Manga Review - Dead Days (Manhwa) - An Interesting Take, and Perhaps Realistic Take on Zombies

Anything involving zombies have usually been popular - The Walking Dead, World War Z to name a few. But most of them depict zombies as decomposing human who have a insatiable hunger for flesh, and most of the time, the probability of such zombies being real is unlikely. There are different ways of depicting a zombie though - e.g. a Rage Virus in 28 Days Later - it just depends on what you define as a zombie. Are they human anymore or are they just an empty vessel left wondering around? Dead Days Manhwa has a different take on "zombies" and depicts these zombies as "souls trapped in a body that they cannot control". One can say that it's pretty sad that one cannot control their own body.

Story (8/10):

The story focuses on the rich and powerful attempting to active the brain's pineal gland, which is supposedly means we would gain a sixth sense - essentially become more than human. This is obviously more fiction than reality, but the concept is cool. At first we see the zombies ("experimented humans") being regarded as nothing but empty rotting bodies, but as the main characters advances, we find out that these zombies actually have emotions. It shows that the zombies are just humans trapped inside a body they cannot control. I think that's pretty scary.

The story takes on perspective of two main characters. One is a person who is manipulated and forced to do the dirty work of the rick and powerful because he has no choice to save her daughter. The other is another ordinary person, who supposedly teams up with a veteran and others. The ending of the story was ok. We finally see the kidnapped daughter activate her pineal gland, killing all the "evil people" (which is a win for readers), but also eventually has to mourn for the loss of her father. Pretty sad indeed. I felt the premise and concept was very good, but the ending felt a bit too quick.

Characters (8/10):

The characters were all realistic. There was a cripple, veteran, manipulated father, it's a party all right. I really liked the old man (the veteran) because of his backstory. We can really empthasize with him because he himself had to witness the horror of this "drug"/"virus" unleashed on soldiers. And what's worse is that he has his tongue ripped off. He can't talk and he has to take care of a deranged and senile wife. What's even more amazing is that he is the one who figured out that the "zombies" become non-aggressive.

Art (7/10):

The art is ok for a horror manwha. It wasn't as scary as it could have been. The only part where I found the art really cool and creepy was the ending scene where the daughter activated her brain's pineal gland and subsequently drains the life (literally the life, and all their blood) out of the enemies. For a normal manhwa, I really liked the art. The characters looked good and very reminscient of the good ol' Korean art (too bad there's a lot of NTR Korean Manhwa out there now). But I need to judge the art by its genre, and it didn't spook me. :'(

Enjoyment (7/10):

There was a decent amount of pages per chapter and every chapter had some meaning. The actual story only has 45 chapters, but I felt it could have been longer so they can make the ending a bit longer/make the journey of the characters longer.

Overall (7/10):

Dead Days Manhwa presents an interesting take on zombies. Rather than your typical rotting, flesh-eating zombie, the zombies in this Manhwa is more like trapped humans in uncontrollable bodies. The execution of the story was initially good, but it just fell off later. I felt the ending was a bit rushed or that there could have been more about the journey of the main characters. Would I recommend reading it? There's not a lot of gore in it even though it's categorized as a "horror" manga, but it's not a bad read. If you are looking for horror and zombies, this is probably not your cup of tea.