@ArisenDresden
Well, here's the deal with Im Dal-Young, at least based on his writing history up to this point, he is the very definition of a hack. Not to say that the guy is untalented, that would be wrong, he can come up with very good premises and interesting and sympathetic characters that get you rapidly engaged and invested into his works, not to mention that he's normally paired up with very good artists capable of creating eye-catching designs to match his writing, but that's where the good part ends. After he lays all this amazing groundwork and you are already invested as a reader and, if you're very unlucky, become a fan of the guy, he starts running things into the ground. Male characters that initially were shown as sympathetic, a bit flawed but generally well-intentioned and realistic to a point, start behaving like cowards and downright assholes. Female characters that were initially depicted as strong, brave, but also caring and empathetic, turn into weak-willed victims that behave in the most unintelligent way possible, which contradicts everything that had been shown about them to that point, and he's a repeat offender of these things I've just mentioned. Anyone unlucky enough to have read more than one of his clusterfucks can imagine characters with a name and face when going through the stuff I wrote above. The only works of his that do not fall into this sort of buffoonery are the ones that end early, probably because they ended before he had the chance to give them the Young-special reverse touch of Midas.
I know I may sound salty and that's probably because I am, very much so, to be honest. I used to like many of his works way back when. I loved Onihime VS, Kurokami until he fucking destroyed it, same with Freezing. I even liked this one foray of his into harem romcom, Unbalance x Unbalance, but that was probably the tipping point for me. Not to mention that he's always working in like 5 stories are at the same time instead of focusing on one, and believe me, it shows. So, if you ever wonder why people are apprehensive whenever he gets something new published, now you know they have good reason to, and redeeming yourself to your fanbase is a lot harder than disappointing them, specially after unapologetically doing this kind of crap for so long. Oh, I almost forgot to put the cherry on top of the cake: he has a
HUGE netorare fetish and he sure as hell cannot stop himself from flaunting it whenever he has a chance through his characters, worst part is, he tries to pass it off as "mature and dramatic writing" which is bollocks, and everyone knows it. So... yeah, try to be at least carefully optimistic with this one.
TL;DR: Im Dal-Young is like a Korean Seo Kouji with a penchant for fantasy. Tread carefully. Thanks for coming to my TED talk.
