[Oceanographer's Choice plays]
"Skeleton Soldier Couldn't Protect the Dungeon" is a webtoon.
Or, basically, a Korean webcomic drawn chapter by chapter in one long strip,
designed for vertical scrolling.
"Skeleton Soldier Couldn't Protect the Dungeon's" story follows a skeleton who
happily served a succubus until she was killed in front of him.
The skeleton soldier was also then killed but, for some reason, he wakes up alive,
20 years before he was killed!
Distraught at the loss of his beloved uh... mistress, the nameless skeleton
soldier resolves to save her in the future.
This resolve becomes more plausible when the skeleton soldier realizes that every
time he dies, he gets a do-over.
And he's able to get stronger, and obtain more abilities than he ever would have as
a standard skeleton soldier guarding a dungeon.
As a reader, you slowly realize that the skeleton soldier seems to be an NPC in
some kind of fantasy game. Not just a skeleton in a standard fantasy universe,
but specifically an enemy NPC in a JRPG style fantasy.
And for some reason he's been gifted the ability to respawn, to level up, to pursue
quests, and to see the statuses of other characters.
He uses these abilities pragmatically, but is completely baffled by them.
The skeleton soldier has no idea where these abilities come from.
I mean, he presumably has no idea what a video game even is.
And step by step, he learns how to use his new abilities to his advantage.
There's a genre of manga and anime called "isekai" revolving around a normal person
being transported to, or trapped in, a parallel universe.
"The subgenre can be characterized as wish fulfillment, with the person being
transported often being a NEET, shut-in, or gamer. In the new fantasy world, they
are able to succeed through the use of their comparatively
unimportant-in-real-life genre knowledge, or gaming skills through the use of a game
interface only they can access."
I'm far from an isekai expert. I'm sure there are works in this genre that are
great, and some that are fun and subversive.
I have friends whose opinions I respect who really enjoy some of them, so I'm not
saying the genre is trash or insulting people who enjoy it.
But, even as a teenager, I really didn't have any interest in wish fulfillment
fiction.
Especially fiction very deliberately catering to a certain kind of male nerd.
"Sweet Home," my favorite webtoon which I also reviewed, centers around a suicidal
Korean equivalent of a 4chan NEET, but it's a dark comedy horror series where he
is slowly learning bravery, and empathy, and how to be a good person.
And while he's terrified and fighting for his life, his change is genuinely moving.
And it's the opposite of a wish fulfillment fantasy series about how
special and unique a nerd secretly was all along because he was a gamer.
"Skeleton Soldier Couldn't Protect the Dungeon" has all the fun
meta-elements of isekai material without the, to me, cringey pandering.
Skeleton soldier is not a human nerd whose gaming abilities suddenly made him
a capable hero in fantasy world. He is literally
a skeleton.
Many of the times I laughed at the comic involved the fact that his character
design is realistically rendered skeleton that is navigating a fantasy world of
stylized, expressive humans and monsters, and the, I think, intentional absurdity
of his realistic skeleton appearance in juxtaposition with those humans.
And he loved his succubus boss and was happy to serve her, and that's it!
He has no desire to change the world or be a hero.
And, apart from him slowly growing stronger and being recognized for his
strength, he is not a hero or a Chosen One.
He wears armor to disguise himself because he wants to stay under the radar and
one day save someone he cares about.
He actually has information on the political landscape of the future that
could change the course of history, but he doesn't seem to care about that outside of
his one goal.
Additionally because he is a skeleton, he seems to have no sexual or romantic
interest in anyone.
His relationship to the succubus seems platonic, so the story isn't inundated
with the "horny teenaged boy surrounded by big boob fantasy women" trope.
The only trope that I hate in this comic, and it's my big hesitation when
recommending it to pretty much anyone, is that it's extremely rape-y.
And uses violence towards women as a plot device way too often, especially in the
first several chapters.
The clichéd, fantasy, "look at how dark and evil this world is."
You can tell that the world is dark and scary and evil because there's
a l- there's so there's so much rape.
Skeleton soldier himself seems essentially asexual.
And he isn't misogynistic or sadistic or anything like that.
But there are a lot of women he meets who get raped, or murdered, or raped and
murdered to the extent that I stopped wanting to get attached to any of the
female characters that he runs into.
I'm not opposed to sexual violence in fiction, but it's a serious and heavy
topic that deserves respect and time devoted to fully explore its
ramifications.
In my "Hannibal" video I quoted a great Bryan Fuller interview on the subject
that I'll link in the description here, and it feels completely inappropriate as
a repeated plot device in a fantasy RPG skeleton comic.
And I mean so repeated, yet so out of place to the point that it felt absurd!
It's extremely off-putting.
And it isn't a comic that otherwise objectifies women or
poorly represents them.
I particularly like skeleton soldier's female thief companion, who is a fun,
fleshed out character comparable to Nami in One Piece.
She's underhanded and ruthless in a way that is realistic and intriguing,
rather than a femme fatale stock character or some kind of weird, gross
implication that women are untrustworthy.
And most female characters are interesting and treated by the narrative as people and
there aren't over-long cringey fanservice scenes, or rape scenes meant to
excited readers.
A lot of it is offscreen and heavily implied and that kind of thing,
but there's so much rape!
I would absolutely prefer light-hearted fanservice to so much rape!
That feels less exploitative to me than weird, heavily censored rape scenes that
are still there.
Skeleton soldier's story has elements of political subterfuge and explorations of
monster-human relations, but this isn't a serious, adult web-comic that makes room
for content really exploring the ramifications of sexual violence
in its universe.
"Man Bites Dog," for example, is one of my favorite movies and it has repeated
instances of brutal sexual violence, but it's a subversive and confrontational film
about consumption of media violence.
Not a goofy, fantasy-action series about a walking skeleton.
When I was re-reading parts of the story for this video, I did catch an at times
explicit thematic undercurrent where skeleton soldier relates to women, or
women to him: being seen as just a body, being seen as incapable, being seen as
an other. That is worth mentioning.
And most of the rape happens towards the beginning of the comic, and the comic does
seem to get a little better about it as it progresses, but it remains off-putting and
baffling to me.
Especially because "Sweet Home" is forefront in my mind while reading other
webtoons, and sexual violence, if explored there, would be handled with more nuance
and gravity, rather than a sledgehammer reminder that people in this world
are bad. They're really mean... You know that they're mean 'cause they rape women.
"Skeleton Soldier Couldn't Protect the Dungeon" reminds me a little bit of
"Mogworld," Yahtzee's novel about a character in an MMO which I enjoyed a lot
when I read it almost a decade ago.
But "Skeleton Soldier" is less satirical and less meta, and at times seems
self-aware and plays with clichés, and other times is kinda dumb and banks too
hard on them.
Like when you see another soldier who refuses to take his helmet off...
The- the mysterious knight who refu- like I wonder could it be a woman in disguise?!
I've never ever seen that- I've never heard of that before!
G-genius... Genius plot twist.
Other times the way the narrative works is neat.
Since skeleton soldier is an enemy NPC and not some kind of hero, he has what's
called an "assimilation rate," and he has to be careful with how much time he spends
in dungeons and completing quests and clearing out monsters.
As a JRPG fan generally, it's fun to try to figure out what tropes he'll run into,
what abilities and what quests he'll get, and what monsters he'll either
befriend or fight.
Along with skeleton soldier's human thief companion, I also really like a character
who is a shape-shifting slime.
The art shines particularly during fight scenes, which are rendered fluidly and
gorgeously, and when skeleton soldier is expressing a certain emotion
which the artist manages to pull off while usually keeping his rendering realistic,
aided by great, often subtle, use of body language.
This comic also has one of my favorite titles out of anything that I've
ever read.
It's kinda silly and weird, but it's also a reminder to the reader of the main
character's regret, and of the failure he's always trying to make up for.
He really loved the succubus who took care of him and her death was genuinely
traumatic for him.
There's no official English translation of this comic, and I think the app that you
would use to read the Korean version isn't even available in the U.S.
But I'm sure viewers could easily find fan-translations if they looked for them,
though watch out for weird, shady, scanlation sites.
I would like for more people to read this, and would readily give money to support
the author or support an English translation, though the series is, like I
said, a somewhat hesitant recommendation from me.
Because the weird, absurd, and darkly funny skeleton action is, especially in
the first chapters, overshadowed by pervasive sexual violence.
Still, I enjoy it a lot. And it's one of only three comics that I keep up with.
And it's un-pretentious, un-pandering approach to a meta-video game story
is always engaging to me, and I'm excited to see where it goes!
Especially what will happen with certain recurring characters, whether or not
we'll get a full explanation for skeleton soldier's powers I'd be satisfied
either way.
And if, and how, skeleton soldier will one day protect the dungeon!
Thank you for watching.
If I missed anything about JRPG lore or the way the story works, feel free to
point that out in the comments.
I've played a lot of JRPGs, but not always a lot of the mainstream series and
they're- and I don't know anything about current isekai shows or comics so maybe
there are more references to that that I- that totally went over my head.
'Cause they would go over my head 'cause I've never enjoyed the genre when I've
tried it or it doesn't seem like something I would really like.
I prefer a One Piece-style thing where it's just a really fun adventure with a
fun cast of characters rather than, "here's a specific character that
you would be if you went to this universe!"
'Cause, like, why would I wanna be a nerd guy transported into a universe
when I could just be a part of the universe?
If you would like to support me, I have a Patreon and a ko-fi, and along with other
video essays and reviews I'm also on a podcast called "Critical Bits."
It's an actual play podcast, a teen superhero podcast, not a fantasy podcast
and we just put out the sixth episode.
As it's kind of long, um, it's gone from just sort of a... a dumb, fun, slapstick
comedy su- teen superhero podcast, to more of like a dark comedy, body horror podcast
that still has slapstick elements.
I'm really proud of how it's going, and if- if that's something that you would
enjoy, as with a- a bunch of things in this video, uh, link in the description...
And, thanks! [Oceanographer's Choice plays]
"Well, guy in a skeleton costume Comes up to the guy
In a Superman suit RUNS THROUGH HIM WITH A BROADSWORD!"