Alright. My love for BTS is a secret by no means. If you didn’t know though…I am absolutely enthralled in everything that is the top global 7 member k-pop group-BTS!
For Context: Earlier this year, it was announced that BTS would be doing a collaboration with Webtoon– one of the most popular graphic comic website/app in the bizz right now. It was January 14, 2022 that the first episode, “The Prologue”, was published, yet somehow I still have not given myself the opportunity to read it. It’s now March 31,2022. I will admit that I am no avid comic reader, and I only started because of BTS; however, three months later I am seeing what this comic has to offer.
The Webtoon comic is titled 7Fates: Chako and is loosely based of the 7 BTS members. I’m going to be focusing on the first three episodes, including the prologue, to focus on what the comic has been initially giving as I have started it off.
Warning –Spoilers Ahead– Warning
Right off the bat the reader is thrown into an action scene. It is a vivid moment which I assume is introducing the audience to the main 7 people. There is little dialogue in this action scene which could have easily left the reader extremely confused as to where/who/what is even going on, but this isn’t the case. This strategy actually works for a number of reasons.
For starters, since there are such few words written, each word passing becomes vital. The writing team knew an immediate fight scene could be overwhelming with 7 new characters being introduced all at the same time, so a third person narrator gave a very broad description of the story as the main protagonist and antagonist groups were introduced– the Chako team and the Beom monsters.
The delivery can be compared to a microfiction. Like in a microfiction, one wants to say the most with the least amount of words. This is exactly what they did while giving the reader enough information to be interested but not overwhelmed.
After this, the story dives into what seems to be a few moments in the past before the intense prologue scene. The story continues to unfold by jumping back and forth through time. The actual characters aren’t time traveling, but the story is being told by flashbacks and flashforwards. Now, this is exciting and keeps suspense from one transition to another and all, but I am afraid it can be just slightly confusing at times. Luckily so far, when a transition happens, it will begin with two seconds of the scene from where the reader previously left off.
I’m not saying shifts through time are a bad way of telling a story at all, especially because the main character keeps recalling lost memories about his past in this story. For some reason though, the flashes through time do not feel like smooth transitions to me. It’s almost giving me reader’s whiplash. I hate to say any negative critiques about anything associated with BTS, but this couldn’t be a truthful review without me mentioning this.
Other than that, through the first three episodes I am having no major negative feelings that would cause me to cease interest. Granted I may be a little biased 😉 I feel like so much and not much has happened already, and I am not sure if that is a good thing or not. I’ll leave that up to your own judgement.
But yeah! This is a fun story that is outside my usual reading zones, and I am glad BTS were the ones to help me explore other horizons of story telling. If you want to see what I’ve been clamoring on about for an entire blog post check out WEBTOON and search for 7FATES: CHAKO for the weekly updated series. Hopefully you won’t be disappointed. I haven’t been so far Thank you so much and have a great day ♥