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I have read the light novel before reading this so my expectations and what I have seen of this manhwa so far have been in sync. It is a flawed story with strange ideas scattered about. The story is more suited to a light novel rather than a manhwa because it can go by faster and hide some of the flaws within while also having a funnier tone. But, the manhwa has problems stemming from a source material having thousands of chapters, while also being particularly difficult to tell in a more visual medium. Honestly, the story is bad. That comes from someone who has ... read the light novel for over 1400 chapters. I think the art is good but the story is so long that the art becomes incredibly difficult to maintain a high standard. At a point, the entire manhwa becomes rushed. Nothing feels right, not just a manhwa not filling the shoes of a good light novel but a manhwa that is just uninteresting.

The character development in Grid is awkward, the story feels like a slog, and everything is not worth continuing with. The tropes of a virtual reality game with an overpowered protagonist have been done before. However, the Overgeared LN was one of the first to do it. That fact is irrelevant. The manhwa has to stand alone and be enjoyable and it is not. The fight scenes are cool but pointless. Because like every other overpowered protagonist, there is no danger or tension to most fights. Overall a mixed bag of elements that do not mesh together. I can not recommend this to most people.

The point of existence is meaningless. Let me rephrase, the point of the Manhwa series Existence is a commentary on humanity and life as a whole that leads the reader to no new conclusions or grand idea that makes reading it worthwhile. The art and general idea are great and interesting. However, it goes off in a direction that seems antithetical to the idea of humanity being imperfect yet having value in ways that cannot be easily described. The main character of Existence becomes detached from humanity through the multitudes of lives he has experienced over the history of life on Earth. He eventually comes ... back and learns to care for humans despite their flaws because of his interactions with his mother and a girl who reminds him of his mother. This main plot has been done before in various ways including the personification of artificial intelligence who later gain some sort of sentience or monstrous creatures that become attached to humans. So if you like this main idea you can find it done in a much more engaging and thought-provoking way rather than in this manhwa.

But, back to Existence. The whole point of making a character like in this story is not to show off his powers but rather to show a progression of how they can understand life and make the most of it. The absolute power of the main character is shown often, while also ignoring the narrative reasoning why he would have such abilities because it brings the reader out of the story and makes them think, "Cool, but why is this happening?" The answer to that question is multilayered, it makes you think the story has more depth than it does, like answering that would somehow give you some insight that would ruin the mystery of the story. Suspending my disbelief to ignore why he has the power of any animal he can think of and some weird electricity power is easy, but it comes with the reader being less understanding of everything going on in the story. In the end, it all leads to somewhere unsatisfying. The development of the main character is slow and frustrating. It feels strange to imagine an all-powerful man who has experienced millions of different lives, originating billions of years ago, yet be persuaded to hate humans less by two random women. It would be easy to reason that he would have nigh infinite wisdom or be some random thing that has been changed irreparably by his memories, instead, he becomes the embodiment of random thoughts of the author, like, "Isn't pollution bad?", "Isn't human greed bad?" or "What is the point of life?" It becomes an analogy for so many different ideas that you wish the author just decided to focus on something or expand on it instead of going on and on about life's problems at such a surface-level depth.

The best parts of Existence lie in its art and action. The problem I have with it is that the story would be better without it because it takes away from the main story. I am horribly hard to please, so if this review seems too critical, then it is likely that you might like Existence more than me.