Alright, so I just spent today finishing How to Fight, and I have lots of words.
First off, this was the first webtoon I truly fell in love with. I was seventeen and just needed some dumb comic to get through community college and living with my parents. It was the stupidity and sensitivity that each character brought to life that intrigued me, and the creative mess that it became that kept me hooked.
I lost interest and gave up on the comic around the first time Jinho was captured. Simply because I really did not like where they were going with his character, turning him into something very serious and flawed. To me, he would always be an interesting side character that did not make sense to be the main villain of a comic about teens calling out bastards on Newtube. (I was truly in love with Hobin and his crew until Jinho became a character, he was so much more interesting to me than them and it was odd to know he existed to be "beaten")
However much I could not bring myself to care about his little group of 20 somethings at the end, I was still very interested in what they would do with him. How would they end Jinho lee? How would Hobin finally "beat" him?
I was not expecting much. I was expecting some over the top Hobin has become sooo strong bullshit. but I was pleasantly surprised at the Jinho death scene they pulled off.
First of all, he dies because of his own mistake. He does not die because someone else was able to kill him, but because of a decision that went super poorly on his part. Like karma, the explosion frees him, but he drowns anyway. This kind of death makes sense for him. He's alone, there's no one to get him out of the water, there's no phone to call for help, there's no one else to hurt to keep living.
It is at this point that we realize just how lonely Jinho is. The people he sees as he's dying are those who could have been important to him, but he hurt and screwed over for his own gain anyway.
He sees Seongjun first, as the person who holds him down to his death, then as maybe the person that saved him. The few panels with them two are a lot to unpack.
At their core, they share with us just how important Seongjun was to Jinho. In a sick little way, Jinho in death imagines himself as the person who "saved" and abused Seongjun. He sees them in the boat again, but this time he's the one on the stretcher telling the only person he ever thought equal that no one ever appeared human to him. Only to hear back that everything he sought out was for nothing but a sad lonely death.
It's a crap load to think about that was really satisfying to read. I think it was a well done death scene, and I may have more words about it in the morning.
Anyway. It's over. Wow. How are we feeling Htf homies?