Written by JunHo Hwang this Forest of Humans is categorized for an adult audience even if from my point of view does not have all the graphic violence that was expected.
We are in a South Korean town where the government in secret and with extremely labile precautions keeps a group of serial killers authors of unspeakable atrocities in a facility to experiment on them.
Here our heroine Ru Ha on her first day of work due to an accident finds herself alone surrounded by this bunch of psychopaths who try to kill each other.
I like how this comic does not try to justify criminals by humanizing them or making them good. I have noticed that some mangas generally for a young audience have this tendency to find the good or to justify someone who has committed a crime with long speeches of unfortunate childhood.
We are told what these monsters have done but the Manhwa does not go into detail about each of these by telling us everything they have done or the violence they have done or immediately causing the reader to like the bad guy.
Yes there are some shades of grey on the concept of evil here and there but they are never excessive.
Their faces are pale wideeyed faces that one can meet on the street like the 60yearold man who tortured children in a shed by disembowelling them slowly or the high school kid who killed his best friend for fun. These are some of the characters you meet in this cinematic and Americaninspired thriller with clear photography made of greys and reds falling pleasantly sometimes into black comedy territory like when one of the madmen was consoling Ru Ha giving her a mini therapy session.
The final paramount is very well constructed and although closed it leaves questions about the mental state of the protagonist.
A nice reflection which obviously must be appreciated with due caution is the one on the concept of Who establishes morality?. One of the killers briefly launches into what is perhaps the only moment of real philosophy of this manhwa when with an entirely psychotic syllogism he says:
Why do I have to feel judged by those who eat vegetables just because I eat meat and I who eat meat judge those who eat dogs? And then we can eat and kill dwarfs and dogs but we cant kill human beings?
It is undoubtedly as already anticipated an affirmation to be taken with extreme caution whose specific meaning is how a serial criminal sees the world his speech has nothing to be glorified or taken too deep.
Forest of Humans flows well with an ending that even if decisive remains sadly tragic because unfortunately these things really happen and the serial killers who commit murders exist.
60
/100