Notice: This is a sequel to the piece “The beautiful and toxic worlds of Webtoon creator Lee Yone.”

Lee Yone’s survival horror metafictional thriller Surviving Romance ended with a request to the reader: “Please take a look at Please Kill My Husband as effectively!” Please Kill My Husband was a collaboration between Yone, comics duo CANNT WORKS and Gamul. But whereas the collection was produced by WEBTOON’s father or mother firm Naver, you must go in search of it on TappyToons to learn it in English. WEBTOON’s famously strict (and inconsistent) content material tips might have one thing to do with it. But it surely made me surprise: did Lee Yone have a profession exterior WEBTOON?

As a matter of truth, Lee Yone’s profession didn’t start in 2018 with The Make-up Remover. Her first comedian, Unusual Story of eleventh Avenue, was printed on the comics website Lezhin in 2013 below the pseudonym Gaje (crayfish.) Unusual Story was a thriller horror serial influenced by the tales of Edgar Allen Poe. Not a lot different details about it’s obtainable in English. However in an interview with Webtoon Information, Gaje fortunately discusses her influences: cult horror artist Daijiro Morohoshi, the grotesque comedy Franken Fran, and (in fact) Junji Ito.

Sailor Moon from hell

The zombies in Surviving Romance weren’t an accident, nor the suspense scenes in The Make-up Remover, as Gaje has had roots within the horror style from the very starting. Her longest-running work at Lezhin, a collaboration with fellow artist stego, was no exception. Miss Guillotine was printed from 2015 to 2017 and it requested the query, “what if Usagi Tsukino from Sailor Moon and her buddies have been bullies, and the woman whose sister they killed determined to take revenge by murdering all of them?”

Bullying tales are a staple in South Korean popular culture and English language readers could also be conversant in Netflix’s The Glory, a 2022 thriller a couple of trainer who takes revenge on her former bullies. Nonetheless, loads of Webtoons contact on the topic as effectively, whether or not because the central focus (Pyramid Recreation) or as a short episode meant so as to add taste (Odd Woman Out.)

Miss Guillotine takes the novel route of mixing the bullying story with the visible signifiers of the magical woman style as the women on this collection don colourful outfits straight out of the Precure franchise to defend humanity from monsters. In addition they occur to do horrible issues to their classmates and to one another of their every day lives, a few of them even going so far as relishing within the expertise. One after the other, they meet their finish by the hands of the mysterious Miss Guillotine, whether or not by strangulation, drowning, or worse.

The monster of the week is individuals

Miss Guillotine leaves itself open to the identical criticism that dogged the equally grim Puella Magi Madoka Magica again in 2011: it takes a style meant to empower younger women and drags it via the muck. stego’s character designs and sickeningly brilliant colours go even additional in giving Miss Guillotine a definite identification of its personal, liberating it from direct comparability with different tales. Lezhin’s relaxed content material requirements additionally permit for horrifying scenes that might by no means be allowed on Webtoon and competing providers. Even with the extra excessive content material, I wouldn’t say that Miss Guillotine is any extra mature than The Make-up Remover or Surviving Romance, as its excesses are these of a younger and bold artist relatively than a totally shaped storyteller.

There are additionally distinct variations relating to how Madoka Magica and Miss Guillotine strategy the magical woman style, with Madoka envisioning a system through which little women are tortured to feed a hungry, uncaring machine. On the flip aspect, Miss Guillotine as a substitute builds a world the place the torture machine is comprised of different individuals: Magical women damage each other not as a result of they’re compelled to take action, however as a result of they’re younger youngsters burdened by energy and fame because the bullies of Miss Guillotine battle with physique dysmorphia, anxiousness and unrequited love. All the emotional, bodily and psychological chaos ends in them lashing out at their classmates when preventing monsters now not works as a coping mechanism.

Tales with different motives

With a decade’s value of hindsight, it’s fascinating to see simply how a lot of Gaje’s output as WEBTOON artist Lee Yone started in Miss Guillotine. Like Surviving Romance, Miss Guillotine is preoccupied by style subversion, the principles of tales and whether or not persons are in a position to change their inherent nature. In the meantime, Miss Guillotine asks questions on magnificence requirements, the price of fame and collective punishment that might all come up as soon as once more in The Make-up Remover.

The one factor Miss Guillotine lacks is a male love curiosity, even a decoy like Yuseong or Jeha. That reaffirms Gaje’s dedication to telling tales centering girls and their relationships and it jogs my memory of what director Kunihiko Ikuhara as soon as mentioned about his expertise directing Sailor Moon. As quoted from an IRC chat interview made obtainable by the fansite Empty Motion: “If I’ve a man within the present, the love relationship will get to have a much bigger function than the present…I feel there might be extra exhibits with different motives than that.”

Gaje is sort of definitely an Ikuhara fan, if solely as a result of the finale of Miss Guillotine is a homage to his masterpiece Revolutionary Woman Utena. Although what marks her as a real inheritor isn’t restricted to aesthetic signifiers, it’s that she tells tales about egocentric individuals (notably girls) working collectively to flee oppressive programs. Miss Guillotine could be flippant about its magical woman aesthetics—and maybe even underutilizes them all through the story; Gaje takes the desires and fears of her characters severely, even when meaning following them to locations the reader will discover uncomfortable.

Goodbye Lezhin Comics

Gaje continued to put in writing for Lezhin Comics after Miss Guillotine. Her subsequent collection, a suspense collection referred to as Vanishing Twin made in collaboration with the artist Dodal, premiered in 2016. Two years later, Gaje jumped ship to publish The Make-up Remover at WEBTOON below the title Lee Yone. Because of this, Vanishing Twin is now obtainable to learn on Naver relatively than Lezhin in Korea. Miss Guillotine is listed on a number of comics platforms in Korea, though the English model is now not listed on Lezhin Comics.

What may need occurred to trigger this break up? Whereas I can’t say for positive, it might have one thing to do with Lezhin’s unhealthy habits via 2017. At the moment, Lezhin canceled their net novel service with simply two weeks of advance discover. On prime of the service cancellation, additionally they charged their expertise a “late penalty charge” in the event that they submitted work over two days late, along with taking 70% of the earnings. Gray, the creator of the favored collection Data of the Chilly Moon, alleged (per The Magic Rain) that when she was identified with thyroid most cancers, her editor anticipated that she hold drawing and publishing comics.

A blacklist of artists

The next yr, on January eleventh 2017, 100 artists and readers protested exterior Lezhin’s Seoul workplaces within the freezing chilly. At this protest, says Korea JoongAng Every day, fashionable Lezhin artist Eun Music “accused the corporate of utilizing a blacklist of artists it considers to be troublesome and limiting the promotion and publicity of their works.” Any artist at Lezhin might be erased for daring to criticize the corporate and its practices.

A couple of days in a while January sixteenth, a number of Lezhin artists put their comics on hiatus in solidarity with the protestors. One in all these comics was Sadistic Magnificence, a collection that Gaje beforehand beneficial in an creator feedback episode of Miss Guillotine. I don’t know if this was the set off that led her to desert Lezhin for Naver. However I do know that right now many artists and writers within the Korean comics trade now not trusted Lezhin, in the event that they ever did.

Punishment woman

Lezhin’s administration made a public apology, in line with OhmyNews, on July twelfth of 2018. However the firms that run Korean comics hold making an attempt the identical tips within the hope that they are going to ultimately escape penalties. In 2021, says Korea JoongAng Every day, the CEOs of each Kakao Leisure and Naver testified in entrance of the Nationwide Meeting as to whether or not they required their expertise to signal exploitative contracts. As lately as this April, Comics Beat reported that Line WEBTOON was in sizzling water as soon as once more for demanding the identical of artists below its Originals umbrella. (A WEBTOON spokesperson denied the allegations.)

The Korean and English language Webtoon industries share a historical past. Corporations like Naver, Kakao Leisure and Lezhin solely profit by retaining these worlds separate. In actuality, readers ought to acknowledge that the writers, artists and assistants who make Webtoons are greater than the particular platforms on which they publish their work, they’re additionally impartial personalities with their very own ambitions and need to be thought of as such. I’ll at all times be grateful to Lee Yone’s work for instructing me this lesson.