itself WAY TOO SERIOUSLY without any lack of levity, as it goes on in later chapters to get the lamb out of the farm.
 * 2) *As a result, it should have turned the "deal with the devil" scenario into a dead horse with a non-existent revenge story towards exaggerated cruelty that NOBODY ever asked for.
 * 3) As to get the lamb out of the room, this story is extremely mean-spirited and utterly soulless as everyone, including the delinquents constantly abuses Jungho, the manhwa's main protagonist for their sick amusement and goes as far as to kill anyone who treated him so poorly by pleading them to commit their sins instead of just telling his teachers about it. But making him a torturous killer doesn't make him a good protagonist and he acts very unheroic as the series goes on, making him unable to grow up (see below).
 * 4) The title can sometimes feel nonexistent and predictable, but this feels like it came from some fan-made story that nobody asked.
 * 5) It maybe a supernatural horror series, but it clearly has no idea that it would be TOO edgy enough, with plenty of things about remorse, which is the problem of it.
 * 6) False Advertising:
 * 7) *The third season's main cover shows Jungho holding his knife and with red hair and a black horn in his right side of his head in his school uniform, and that doesn't happen in the manhwa at all.
 * 8) It acts more like an advertisement so that other people would be interested in the manhwa.
 * 9) Similar to the manga, Magical Girl Site, it attempts to be a darker, yet serious story but ends up relying on exaggerating cruelty as it goes on. Also, it feels like it's made for teenage edgelords.
 * 10) Throughout the manhwa, it focuses more on the bullies than the main characters, who are more than the real "actual" villains than Mephistopheles, Lilith, and Beelzebub whom the devils are supposed to be pure evil and twisted.
 * 11) Despite being too dark, it tries to embrace that revenge is just a "happy place" for them, but justified the fact that revenge by killing people won't solve the problem.
 * 12) Since it is a Korean web manhwa, it even rips off, plagerizes and strongly steals a lot of ideas from other similar series and medias like especially Tokyo Ghoul, Puella Magi Madoka Magica, Elfen Lied, Berserk, High School DXD, Bleach, Magical Girl Site, and the music video, Brittle Bones Nicky by Rare Americans. All of them suffer the same case from that manhwa.
 * 13) *For Tokyo Ghoul, it gives Ken Kaneki/Jungho, his tragic past where he is treated like an outcast. But, It's as just an excuse when he has white hair along with some ghoul-like tentacles.
 * 14) *For Puella Magi Madoka Magica, it involves giving a contract for a person and will determine his/her fate.
 * 15) *For Elfen Lied, it borrows ideas of using vectors as giant hands.
 * 16) *It severely plagerizes Magical Girl Site with similar plot threads like a person getting his school stuff vandalized, treating school teachers like morons nor smart learners, along with someone being pressured so hard, that it would get a person to be abused for not putting high efforts on education and makes a person, an uncaring sociopath.
 * 17) *In Bleach, it rip offs Hollows, but as an armor similar to Berserk and High School DxD.
 * 18) *For Brittle Bones Nicky, the main character has an abusive father who abandons him, and a bully harassing him to the point of the latter proving that he is not a pushover by beating up people back.
 * 19) Uncharismatic characterization for the characters who just written to be dull, uninteresting, and act like a bunch of lifeless fools that try the justify their unforgiving actions even it's unrealistic. That shows that the creators of series did not even care or had any experience about the characters they were creating:
 * 20) Jungho is a poor man's rip off of Ken Kaneki, the main protagonist of the manga/anime, Tokyo Ghoul and also Takemichi Hanagaki from Tokyo Revengers. Like them, he is an unheroic, yet vengeful boy who takes a strong hatred on his bullies by torturing them. As a normal person, Jungho is treated like a poor weak lamb who never even fights back and somewhat gets himself into a nasty situation with his bullies as they torture him in pain and tie him up. As such, he even breaks his morals and tries to torture them nonstop like they did, too. Proving that Jungho never grows up like a normal boy.
 * 21) The only thing Jungho fights are just bullies and devils, that's all. He even delivers his own purpose and desire his bullies to commit their sins and dies for it as he proclaims, "I'm gonna kill them all!", making him more of a villain than a sympathetic bullied person.
 * 22) When he was a child, he had an abusive father yanked her mother to the hair just for him sleeping/cheating with another woman and doesn't understand her by leaving as a divorce. When Jungho was 18 and trying best with scores on his school exams, his mother became a drug addict losing hope of being divorced by his husband from said cheating to another woman.
 * 23) He even admires Lee Yoonhee as his crush, which rips off Ken and Rize in Tokyo Ghoul.
 * 24) In later chapters, we see him get beaten up at school along in class, at the bathroom and outside of the outskirts of Korea by delinquents led by the main bully, Jae Galhwa.
 * 25) He maybe innocent but he never tell his teachers about the incident and his injuries Jungho gets during getting tortured and beaten by Jae Galhwa is just sickening and too realistic, even by manhwa, manga, anime or real world standards.
 * 26) He acts as an impatient, yet whiny man-child who goes off to kill his tormentors by using his magical powers from Mephistopheles' deal.
 * 27) *Throughout later chapters, Jungho later becomes a red-headed laughing, full-blown sociopath who wears a red mask to squander, torture and kill delinquents (who are needed to be exposed by the public) and pretends to act like the victim compared to the delinquents that torment him.
 * 28) *IDIOT MOVE: He tried to use his knife while he was cuffed by ropes from Jae Galhwa and his gang. However, Galhwa sees it and stabs him.
 * 29) Lee Dongho is a small, obese classmate of Jungho who has been a perfect target by the delinquents due to his small frail size and has been that way for 18 years, seriously. While he befriends Jungho and Wie Jinoh, Dongho is always used and forced by Jae Galhwa and his gang to beat up Jungho at school or somewhere outside.
 * 30) *Dongho was often sent by Jungho to try to threaten his classmates by using a radio cassette recorder to kill the teacher who was revealed to have been peeping female students, ostracized and harassed good teachers who just wanted their jobs by making their lives miserable just like his bully, Jae Galhwa.
 * 31) *At the end of the series, Dongho is never seen again and will never get his happy ending.
 * 32) Lee Yoonhee is too similar to Rize Kamishiro from Tokyo Ghoul who has similar attractives with Jungho and Ken Kaneki. She is a very weak girl who doesn't fight back at Jae Galhwa and his gang, who also treated women very poorly. After Galhwa and Lee Dongho beat up Jungho in the warehouse, Yoonhee later commits suicide when she and Jungho go to a Tarot Card Reading to meet the fortune teller to predict her future was just because Jungho was unable to fight back at his bullies.
 * 33) Leviathan is also too similar to Rize Kamishiro, who is also the source of Ken's/Jungho's powers in their subconscious minds.
 * 34) Jungho's teacher is a poor representation of what teachers would act. As such, He does witnessed Jungho being beaten by Jae Galhwa and his gang, whom thought they were teenage gangsters instead of students, he tries to take them to the principal's office, but they ignore and leave disrespectfully.
 * 35) *In episode 39, when Jungho was absent, he thinks Jungho's like any idiots that would make him nuts if the principal was gonna fire him for his absence. The teacher is later revealed that (as mentioned in WIS #18.2), that he was actually a jerk like like Jae Galhwa, who peeps female students, harrassed teachers that are nice for their jobs, and just proves that he is a neglectful teacher.
 * 36) Jungho's classmates act like ignorant jerks who coincidentally ignore Jungho being bullied by delinquents. When Galhwa posted an embarrassing picture of Jungho, they start to torment him just like the delinquents. They become much delusional after their teacher often suffered a stroke and one classmate tried to call the ambulance was slit to the throat by telekinesis and learned about the teacher's troubles. One male student uses a box cutter to threaten the teacher to sacrifice himself until the police officers intervene. But, the damage was done when Dongho stabbed the teacher which led him to be arrested when he and Jungho's plan nearly failed.
 * 37) *Speaking of Galhwa posting the picture of Jungho to the public to see, it shamelessly plagiarized Fred's humiliation in Fred: The Movie.
 * 38) Jae Galhwa's father, Galhyun and her wife are too similar to Aya's adopted parents from Magical Girl Site. Like them, the father disciplines his son like a greedy homeschool teacher, forcing his wife for a divorce in order to keep Galhwa into studying, for skipping an expensive lesson to his education and considers Galhwa as a useless loser.
 * 39) *He is also the source of his son's violent bullying, delinquent nature that beats up and tortures his victims in pain as a nobody who believes Galhyun is not his "real" father anymore.
 * 40) *When Galhwa was 18, he is often aware of his crimes and tries to disown him and not go near her mother. And for the mother, she does care about his son but there's a difference where she abandoned him in favor of a new husband and son, leaving Galhwa to be a nobody and an aggressive bully.
 * 41) The bullies and delinquents are depicted as malicious Korean stereotypes who sometimes showed ignorance and disrespect to their teachers, students, classmates, parents (those that were abusive), and the police. But, they are taken too seriously to be villainous and are definitely the worst characters in this series, but they are very unrealistic to be like this.
 * 42) *Since then, they only care about beating the weak (without good motivation), which will make these incidents too juvinile. They often threatened their victims to injure themselves so that they would get away scot-free. Thus, their behaviors (where they rely on their tongues to open up from their mouths for their disgusting tendencies) make them rip offs of the Tokyo Manji Gang and other minor delinquents from Tokyo Revengers:
 * 43) **Jae Galhwa is basically a poor man's Saizo Komiya from Rosario + Vampire, Masataka Kiyomizu from Tokyo Revengers, Henry Bowers from It and Billy Hargrove from Stranger Things with a similar juvinile behavior. In it, Galhwa is a sadistic, laughing, one dimensional delinquent who enjoys torturing and beating up people (who considers them as weak losers that are not older, or taller than him). He is definitely the WORST character in this manhwa where he's done many sinful things to Jungho, Dongho, Yoonhee, and others.
 * 44) **#Aside from being a the main bully/delinquent of this series, he is shown to be more malicious, recklessly cunning, and clever than any other delinquents different than him and is a nasty teenager with no uncaring qualms of his actions that he won't even learn.
 * 45) **#He is even much more sadistic and evil than Mephistopheles, Lilith, and Beelzebub, whom are supposed to be twisted and evil.
 * 46) **#He constantly tortures Jungho every single day by attacking him, torture him, harming him, kidnapping him, and pretends to be the victim such as:
 * 47) **##Using cigarettes to poke and scar.
 * 48) **##Threatened others to lick his spit on the floor so he and his gang can laugh at him (which makes it absolutely disgusting).
 * 49) **##Spills milk on people's head.
 * 50) **##Tying up people.
 * 51) **##Manipulate others to beat them up.
 * 52) **##Take embarrassing photos of his victims to humiliate and ruined their lives.
 * 53) **##Beat up others whenever they're in the bathroom, outside, or the classroom (whom he would leave and ignore the classroom's teacher).
 * 54) **#As a tormentor, his favorite target will always be Jungho and Lee Dongho, who thinks beating up people would be his own "fun" and taunts them of why he's tormenting them was only because they're weak losers whenever he sees them and hopes he ruins their lives.
 * 55) **#He constantly treats his gang poorly and threaten them to obey his orders.
 * 56) **#Galhwa's backstory revolving on that generic "having high standards" subplot, that shamelessly steals ideas from Kaname Asagiri's subplot from Magical Girl Site where it was revealed that his father was a domestic abuser and a greedy educator who pressures his son to work with expensive lessons for his education. He had his mother divorced from him, leaving him to endure vowing to get revenge on his father for all the abuse he had did and considers his parents aren't his "real" ones, making him a nobody.
 * 57) **##Much to his anger and this disgraced, Galhwa spent days and years beating up people by stealing their money to prove he is not a useless loser by his father, and had his gang burned Wie Jinoh's house. After that, he should have bother to tell his family's butler about his problem. But that does not help after Galhwa was giving a present for her mother. Her mother however returned it to his father, which Galhwa thinks he has no right to treat him like this and no longer thinks his own father or mother as his "real" child.
 * 58) **#It was said that when he was used to be a good friend to Lee Shiyun, who is the only one he trusted until he was killed and possessed by a devil named Beelzebub, Mephistopheles' rival.
 * 59) **#*After Shiyun disappeared, Galhwa begun to think that his friend is no different than others for attacking him, and often sees people who bumped him including Jungho deserved to be beaten and tortured, but thinks "playing" with them would make himself proud for his satisfactory and gain.
 * 60) **#Galhwa is often malicious to ignored and showing disrespect to his father, his teachers (when he leaves the school and never comes every Monday through Friday) and the police who are aware of his behavior whenever he beats up others. But, cares about picking on the weak and nothing else. Even, to the point that he goes out of nowhere and targets Jungho, nonstop whenever he's not at school.
 * 61) **#He even had Jungho made Yoonhee get close to him when she messed with him, and used Dongho to spy on Jungho.
 * 62) **#He is even more unlikeable when he used a bullied victim, Dongho to force him into beating Jungho up at his classroom and at a warehouse, by kidnapping him and Lee Yoonhee. Thus this incident led Jungho to become a vengeful killer after Yoonhee's suicide because of Galhwa.
 * 63) **#Then, after tying Jungho by torturing him once again after framing his underling, Seokmu for thinking that he killed his gang, he was about to be arrested from the Chief Inspector of the Violent Unit at Lezhin Precinct, Lee Jaehyun and easily beaten him proves that he is a Karma Houdini.
 * 64) **##So, after stabbing Jungho, Galhwa did not care about killing him and avoids getting caught by the police and his cronies who are afraid of him. He even just stands around smoking without any remorse of his life.
 * 65) **##Since killing Jungho resulted to be awakened in a new form, and Galhwa is beaten for what he did.
 * 66) **#In the climax, he gets all of the powers from Beelzebub, Mephistopheles' rival, then murders Jungho's mother and art teacher with no remorse.
 * 67) **Jang Seokmu is just another musclebound partner who is not as stronger or barely fights better than Galhwa, whom always treated him poorly, beat him up, and then kill him. He was also shown to dislike Galhwa whenever he uses him to beat up people, but shifts to even if he is trusted. He gets framed by Jungho for killing his gang of delinquents, and tried to hunt him down for that.
 * 68) **Lee Kyungjoon is another distrusting, yet innocent bully, who used to help Galhwa torture Jungho and threatening him to use a cigarette to injure his arm and his tongue. After Jungho used his magical kitchen knife to transfer injuries on him, he was aware that Galhwa did not treat his gang like this and gets hospitalized for betraying him.
 * 69) **The group of male and female bullies who tormented the girl before making the deal with Mephistopheles are extremely one-dimensional delinquents who have no reason to physically abused her and do not get their punishment whatsoever and we never learn about them.
 * 70) The final battle between Jungho and the possessed Wie Jinoh (after he killed Wie Jinoh) was anti-climatic. Then, Jungho sparing Galhwa.
 * So, Jae Galhwa decides to use Jungho's knife in order to commit suicide by himself, but thinks no one will never mourn him.
 * 1) From the dark tone itself, it doesn't know what it wants to be and just cares more on treating Jungho being treated like a sore weak loser who tries killing his tormentors instead of having those to punish them while Jae Galhwa is a selfish jerk whom he and Jungho would never . Even for that, the writing is just a desperate attempt to be some manhwa that has no reason to be this way.
 * 2) Incredible crappy dialogue that relies too much trash-talking for the delinquents and adults swearing to make it very mature.
 * 3) Horrible moral to parents: If you ever find yourself disciplining your children into focusing on an expensive school lesson, just keep their friends away from them, so the children will be a bunch of lonely nobodies.
 * 4) The epilogue comes off as insulting where another person who is a girl is beaten by a group of male and female bullies led by an unnamed female leader similar to Jae Galhwa while Galhwa's former three goons ignored the incident, while Mephistopheles encounters the girl and wants her to make a deal with him, making this utterly pointless all over again and accomplished nothing. But it's actually kind of horrifying that Mephistopheles is going to continue making deals with other people who are tormented and withdrawn, and he never stops.
 * 5) *In the Q&A session, there are some chances to follow up the epilogue titled, The Devil's Girl, but there were no plans at that moment.

Redeeming Qualities

 * 1) Lee Kyungjoon does apologized for his actions to Jungho, and he is aware that Jae Galhwa set him up to bully Jungho.
 * 2) While generic, Mephistopheles, Lilith, and Beelzebub are solid and intimidating antagonists besides Jae Galhwa and the delinquents.
 * 3) The idea of a loser character getting revenge on committing sins is an interesting concept even if it's executed well.
 * 4) Despite too similar to Tokyo Revengers, it does show the explanation and reasonings why people became delinquents very often even if they're meant to be unsympathetic.
 * 5) The reasoning of why Jae Galhwa didn't have a normal life and gone off to becoming a delinquent from his abusive father was well explained and would have deserved better if he keeps beating up people.
 * 6) *Galhwa often realized that her mother didn't return the gifts and that his father took them in order to keep his son away from her. Thus, she never meant that his son would just "disappear" and becoming an uncaring nobody who bullies people.
 * 7) The artwork is good even in web-comic or manhwa standards with the fights, and character designs.
 * 8) Jungho beating up and torturing Jae Galhwa, as his comeuppance was satisfying despite it was taken way too seriously, after he thought he killed Jungho. He does this by copying Galhwa's actions and used giant hands to distract him.
 * 9) The backstory of Faust and Wagner was happy and turns to very sad, when he made a deal with Mephistopheles just like the German folklore, and was meant to be the past incarnation of Jungho and Jae Galhwa.
 * 10) Likeable characters such as Wie Jinoh, Raziel and Lee Shiyun.
 * 11) It did have an interesting concept but poorly executed. Despite this it is very appreciated to see how forgiveness is what affects a person even why Jungho and Galhwa were reincarnations of Faust and Wagner who sold their souls.
 * 12) Jungho does decide to not kill Jae Galhwa at the end, after all the beatings and torture he had endured.
 * 13) Despite being too similar to Aya's adopted mother, Jae Galhwa's mother does comfort his son and never meant to abandon him. But, reveals that she didn't return his gift to her, and it was his father who did it in order to keep him away from her mother.
 * 14) Some little light hearted moments are still here.
 * 15) A Surprisingly Happy Ending: Jae Galhwa is then comforted by her mother and no longer has to endure his father's negative influence, thus doesn't bully or harm Jungho and his victims.