Flow

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Note: it's been more than a year since I last published this review. I have, more or less, matured and improved my writing skill since the time of review. Any new informations that I either forgot to put in, or only thought of adding some time after the original review, will be marked with 'X'.

I got recommended this manhwa a while ago by one of my friends as an attempt to get back into reading webtoons. And...huh? The world-building and storytelling in this manhwa is very confusing and messy. I get the premise that it's trying to establish, but the execution is very poor. ... Not to mention that it has one of the most unbearable asshole female characters I've seen in the form of Harin. The way she was portrayed in the first arc was so nonsensical I almost stopped reading. All of a sudden, one boo-hoo moment later then we're supposed to be sympathetic for her? FOH.

X: I still retain my stance on most of the things I said above. The story was very messy for the most parts, and so was the world-building. The backstories of some characters were quite illogical. The dynamic between the main and supporting characters also didn't feel natural. More importantly, tlhe point I made about Harin also still stands. Character-wise (as I viewed her as an early antagonist), she was massively overpowering the other characters (sometimes, for no reason), and that's not something you wanna do to your antagonist, unless it serves a purpose to your story, which here, it does not, since she evolved into a (supposedly) more sympathetic character. And they still fucked up on making her more sympathetic, because we as the readers weren't given any clear reasons to like Harin. So yeah, Harin was a massive lowlight in this manhwa. But the magic system also didn't help whatsoever, because if I recall, there was a technique that allowed a person to borrow another person's animal power -- a technique that can basically solve most of the problems contained in the manhwa. Plotholes are the last thing that Flow needs as the manhwa didn't have much of a strong structure as the story went on, so it didn't come as a surprise that when I notice a problem in the magic system, it hindered my reading experience quite a bit.

Despite all that, I think the manhwa redeemed itself at the VERY end by giving us a real tearjerker, when all puzzles of chaos in the manhwa are able to piece themselves together to give us a really touching ending.

X: This is a pattern I'm beginning to see more often in most manhwas. The premise is promising; the ending is coherent; but the middle story is a big bundle of mess. The way the ending of Flow turned out was honestly a miracle in itself, because before the ending, a huge fight broke out because big bro wants his friend (or sis? i forgot their relationship in this manhwa) brought back to life in another timeline. Even though it has decent actions, the fight was stupid and a waste of time, merely for the fact that if big bro actually understands how alternate universe actually works, big bro probably wouldn't even call for the fight in the first place. But anyway, the ending happened, and it was quite touching. The ending was handled well because it's obvious that the author planned it from the beginning. Shame that the same can't be said for the middle parts.

That being said: is it really worth reading the other 99 chapters? Till now, I'm still torn about it.

X: As of now, I'm leaning towards 'no'. But hey, I'd still read this than most western webtoons.

I read this aback in 2017l and loved iso much I tried making an amv. I was so sad it ended , but happy reading what happen in the final chapter. If you read it then you would feel the same way. This was one of my first webtoons I read on the Webtoon app, and I wish there was more since I miss this beautiful story. This webtoon, by Honey B, is amazing in my point of view making me wanna cry and laugh. The art and characters are good as well. I say you should read it yourself since I’m not really ... that great at writing reviews. I bet you well love it and will be wishing for more. A 9 out of 10 so get some tissues and start binge reading this fantasy now. Maybe a 10 out of 10?

I'm surprised this manhwa has such a small presence on MAL, when this had a sizable fan base on webtoons. I read this a few years ago and it was one of my first introductions to webtoons and manhwa, prior to that I had only read The Breaker, Tower of God and Bastard. The story had cliche elements, staying mostly original but it was the art that drew me in. It wasn't as detailed as seinen manga but seeing colour was refreshing and made me have a distaste for non-detailed manga, especially how generic shounen mangas are drawn. The characters I cant recall that well, ... but the MC was good, he was selfish at the beginning but changed throughout. There was also someone other character development + cliche side characters. Like the tsundere semi love interest. The main villain's motive was meh but the final battle between them was very epic.

The manhwa overall is semi-cliche with elements from Wuxia and a bunch of others, but I still enjoyed a lot and I recommend it. 7/10

Underrated manhwa, i'd say this is the Steins Gate- like but fantasy, the MC has the power to change his past but this is the type of "changing your past will also change the fate of his closest one and in this series, worse" ... the MC trying so hard to come back to the original timeline where all of his loved ones exist but then realize there has to be a huge price to pay. In some aspects i think it's doing better than overall mediocre shounen manhwa (ToG,GoH...) the author has stakes in this story and not just making MC OP.

Story was on ... point, didn't waste a lot of time... the world building was explained well, we knew the MC's problem and goal from the beginning, it also has mystery in it.

Art was divisive, some people love it, some people not and both points have truth in it, the color palette the author used was beautiful but in fights scene you can hardly see what's going on, the art also looks rigid sometimes.

Characters were pretty good, at first some might find it typical like zero to hero ML, bitchy FL, edgy friends but they experienced hardship and have amazing development, if you see the progress of character based by comment in official translate, there is some interesting change expecially towards FL and i'd say you'll totally enjoy their ride.

This series is enjoyable, you should try to read it once 8/10.

I started out really liking the series. In fact, if I were simply reviewing the first arc of the series which I read entirely I'd give this series a rather high score overall despite the fact the art really does need work.

However, when the second arc started the entire work devolved into a major mess, one where - I guess the best way to put it is this. The charm which drew me into this particular manga series ended up lost. The character who stood as an underdog in a given system no longer was one. There was a prime opportunity to show his character ... continuing to grow, but for some reason the character growth ended up skipped over for all of the character and we jump right into the next conflict. I guess the build up and character growth they needed to go through was too boring, so they simply gave us quite a bit of exposition?

Despite wanting to know how this one ended, I found myself not wanting to drudge through that kind of writing when I've done that one too many times. I'd hoped for more because the beginning drew me in, but the second arcs execussion lacked the power of the first, so I dropped the series.

SPOILERS:

First of all id like to say its probably closer to a 3 maybee a 4 if ur generous but I gave it a 2 because I considered the whole story not just the ending. The first 60 chapters are absolutely horrendous, incredibly boring and ridiculous I considered dropping. None of the world building + power scaling makes sense / is consistent or even relevant for the rest of the story after the school arc. Things that are irrelevant are explained in detail like the way abilities work but the important things are just glossed over or explained really late in the last few chapters. ... Side characters after school arc manage to somehow become even worse and more annoying and the rest are very bland or uncreative like the classic tsundere female character. The main character starts out as an underdog then becomes one of the strongest instantly ultimately destroying the purpose of school arc. The villain who has been hyped for ages is an utter disappointment, his entire story is done in about 2 chapters and is only shown with his revealed identity in about 4 chapters before the end. The author makes the villain have his way destroying everything our protagonist has as well as everything the author created (world/characters) with typical villain motives I destroy world and create utopia ideology. The author proceeds to try to clunkily piece together his story with a reset button and happy ending with some miracle of the last phoenix god. The ending isnt bad but it just feels like a waste of time reading which is usually the case with time travelling to the past to fix the world esque story. It wud have been fine if everything was explained better.
tldr : shallow characters, unexplained/non-existent world building/power scaling, feels like a waste of time since "nothing happened" with cheesy message end. For a manga called flow it flowed horribly

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.