I Died That Day - Ch. 12

[MangaDex]

 

[Guyincognitus]

God, this series is so... frustrating. I can't even say I'm enjoying it cause all I feel after reading is frustrated. Frustrated and disappointed. I keep reading in the hopes of some kind of catharsis will come but this far in it's safe to say that the writer chose the wrong protagonist for this story. You cannot have a mystery where the detective is so passive she refuses to search for clues and you can't have a psychological drama where the psychology of the character in question is expressed in such a half baked and uncompelling way that fails to explore her with any depth.
I really really want this to be good but it's failing at everything it's trying to do.

 

[Akikako]

Maybe If she has said what she saw, maybe this wouldn't happened...

 

[Skepticium]

tbh i dont think the writer meant to make 'typical mystery' story. Bullying in asian culture is very prevalent because of pre-modern seniority culture. I think this story is more about interaction between very deep system of oppression (of asian bullying culture) and individual part of these system (Each people role in it). Yeah, i think people that expect these story would be in line with western mystery genre would be disappointed, but i kinda like it. Maybe it is because i have a kinda similiar experience with MC about being overwhelmed and frustated by such cold-hearted system.

Btw, to "Mukbang Translation", thank you the chapter.

 

[Anu_Supernova]

Yeah, I agree with the idea that this story is not meant to be a 'typical mystery' story. Also, I find that pyschological dramas are even better when the characters are far from perfect. It hits more (not all the time though). Always having a perfect and active protagonist is not very realistic. The characters in these stories are teens, they aren't exactly confident and just want a normal regular life where they feel belonged. Such well-rounded character "depth" takes a while to develop, and to be honest not everyone will achieve this.

 

[Guyincognitus]

"Such well-rounded character "depth" takes a while to develop"

The thing is though if you want to make a character as passive in the middle of a mystery then the psychology behind the psychological drama needs to be the driving point of the story. Young's fear and anxiety aren't articulated well enough to feel impactful. It could do this by demonstrating how it's affected her daily life outside of the small proportion dedicated to little errands, how it's affected here way of thinking about other things in her life, how it has affected her friends and relationships but instead we just get the occasional one panel flashback to chapter 1, a scared look on her face and maybe an internal monologue barely a sentence long.
It's fine not to have a typical mystery story but if there isn't going to be meaningful change to the MC with regards to the mystery for chapters at a time then it needs actual exploration of the victim being led into a corner. It want's to be mystery it wants to be character drama but doing neither.

 

[Flewby]

I actually love this story. The intense pressure and fear that the MC is going through all while having to put on a "everything is fine" act is so well portrayed through the art style alone. the danger is subtle but always hanging over her head. we are still in the dark along with the MC. while the MC is (right now) just trying to live a normal life with out causing any trouble. Which is what a lot of people do, rather than investigate or try to confront anyone. But there's too much risk for it to make sense for her to act in any other way. (We have no idea who S is or if they are a group of people. they are controlling other people like which means if you go against S you could end up against a whole army in a sense) while I agree that there is more the MC could do I think her character flaw is that she is a bit of a coward and that's why they are preying on her.. The whole situation feels very real and the personalities are the kind of people who end up in these kind of situations. It's interesting to me because I want to know how someone like the MC is going to get out of this.. can she muster up any courage and say "NO" and deal with what happens? Is that what happened to the girl from the begging, she fought back so S threw her off a roof? I really don't know what's going to happen so it's a change from most of the manga on this site. And I love it. thank you for translating this!

 

[sleepyknight]

@Guyincongnitous, the problem with your critiques is that they seem to be more rooted in your personal distaste for passive characters than in any failure of the comic's construction. chapter 10 already stated the root of this manwha's psychological conflict, we aren't watching someone being eaten inside by anxiety we're watching someone be worn down by a seemingly ubiquitous and arbitrary social schema while attempting to barter with it for an ephemeral status quo. young's feelings of guilt are secondary to her cognisance of her newfound vulnerability as both she and the reader's are made increasingly aware of how little difference there is between her and somi. furthermore its not as if this kind of story isn't without literary precedence, if the conspiracy which upended young's life wasn't tied to an individual it would be nearly by the book kafkaesque intrigue

 

[Guyincognitus]

@sleepyknight , My critiques were more nuanced than disliking passive protagonists so I'll try to be clearer. Passive protagonists are generally bad to write because either A.) without the protagonist driving the plot forward nothing will happen or B.) the plot will keep happening to them without any action or decision needed on their part rendering the hero entirely expendable. This series suffers from a bit of both which is a big problem if it's a mystery. But if this isn't a mystery, at least not just a mystery, the thing that it could be where a passive protagonist is a non-issue is a character study. And frankly, I feel like I know jackshit about Young. I knew more about Greg by the time he became a cockroach than I know about her 12 chapters in. Again, show me her life, her relationships, her state of mind in all this; something. Frame the psychological conflict however you like but if it's not informing me about who this main character is it's not doing anything.

 

[sleepyknight]

@Guyincongnitous we're constantly being given insights as to young's mental state and motivations, thats why im saying that it seems less like there's an issue on the part of the writing and more like you not relating to her. which is fine, not every comic is for everybody, but your critique falls flat because it attempts to decenter that subjectivity in order to portray this specific comic as having failed in something which it never set out to do. also i meant kafkaesque in the vein of the trial, a protaganist against a byzantine and all-encompassing bureacracy, whose faith in being saved by virtue of their compliance is eventually worn down until they're unceremoniously discarded by said bureaucracy

 

[Guyincognitus]

@sleepyknight , I assumed the fact that I'm a fallible human suseptible to subjectivity went without saying. I backed up my opinion with an argument based in the thing we're talking about. "That's just your opinion bro" is so 2009.

 

[Skepticium]

Whoahhh, a flame war. Easy @Guyincongnitous and @sleepyknight , dont start a flame war. Tbh @Guyincongnitous, it seems like that your problem is actually you dont like the slow pacing of the manhwa. Slow pace story is not for everyone, if you want to drop this then it is okay. But IMO, the pace of the story is fine for me. The tension rise fast enough for me to anticipate what is happening next but also slow enough to not get overwhelmed by it. Please by civil.

 

[Guyincognitus]

@Skepticium
I don't think either of us were being particularly inflammatory.

Also, the problems I was talking about are a bit deeper than pacing because the pace is going to to be influenced by the type of story and whatever sort of progress it might have. So its not so much "slow pacing is bad" as much as "how much progress does there need to be?" and more fundamentally "what should progress even look like?" But taking it as is, ignoring whatever else I mentioned, I do think it could do more to make the slow pacing work cause reading it feels pretty static chapter to chapter.
I like slow sad dreadful stories and this seems like one of those but it isn't getting across. My favorite tragedies have a clear progression of the metaphorical noose slowly tightening but this spends a lot of time spinning its wheels instead of doing that.

 

[DevLogger]

I can only assume that "S" deliberately tipped that other girl off because she didn't like that Young had become complacent in her assignments, and wasn't treating them with enough care or attention to detail; like instead of moving that last 'assignment' directly as was told, instead Young left it in her bag to handle later. I get the feeling that we're still in the 'set up' phase of this story, despite all that has happened so far. One thing that I've been having a hard time wrapping my head around is, why hasn't Young confided with any of her friends; does she not see them as friends? The more this goes on, the more I feel that Young herself is meant to be or treated as an allegory.