AMANZA is an emotional drama webtoon by artist Bo-Tong KIM published on Olleh Market webtoon, and it is finished with 109 episodes in total. The webtoon is the winner of the 2014 Today's Our Manhwa Award by The Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism.

The story is about a terminally ill young man, 26 years old, who was diagnosed with stage 4 gastric cancer, waking up in a forest and meeting strange existences after getting hospitalized and becoming unconscious.

 

The title AMANZA is the name by which the protagonist is called in the world of imagery as it is the rapid pronunciation of the word, cancer patient (amhwanja).

 

The webtoon shows reflections of the protagonist living painfully in the real world as a cancer patient and people around him grieving and suffering for him. Hence in the world of imagery, the protagonist passes the forest and a desert to meet Bickori and goes on the journey to stop The Desert King.

 

In contrast to the sad and depressing real world that portrays the daily life of a terminally ill patient in a dry manner, the imaginary world has a dreamlike atmosphere and gives off an adventurous spirit as the protagonist goes off on the journey with a purpose in the setting.

 

Though the progress of the disease and the protagonist's feelings are expressed by his monologues and narrations, the webtoon's language gets both abstract and ambiguous in the imaginary world.

 

Rather than writing lines with certain meanings, the author throws incomprehensible lines based on the moment's emotion.

 

For this reason, even if the readers may sympathize with the story emotionally, it often develops in a way that cannot be understood rationally. Such story provides aspects to ponder about at best and makes the readers confused at worst.

 

This may be the obstacle for artists who produce creative works with emotional contents.

 

Usually, in cases like this webtoon, the sentimental expressions may stand out and attract people who can sympathize with them, so that they can fall into the sea of feelings together. On the contrary, there could also be disadvantages that some people may give up reading because they can't simply be immersed in such feelings and understand the contents.

 

Depending on the style, the ways of expression and approach may be different and such difference could indeed form the author's personality. However, in consideration of the reader, there clearly is a need to increase the communicability of the content. (I personally pick Ms. Rieko Saibara as the artist who has taken both sensibility and expressions to the next level. 'My House', which is her representative work of the 90s, may lack in the density of illustrations and yet, as the lines are exceptionally well-written, it drops an emotional bomb that can make the readers cry with a single page.)

 

Apart from it's lines and symbols, the story of the webtoon itself is well-structured in terms of composition.

 

The forest of the imaginary world symbolizes the body of the protagonist. The desertification signifies the progress of cancer, and Lumbari Forest and Cervici Forest mean the body parts of the lumbar and the cervical vertebrae respectively. The protagonist's hands, feet, and eyes also fall out in the imaginary world to reflect his aggravating disease in reality and connect the dream to real life.

 

The protagonist is often more awake in reality in the first half of the webtoon to depict his daily life in the real world, and as the story goes beyond the middle phase and enters the latter half, the protagonist frequently loses his consciousness due to the worsening disease and stays longer in the imaginary world to carry on with his adventure .

 

Holding on to it's original intention to portray the feelings of a young cancer patient faithfully, the webtoon exercises comical imaginations to connect the patient's reality to a dream for the story development. Hence, the webtoon possesses both depth in it's story and novelty in it's execution at the same time.

 

The illustrations may be concise, but there are surprisingly many traces of attention in the webtoon's production and backgrounds. The webtoon has vividly described the protagonist's psychology in the real world and conceptual forests, deserts and mysterious beings in the imaginary world.

 

The artist later reveals that he had indeed copied and pasted repetitive backgrounds and he couldn't draw speech bubbles very well. However, the webtoon's episode flow naturally. The readability of the lines may be poor, but the illustrations are easily perceived.

 

The final verdict is that I recommend this webtoon. Though there are difficult aspects to understand as the symbols and lines in the imaginary world are too abstract and ambiguous, the webtoon's well-constructed composition connects the reality to the world of imagery and portrays the feelings of a young cancer patient and people around him in detail to acquire depth in the story, completing a piece of human drama.