메디컬 환생

MEDICAL HWANSAENG

MANGA

STATUS
COMPLETE
VOLUMES
Not Available
RELEASE
January 28, 2022
CHAPTERS
148

DESCRIPTION

Kim Jihyun, who lived his life as a disreputable surgeon, gains a second chance to relive his life. He then goes back to his middle school days, and live his life to the fullest unlike before, he studies nonstop. His goal is to become a dermatologist who make lots of money instead of the poor surgeon he was from previous life!

(Source: KakaoPage, translated)

CAST

Jin-Hyeon Kim
Hye-Mi Lee
Yeon-Hui Lee
Sang-Min Lee

CHAPTERS

REVIEWS

Julyfire
40/100
A Perfect Protagonist Results in A Dull Webtoon
CAUTION: REVIEW MAY CONTAIN SPOILERS. READ AT YOUR OWN RISK.

I have to admit, I really liked this webtoon in the beginning. I binge read this to the most recent chapter in one sitting when I started this webtoon several months ago, and I honestly thought that I wouldn't be writing something negative about it back then, but here we are. It doesn't take away from what I enjoyed while I was reading this, but I'm just so disappointed in how webtoons (and web novels) in general steadily decline after a certain point, to the point of no return.

I know this webtoon was based on a web novel, so I can't fault the artist of this webtoon for the storytelling at all, because the art here is completely fine. I really have few complaints about the art. The panelling is easy to understand, with no sudden or awkward transitions, and it builds tension and suspense when needed. Lines are clean and the color palette is rather one-note, but it makes for easy reading. The character designs are plain, with the exception of the three main characters, which are the male protagonist, the female love interest, and the male rival. So to sum up, the art is good enough to do what it needs to do, but it's not particularly memorable, and it won't make you gasp in admiration at the beauty of the panels. Quality is quite consistent throughout, which I appreciate, because I hate it when artists do some panels well and some are sloppy, jumping everywhere in terms of quality whenever it's not important.

This brings me to the main point of my review, which is the reason why I cannot claim this as one of my favorite webtoons anymore. The male protagonist is too perfect, a complete Gary Stu. He's like the Messiah of doctors, because not only is he a genius, he's so humble and kind, blah blah. He literally has no flaws. I cannot think of a single one. Many panels are spent praising him and hitting readers over the head about what a great doctor he is. It's hard to really hate him, because honestly, because if I were a patient, I would love to have him as my doctor. He truly is humble, and not faking modesty like people would in real life. I suppose such people do exist, but these kinds of people would not be rewarded nor promoted in the cruel dog-eat-dog society we currently live in. He'd be eaten alive and be stuck at a low position for the rest of his life, dying from overwork or stress-related illnesses, just like how it happened in his first life.

So, he gets a second chance in life, because of how kind he was, saving a poor girl who turns out to be a goddess. This is a pretty overused trope, but it can be forgiven, since it's the execution of the story afterwards that matters. And I allowed it to carry me through the do-over of his life, enjoying how he decides to take better care of his parents and to not allow himself be bullied. That made me like him as I watched him struggle, trying to prove himself to people who looked down on him. People who didn't listen to his medical opinion, because he's not a doctor, just some know-it-all kid (or so they thought). I could relate to him, since I'm in the medical professional field myself, but doctors have always dismissed my valid observations about their own diagnoses, just because I'm not a M.D.. It shows how the medical field is so highly top-structured and hierarchical, that anyone lower than a doctor is largely underappreciated or regarded as less important, when it should be appreciated that everyone responsible for taking care of your health is important, regardless of what degree they hold or if they wear a white coat or not.

That's where his life is different from mine, though, because he's supposedly a genius who is versatile in literally everything, from medical diagnosis to treatment methods to scientific research, so his route to becoming a doctor is easy. But in actuality, he's just an ordinary surgeon who knows certain things about the future that make him seem like a genius. Many things he is credited with as being insightful, catching things people wouldn't have noticed, etc. are completely basic, trivial things. That was a dead giveaway that the author of this story doesn't really know all that much about medicine or science, or they dumbed it super down for the readers, but I can't accept it either way. It's like if I were watching "House" and the final correct diagnosis was the flu. Oh my god, House and his team are geniuses! Still, I rolled with it, because it was still interesting to follow his journey from a weak high school student to graduating from medical school as the top of his class.

And here we have his male rival, who's actually a genius in this story, and his female love interest, who happens to be the male rival's step-sister. You can already see the weakness of the story beginning to show cracks just from these characters' archetypes alone. The world here is so small that the three of them go to the same medical school, and go to the same hospital for residency, and these two characters are even related by blood to the director of the hospital they're in. This is obviously the beginnings of a soap opera, with plenty of family-driven drama nonsense.

It would have been so much better if they'd just focus on the rivalry between the male lead and the male rival, because their initial dynamic was enjoyable to watch. The rival is overshadowed by the ordinary-seeming protagonist, so he resorts to unsavory methods to try to catch up with him, like non-lethally poisoning him before the school examinations. It's clear that the rival has psychopathic tendencies, but he doesn't seem to want to harm the protagonist in a way that would be fatal. Perhaps he does see him as a friend, after all? If only this path to true friendship blossoming from such intense rivalry was the focus of the story! But alas, it opted to go for the convoluted, yet predictable setup of pushing the rival to become the main villain of it all. The female love interest only over-complicates things, because she's never hated her half-brother until their older half-brother was supposedly murdered by him. Then the two of them (male lead and female love interest) team up to take him (the rival) down, because he's just such an awful guy, a horrible human being who doesn't even deserve to live. Even the goddess who saved the protagonist's life to give him a do-over punishes the rival by not allowing him to sleep peacefully at night.

The problem with this is that the webtoon has never built up the rival to be such an evil person. He just suddenly decides to go from food poisoning to outright murder, all because his father doesn't approve of him? His father doesn't approve of the half-sister either, but she's not emotionally damaged like he is. She's nowhere as smart as he is either, and even though she's supposed to be a doctor, you'd forget about it because she doesn't do anything doctor-related in the story that is of note. She's just a prop for the male lead, because the perfect match for a genius doctor is a beautiful female doctor, of course. Her own accomplishments aren't worth mentioning, and her real status is being in the board of directors in the hospital. Yes, the male lead has a girlfriend who is both rich and pretty, and I wanted to throw my phone away when they got together.

Nothing can go wrong for the male lead as he racks up accomplishments left and right like it's nothing, coming up with so-called incredible medical scientific breakthroughs and operating on the most important people in Korea. His parents are barely seen again, when it was one of his main regrets of his first life. Yeah, because a story about a filial child is so boring. Let's just forget about his parents, because they're not important to the main plot of muahaha evil hospital director and his maniacal son trying to stomp the male lead down. While basic, it was still fine to read through, because it's a little hilarious watching the male lead want to avoid attention but end up getting even more fame and recognition each time. But that gets boring quickly, no matter how funny it is, if repeated over and over.

When I first commented on this webtoon, I said that it's unrealistic for nothing to go wrong for the male lead, because no matter how skilled or experienced you are, something unexpected will happen at least once during a medical emergency. More so since he's an emergency room surgeon. It's far more likely that someone will die on the operating table, even if he tries his best. Yet it hadn't happened when I commented on this, not then. It's even more aggravating to see him promise things like "He'll definitely make it" and such things to patients, because in medicine, you never promise something you have no control over, and that is a patient's health. Saying things like that in real life is just asking to get sued by the patient's family if something does happen. You can only do your best, and hope for the best, but even if you're not confident about it, you can't show that in front of your patients. But you cannot give them false hope either.

I held on though, because I had faith that eventually, when the protagonist fails, he'll reevaluate his life choices and his relationships with other people, helping him grow as a character. I was foolishly optimistic. With the way the webtoon was going, he seemed invincible. Even his malicious rival faded into the background, and the new couple were so lovey-dovey with each other, like nothing could go wrong. Nothing at all. Until it all came crashing down.

Psych. Guess again. Yes, something bad finally happened. Yes, one of his patients died on the operating table, largely implied to been have caused by his rival who magically reappeared to be his assistant surgeon during the surgery. Yes, his medical license was suspended, but only temporarily. Such a minor setback. Don't forget, he has friends in high places, and he easily overcomes this without needing to lift a finger. He even gets to go to the United States, gets offered a ludicrous salary to work at a fictional top hospital in NYC, just because of hero plot armor. This is bad writing. He didn't even suffer proper consequences for his failure, not even mentally or emotionally. The first patient death for a doctor is usually the hardest. Don't tell me it's because he's already experienced it in his previous life as a surgeon, because every life is important, so it should hit him the same way the second time around, especially with how his character is built. He's more troubled by how he let the rival get away with it.

For someone so smart, he is rather dumb. There's so many ways he could have prevented the rival from doing what he did, if he already suspected him of foul play, and he should have him either under supervision or have his medical license revoked. He could have gathered evidence early on to prove that this doctor was suspicious. He could have checked to see if his rival's patients suffered higher mortality rates than normal. He could have put in a request to not have his rival be the assistant surgeon, appeal to the patient's family to submit the request themselves, etc. But because story needs to story, we have this artificial fall from grace that lasted half a chapter before he is given a bigger opportunity elsewhere. There's zero growth in any of the characters, and I'm utterly disappointed and disinterested in how his story will develop in the United States. Isn't it obvious? He's just going to do the same thing all over that he did in Korea, except in the United States, which is a bigger world stage. He'll be known as the genius surgeon and he'll come back to Korea as a hero, with his perfect useless girlfriend waiting for his return.

I find it completely unbelievable that he can just pop on over to the United States with zero issues, and that he's magically fluent in English. Yeah, I didn't forget he was an ordinary, run-of-the-mill surgeon in his first life, who never even stepped out of Korea then or until now. He can totally speak English with zero practice, and even know all the medical terminology needed without any studying. I buy that he COMPLETELY knows all the anatomical structures of muscles and bones, medical equipment names, and diseases all in English. Pshhh. True story, the youngest doctor in the United States who got accepted into medical school at the age of 12 admitted that he had the most difficulty memorizing the names of medical anatomy while studying to be a doctor, and he was an actual genius, unlike this guy here. So no, stop it. It was tolerable when he was in Korea, but shoving him in a new land to repeat everything all over again? Just forget it.

I hated the Amy character from the beginning she was introduced, because it's obvious that she was going to be used as a get-out-of-jail-free card, being the only foreigner introduced in this webtoon thus far. Every time she appears, she conveniently brings money-making opportunities for the protagonist, so after each interaction with him, he earns another mark on his invincible doctor scorecard. It turns out both her father and her uncle, or some other relative she has, are all very high-ranking important people in the United States, so she's got everything worked out for the male lead to hero it out. It's all so perfectly set up for him, to the point that it disgusts me.

Why should I care about someone who doesn't need to work hard to achieve his goals? All his obstacles are fake and easily overcome. He has zero solid relationships with people, because he's a one man band. It's even worse when you think about his girlfriend, who is just a character crutch to emphasize how perfect his second life is and will be. He can just retire right now, and everything will be fine, since she has lots of money, and he himself has loads of money from stocks. Why does he even bother with his busy life as a emergency room surgeon, since it's clear that humanitarianism isn't his end goal? Yes, you heard it right. While he's a good doctor who strives to save every life in front of him, it's only when they're in front of him that he does it. His ultimate goal was to be a dermatologist, which is the most useless speciality you can be in, if you actually wanted to help your patients. He was only in it for the money, because dermatology is all about the easy life with money pouring in from the wide variety of cosmetic procedures you force people to get. Ahem, sorry, persuade them to buy into. Cough cough. Anyway, someone with that kind of ideology is unsuited to become a doctor, that's all I can say on that matter. Even if he's brilliant and has great bedside manner, his chief motivation is selfish, so I really can't sympathize with him when things don't go his way. I actually cheered when he failed to get into dermatology residency.

Although I'll continue to read this, like with all webtoons I start (no matter how bad they are), to the very end, I really doubt it will get better. I predict he will have a very successful life, get settled down happily with his dream girlfriend, and his rival will get his just desserts eventually. It's all a matter of time. He's just asking for it because he's been clearly painted as a villain that's beyond redemption at this point. Which is unfortunate, because I had hoped that the strong rivalry that drove the two characters in the beginning would carry it through to the end. But this is not a Yugi Muto & Seto Kaiba millennium-spanning rivalry, nor a Phoenix Wright & Miles Edgeworth spontaneous court-based partnership. The rivalry is dead, downgraded to a simple hero vs. villain dynamic, and that's just really, really unfortunate.

Everything wrong wIth this webtoon encapsulated in one panel (it's not sarcasm, the author is serious here. That's right, how DARE you, the reader, hate our protagonist? Something must be wrong with you!):

And here's another, just in case you didn't get the message:

And one more for the road!:

Nearly every chapter is peppered throughout with such amazing panels extolling the undeniable virtues of our hero. Hats off to Mr. Gary Stu!

Then i see this singular loaded panel, and I lament at what could have been. Isn't the wistful silence here far more emotionally impactful than all that repetitive jibber-jabber? Out of all the roads the author could have taken to get to this point, they chose the absolute worst one. Such a waste.

Overall Breakdown:
Characters: 3/10
Story: 4/10
Art: 6/10
Lore/Worldbuilding: 1/10
Enjoyment: 6/10
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