Bastard manhwa review, short version: read it, 9.0/10. Bastard is a finished Korean thriller about Jin Seon, a sickly high schooler whose father is a respected company CEO and a serial killer. There are no monsters and no superpowers; the fear comes from the dinner table. Kim Carnby wrote it and Hwang Young-chan drew it, the same pair who made Sweet Home afterwards. Skip it if you need a fast start: readers who rank it among their favorites still say the first chapters drag.
Reviewing
Bastard
Kim Carnby (story), Hwang Young-chan (art) · WEBTOON
Score
Pros
- The danger lives at home: the killer is Jin's own father, and the reader knows it from the start
- No powers, no monsters, no detective: the dread comes from people
- Finished, and readers keep praising the ending
- Early, complete work from the team behind Sweet Home
Cons
- Readers who love it still warn that the start is slow
- Some fans of the same team rate Sweet Home higher
- Only the first 10 episodes are on WEBTOON's website; the rest are in the app or in print
Verdict
Bastard is a finished psychological thriller about living with a killer who happens to be your father. It's tight, dark and worth reading, slow start included.
Bastard manhwa review: the setup
Seven Seas, which prints the series in English, sums up Jin in one line: "A sickly disabled boy, Jin might as well be invisible." Nobody notices him except the bullies. At home, his father, Dongsoo Seon, runs G Corporation and keeps a clean public face. The secret is the hook: "there's a serial killer in his house…and it's his father!"
It gets worse than that. In the Volume 2 description, the father has "long forced Jin to serve as his accomplice." The story turns when "his high school crush winds up as his father's next target," and Jin "resolves to stand up to the demon that controls his life." That crush is Kyun Yoon, whom AniList describes as friendly and principled, with "a lot of morality as well as common sense."
Bastard Vol. 1 cover. Image via Seven Seas Entertainment.
Bastard ran on Naver Webtoon in Korea from July 4, 2014 to March 20, 2017, per AniList, which lists it as finished at 94 chapters. Naver lists the series as 97 episodes, completed. Seven Seas says it "snatched the top spot as the most-read webtoon only a few months after its release." The English WEBTOON edition started on June 15, 2015 and is marked COMPLETED, with 151.8M views. WEBTOON's own trailer gives the tone in under a minute:
Where to read it and how the run is laid out:
Bastard Manhwa Reading Guide →
What works: the danger is family
Most thriller manhwa hand the hero something to fight back with: powers, a badge, a puzzle to solve. Bastard gives Jin none of that. He's weak, he's been made complicit, and the most dangerous person in his life is the one everyone else admires. Every scene with his father plays as a test of how much Jin can hide.
That premise stays narrow on purpose. The series doesn't grow into a conspiracy or a superpower battle. It tightens around a few people: Jin, his father, Kyun, and the classmates who start to matter to him. Volume 2's description mentions "An unexpected friendship with his former bully," and that shift is part of why the ending lands.
Readers come back to the ending most. One r/manhwa reader who returned to it after dropping it wrote: "Bastard has one of the best endings I've ever witnessed." Another called it "the best manhwa ive ever read in my life" after finishing it in a few hours.
Bastard Vol. 5 cover, the final volume. Image via Seven Seas Entertainment.
What doesn't: a slow start and a strong sibling
The same reader who called it the best they'd read added a warning: "its slow at the start but trust the process please." Jin is passive early on because he has no room to act, and that can read as nothing happening. Give it a few chapters before you judge.
Bastard also lives in Sweet Home's shadow, and not everyone thinks it's the better book. In the same thread, a reply said: "I actually like Sweet Home (same author) more than bastard." Bastard is the smaller, more personal story. If you came for monsters and a big cast, Sweet Home is the one you'll prefer.
The last catch is practical. WEBTOON's website now lists only the first 10 episodes, with "Read more episodes on the app!" above them. The full run is in the WEBTOON app, and in print: Seven Seas published five volumes between May 2025 and September 2026, the last one labeled "FINAL VOLUME."
Our take: Bastard manhwa review verdict
Bastard does one thing and does it all the way through: it traps a powerless kid in a house with a killer and makes you watch him look for a way out. It's darker and smaller than Sweet Home, and it's finished, which makes it an easy recommendation if you want a thriller you can read to the end in a weekend. Push through the slow opening; that's where the payoff starts.
The Good
- The killer is Jin's own father, and the reader knows it from the start.
- No powers, no monsters, no detective: the dread comes from people.
- Finished, with an ending readers single out.
- Early, complete work from the team behind Sweet Home.
The Cons
- The opening chapters are slow.
- Some readers rate Sweet Home higher.
- Only 10 episodes are on WEBTOON's website; the rest are in the app or in print.
Rating: 9.0/10
For more series in the same vein, see Manhwa Like Bastard.
How We Checked This
We checked 28 facts on October 15, 2026 against AniList, Naver Webtoon, WEBTOON, Seven Seas, YouTube and Reddit, with a quoted line for each in our sources table. The rating and verdict are our editorial call. This pass corrected the original platform (Naver Webtoon, not Lezhin Comics) and the end date: it finished in March 2017, seven months before Sweet Home began, not a year earlier as we had it. We removed an age rating and a "late romance subplot" complaint we couldn't source, swapped a misdescribed image, and dropped the FAQ, TL;DR and key takeaways.
Last reviewed: October 15, 2026
Related Reading
- Bastard Manhwa Reading Guide: where to read the full run.
- Sweet Home Reading Guide: the same team's monster horror series.
- Copycat review: Kim Carnby and Hwang Young-chan's newer thriller.
- Best Psychological Thriller Manhwa: where Bastard fits in the genre.
- Best Thriller Manhwa: Bastard's genre neighbors.
- Best Completed Manhwa: more finished series.
