Webtoons about teenagers who are growing up have been loved by a large number of readers for a long time. In particular, they’re attracted that characters are innocent and fresh, there is a specificity of having diverse possibilities only in the adolescence period, and they fall into characters from webtoons. Amongst them, I like to introduce this webtoon that also covers teenagers with diverse possibilities and allows readers to easily read. It is Free Draw, a youth dram with the theme of the period of growth. 

Free Draw is a story about the high school life of the main character, Han Tae-sung who was a well-known bully until he was a middle school student. He won the title of Teeth Thresher of Mt. Dobongsan in the area when he was a middle school student. 

Becoming a high school student, he wants to clean up this immature bully life so he enters Namcheon High School where no one knows him. This is how the story begins.

 

It is his first day at Namcheon High School. He wants to hide his shameful bully life in the past, but his hope is scattered by his juniors waiting for him. When he first finds them, he puts a plastic bag over himself to hide his identity. But his identity is eventually discovered. He receives a school entrance gift, Northface’s Himalaya jumper from his juniors. This jumper gets him involved in many fights. After all, his effort of entering a distant high school goes in vain and he continues a bully life again. 

However, Han Tae-sung has an opportunity to terminate his bully life - he meets Minji, his future girlfriend and Gu Harin. He has serialized Ukiki the Monkey Man on Challenge to be a Cartoonist. When he finds recruitment of the club, he becomes close to Minji.

He tries not to join the Comics Club in the first place. He believes it doesn’t save a bully’s face since comics are for nerds or maniacs. However, when he rides Gu Harin's motorcycle and falls, he experiences an accident that the motorcycle alone goes straight and crashes into a truck with fifth-class hazardous articles. Because of the payment of the motorcycle, he finally joins the Comics Club. The chaotic and romping story of their youth is the storyline of this webtoon.

At first, the webtoon got complaints of many people; it covered a story of Han Tae-sung, a bully at school and outrageous aberration of bullies and many fights, so the webtoon was known to romanticize bullies. However, when you read the school trip episode, Tae-sung meets a guy whom he bullied by making him buy bread and snacks. They have a conversation together. So, you may consider Free Draw as a drama about teenagers’ growth, rather than comics about bullies.

When you read other webtoons that depict bullies are enlightened, you find quite often that the main character apologizes, the other who has been bullied accepts it and they reconcile. Since Free Draw doesn’t have this type of cliché, it somehow gives a lesson to teenagers, the main reader class of this webtoon.

The severity of school violence in Korea has been constantly highlighted for a long time. Although we’re aware that perpetrators of violence are still a problem, most bullies are romanticized and live as if they are currently the mainstream. 

Also, most victims who suffer from violence and bullies are considered negatively these days. When a bully feels the shame of his/her past and is motivated to make some improvements, he/she can reflect on him/herself and think of how a victim might think about the situation. I believe it might be the theme of this webtoon.

Of course, a story related to the growth of the main character isn’t only the factor of making Free Draw interesting. The other factor is compelling and stereoscopic surrounding characters who keep you engaged in the comics.

In particular, Gu Harin is an example, winning the top place over the main character for the popularity vote of Free Draw.

Gu Harin is a representative character who helps Tae-sung to make one step toward his dream rather than staying as a common bully. She’s a captain of the Comics Club, a granddaughter of the Namcheon High School Principal, Gu Chang-ho, and a mixed-race between Swedish and Korean.

She has an unusual appearance and straightforward personality in the webtoon. She’s a cool character. She sharply criticizes Han Tae-sung, when she first finds him bully others. And she helps him when he’s chased by a hitman. A recent episode shows how she treats Go Hee-sun who breaks her motorcycle. She lives her life as desired and without worries.

However, such a character also has agony. Since Gu Harin has the appearance of a mixed-race, she always stands out, and she was also a bully in her middle school. Even when her close friend was ostracized, she was pretentious and being a bystander. One day, she heard that her friend committed suicide. After she heard about it, she went to personally see the perpetrator and spoke about the suicide of her friend. But they laughed over it. It caused her to feel skeptical, so she quit being a bully. 

Then, she lives an ordinary life in high school. However, when she met Ji Daye and Hyun Ayeong from the Art Club, she learned how her friend might have felt, who was shunned and died. So, she newly establishes the Comics Club and creates an intertwined story with the main character.

Jang Bongnam is also a great figure in Free Draw, who appears in few episodes but has the most exposure and some fandom. 

Being an enemy of the main character, Han Tae-sung at first, Jang Bongnam meets him as a member of Saber Tiger. Jang Bongnam is homosexual and starts having a crush on Han Tae-sung while fighting against him. He saves Han Tae-sung who is kidnapped and goes to the Youth Detention Center. After getting out of there, he helps Han Tae-sung to seduce Park Sejun and finds true love. He’s a comic character.

For reference, although Jang Bongnam is only in few episodes, his trolling and charms are so popular that whenever similar bromance or LGBT scenes are shown in other webtoons, comments about Jang Bongnam are found in the readers’ comment section. 

Occasionally, some webtoons set a villain character to be evil forever and a good one to be continuously good and nice. However, this webtoon sets characters to be diverse. Although characters experience the same happening or even suffer from it, each of them has different reasons, so some of them regret and reflect on themselves. Or others continuously commit evil. I believe these stereoscopic characters make this webtoon more interesting.

One of the appeals of Free Draw is a realistic depiction by an artist graduated from the department of animation and video, Kyonggi University. His drawings are so realistic that they look like being rough-sketched over real photos. 

I know that there are some unrealistic and outrageous storylines like Makjang. When Gu Harin feels skeptical, she joins the gangster group and makes some chaotic mess. There is a car race scene in Seoul because of Ukiki the Monkey Man materials to be submitted to the finalist. However, reading Free Draw makes me think of some issues and wait for the story of original characters. And it’s fun. I think these are the charms of this webtoon.