Flow: Webtoon Review (2/11/2022)

 I'll be honest. Flow is far from perfect. But having come fresh off of a second reading of this series (4 years after I read it for the first time), I think that this is a case of a series that just has an ending that is so well planned out it elevates the rest of the series to a higher level.

Before we talk about that ending, lets first state some of the glaring flaws that Flow has. The first problem that I have with series actually comes from the translation.

I read this from Webtoon, and the translations are simply not good. There is a decent amount of typos and grammar issues, and some of the dialogue can feel sloppy, which is more of a fault of the translator than it is of the author's writing ability. I'm honestly surprised that Webtoon still keeps this translation up (and are even charging Daily Passes for it), because this series just deserves so much better*. The translation is so awfully done, I would almost recommend pirating the comic. 

*as an example, they say that someone's name is Jun, and then right after it is shown on a nametag that Jun is actually spelled Joon. Just sloppy translating, which really sucks.

That being said, the story does suffer from some writing issues. The author actually mentions that she wrote the story for part three, and this makes sense because, to some extent, it does feel like the rest of the story is just filler to get to part three. The first two parts suffer from many Webtoon cliches, such as there having a tournament arc (which I didn't like too much), and also the need to have a ranking and play pointless games. If you've ever read a popular Webtoon (think God of High School, Tower of God, Unordinary, etc), you've definitely seen similar things before too.

This is made even worse by the art, which is frankly pretty sketchy. I didn't really care for a lot of the background characters, because they all looked the same. I mostly used the tried and true anime tactic of recognizing people by the color of their hair.

When building up the mystery, the author also tends to use the pronoun game a lot. This just means that they will end a chapter with a person saying that they need to tell "them" about someone, without actually saying their name. It's a bit tiring and lazy, in my opinion, but it can be brushed off.

But the reason why I rate this manga so high is because of the oh so amazing part three. While rereading the series, it took me about a week to drag through the first few parts, but then once I hit the end of part two and the beginning of part three, I just couldn't put it down. The pace really ramps up, and part three is when all the shit hits the fan. It's pretty obvious that the author planned out the ending extensively, because after reading part three you can go back to the previous parts of the story and find various details, which I really love. There's even a lot of tiny little plot twists and subversions, which just even add more to the story. Some of these are listed below, but they are pretty big spoilers:

spoiler warning!!! Don't read this part until after you finish the series!!!

Because Seo Yulbi is a pigeon anima, you are led to believe that she was the red phoenix all along (she also has pink hair), but it turns out to be the little boy. The series also makes you guess if the older brother or younger brother is the black dragon, but it ends up being both of them, which was also a nice subversion. Hyun Eun Jol's anima is also a snake, which is a nice lead up to him being revealed to be the black turtle, as snakes and turtles are both reptiles.

spoilers end here!!!

The first time I read Flow, I rated it as a 10, albeit with a few flaws. When I inputted Flow into MAL, I decided to knock that score down to a 9 (because of part two, which I remembered not enjoying). To me, part 1 is a 6/10 (which could become a 7/10 after you read the ending), part 2 is a 6/10, and part 3 is a solid 10/10. 

On the second reread, I've decided to combine these scores into a total score of 8/10. I admit that this score is inflated due to a good amount of nostalgia from my part, but I still think that this story has merit just from part three alone. In all honesty, because I've just read so much great manga, I think if I read the series blind today I'd probably give it closer to a 6 or a 7. That, in my opinion, is still a high enough score to justify reading it. Maybe you'll get your mind blown just like I did when I first read this story 4 years ago.

If you want to read a similar story (albiet significantly more complex and hard to understand), maybe try out Pandora Hearts.