The Red Book is a horror webtoon by the artist Rangddo, published on LINE Webtoon Platform and it is already completed with total 24 episodes. It was released as a cuttoon which has the composition of reading from left to right for readers on the mobile screen.

 

The story is about the moments when ordinary people encounter supernatural beings such as ghosts and monsters in their daily lives.

 

There is no main flow of the story, and since each episode isn't quite self-contained, it's hard to perceive it as an independent short.

 

The artist did not create a single storyline with the structure of introduction, development, twist, and conclusion, and is simply depicting the moments when ordinary people encounter with a ghost in the story.

 

It's a story that only illustrates the moment of fear by removing all other elements that could compose a complete story. In other words, the story eliminates it's entire context and shows only the outcomes.

 

As a result, readers often do not understand the content. There's a bit of unkindness to the readers as the story is executed with instant ideas even when explanations are needed for understanding.

 

This is the drawback of drawing the webtoon on improvisation whenever scary scenes come up in one's mind without planning the basic story ahead.

 

In fact, the method of focusing on one scary scene in such a short story has been widely used before. To be precise, they can be easily found in today's horror comics, and the Japanese comics called 'Seeds of Anxiety ' by Masaaki Nakayama can be counted as an example.

 

Seed of Anxiety also tells short episodes in three or four pages, omitting the context, and depicts only the moment when a human encounters a supernatural being.

 

As such, the way of arranging this webtoon may not be original, but it can be regarded as adapting to the new trend of horror.

 

However, Seed of Anxiety is still very tense at least in the moments of fear, providing lingering imagery after reading it once. This webtoon is the opposite.

 

As the artist didn't have to worry about the story anymore due to the specific way of expression, he now had to pay full attention to producing memorable scenes. But he clearly hasn't.

 

In particular, there are too many episodes where humans and ghosts are in the same space but are not aware of each other. As such scenes get repeated several times, not once or twice, they rather become exhausting.

 

For example, it goes like this. Ghosts haunt an uninhabited house or apartment stairs. When a person enters the house or the stairs after the ghost, they are done.

 

It seems that the webtoon is adopting the concept of horror that can only be realized by the readers who are the third party. This is a measure that was preferably employed in previous horror movies and one may think of 'Paranormal Activity' as an example, in which the fearful story proceeds as the supernatural phenomenon get recorded on CCTV. However, though movies can make the audience feel creepy with a supernatural being just passing by in it's scene as the medium has motions, such method will only bring reverse effects in webtoons as they are still.

 

Impressive scenes are necessary to cover the disadvantage, but this webtoon doesn't have any. The webtoon is attempting to give fear using it's illustrations, rather than trying to compete with direction.

 

The problem is that making such an attempt is a misstep for the webtoon. To begin with, the drawing style of the webtoon does not fit the genre of horror at all.

 

Rangddo, the artist of the webtoon is indeed a well-known artist for crazy, comedy comics. The artist who has been drawing comedy comics for many years suddenly made a horror webtoon, so it's lack of density as a horror genre is inevitable.

 

Of course, there is absolutely no reason to argue that artists who have drawn comedy comics shouldn't make a horror comics and rather, there certainly are many artists who produce both comedy and horror comics very well.

 

Famous Japanese horror cartoonists such as 'Jiro Tsunoda', 'Kazuo Umezu', 'Morohoshi Daijiro' and 'Junji Ito' can be all deemed as an example. ('Jiro Tsunoda' may now be acclaimed for 'Kyoufu Shinbun', but he also had mainly drawn comedy comics during the early debut period and made his first success with 'Rumi-chan Kyoushitsu'. 'Junji Ito' has clearly shown the readers that the contrast between a horror and a comedy is paper-thin with 'Cat Diary: Yon & Muu')

 

Such artists' horror comics all have a drawing style, direction, and contents which are suitable for a horror comics that make readers hard to believe that the artists once used to create comedy comics.

 

The final verdict is that I do not recommend this webtoon. Attempts to produce a horror webtoon with an unfitting drawing style for the genre by the artist who is famous his comedy webtoons may be highly regarded. However, it doesn't have fresh ideas, original way of expression and extensive contemplation or researches on the stories and direction of the horror genre. It is a too easygoing webtoon that tries to awkwardly present fear by relying upon instant thoughts that stroke the artist from time to time.

 

It is like watching K- Horror's webtoon version, which pops out in the summer season and wastes films.

 

Besides, the artist mentions that he often sees ghosts in his regular days in the epilogue of the webtoon. Reading the episodes of the artist himself witnessing ghosts in real life that are portrayed comically was more fun than the actual webtoon.