ranking the PTJ-verse manhwa because i have to get SOMETHING out of having read all of them:
Quality (tentative since some are incomplete) (probably still biased but not on purpose like the other one):
1. My Life as a Loser
This manhwa is the only reason I believe any manhwa PTJ is involved in is still capable of sticking the landing. It gets to be at the top of the quality ranking because its pacing is consistent, it doesn't do anything unnecessary, and it delivers on exactly what it promises. Its characters have goals that they achieve. It has an ending that is satisfying for everyone involved. This should not be the bar, but unfortunately it is. Its characters have the stupid charming flair of many PTJ verse characters and its ending actually feels suitable and well deserved.
2. Juvenile Offender
The only other PTJ verse manhwa that has a decent ending. I think these two combined are just joint proof that this company only makes good manhwa when given a length restriction. I would assume it's just because both main characters have such obvious goals from the get-go that they didn't have wiggle room to make up a new goal (stop the drug war! take over gangbuk!) midway through the story. Some absolutely heinous things happened in this manhwa to the point where I felt physically ill reading it, but ultimately I think it had something it wanted to say and it carried that message faithfully and with a decent amount of flair. The main character has a goal, he works for his goal, and he achieves his goal. Congratulations yay. Good work all around
3. Lookism
This manhwa is dogshit from a broader plot perspective. Its pacing is terrible. It has zero (0) consistency whatsoever. Being a fan of it is like being trapped in the manhwa reader torment nexus for ever. I have however moved it up fairly high in the quality showdown because the parts of it that are good are really good. It has more complex characters than almost every manhwa in here. Johan Seong ripped my heart out and stopped on it in steel toed boots. If every one of these manhwa were only being represented by their best-written moments, Lookism would unquestionably be at the top, but it is just so bad that it cancels out also being so good. Every other manhwa in here it handles women terribly, but it is the only one that is so bad at handling women that there are just no women at all whatsoever for 200 chapters. Its morals are questionable at best if you operate under the assumption that it has any at all. It switches genres halfway through and does not turn back even once. I hate it. Everyone I know should read it
4. Viral Hit
God I wanted to put this higher than Lookism just because it at least had the decency to end. But I’m sorry I just hated the ending so much. I guess the problem is Hobin is not at his core a protagonist who seeks out trouble, he has increasingly worse Situations happen to him and he reacts accordingly, but it all just felt terribly anticlimatic. I did put it above the other three on account of having Baek Seongjun in it, but I think Viral Hit and Lookism both have really good parts and really bad parts, but Lookism has a lot of both, while Viral Hit has a handful of good parts, mild bad qualities, and a huge expanse of really mid parts that altogether don’t make it as memorable. It has more consistent quality than Lookism, but it doesn’t have as many shining points to bring it up.
5. Manager Kim
Lowkey this manhwa forgot what its purpose was immediately after the first arc. The entire time I was reading it I was thinking wow this plot could have been a one shot. Lookism loses sight of its goal, but Manager Kim achieves its goal within thirty chapters and spends the next two hundred or so wandering around headless. Additionally, despite all of them technically being power fantasy shounen, Manager Kim feels like it has the lowest stakes of all, because while Daniel and Hobin and Suhyeon are all OP as hell, there is still a chance they will lose. Manager Kim does not lose. He would not be Manager Kim if he lost. This is probably the issue with taking a guy whose original role is Infallible Mentor and then trying to write a story about him without ever undermining that original impression. It just doesn’t work. I have never been concerned ever the entire time reading this whether Manager Kim was going to succeed, and that feels like a genuine failure.
6. Questism
Oh my god where do I even start. This manhwa is so bad. This manhwa is SO bad. I want to kill everyone involved in the making of this manhwa. The pacing is dogshit. Suhyeon is little more than a plot device and experiences no character development whatsoever over the course of the entire story. Not a single character in this manhwa develops substantially during the time it occurs actually all of the people who experience change went through that change prior to it. The only ones who change in action do so because their have the evil magically removed from their brains. What do you mean your main villain spends ten chapters explaining a backstory that amounts to ‘actually he was always evil’ and then smash cuts to him jumping off a building and then that’s it?? Plot wise this manhwa has no redeeming qualities. I was so ready to rank this manhwa higher because it was the only one with the guts to involve actual queer people instead of fanservice bait that never goes anywhere, but it is hilariously bad and its ending borders on unreadable.
7. Laws of the Good Child
This manhwa did not lose sight of what it wanted to do, it just becomes increasingly apparent it never knew what it wanted to do to begin with. We are losing the plot at an incredible rate. I’ve been reading it since it had like fifteen chapters and it just kept getting further and further away from what was already a barely substantial goal. It treats its characters like cannon fodder. Its pacing is patently terrible. I could not tell you at any given point who the antagonist actually is because it changes its mind on this every other chapter. I also barely remember the names of anyone in it despite it being one of the ones I kept up with most recently. I like it but it is quite simply indefensibly not good.
Extremely biased personal scaling:
