Have you ever wondered what it would like to be inside of your favorite story? Meeting your favorite characters.
I mean, I love The Hunger Games. But I know I won’t survive more than two days there. But hey at least I will get to meet Effie, Rue, Finnick, and Peeta.
Omniscient Reader is kinda like that. How? – You ask? Let’s get into that!
Title: Omniscient Reader
Author & Artist: Singshong, UMI & Sleepy-C
Overall rating: 10 out of 10
Story: 10 out of 10
Art: 10 out of 10
Status: Ongoing
Genre: Action, Fantasy, Fiction & Apocalypse
*Overall rating might change in the future depending on the future chapters. Since this webtoon is currently ongoing.
Before anything let’s break down the title. Omniscient Reader, what does it means?
The meaning of ‘omniscient’ is all-knowing. So Omniscient Reader basically means an all-knowing reader.
What is even cooler is that the name of our protagonist is Dokja. Dokja is Korean for …well you guessed it! Reader.
Now you might think, okay, what does it have to do with the story?
Well, my little friend, it has everything to do with this story.
The webtoon follows Dokja as his favorite fiction story comes alive. So it is basically about you – a reader- following Dokja – whose name means reader – following the story that he used to read as a reader.
Get it?
That paragraph is the sole reason I started this. And I also love this webtoon a lot, if you haven’t guessed that by the ratings you can check my Twitter. Every Wednesday this is all I talk about.
With this embarrassing part behind us, let’s get on to the fun stuff.
Omniscient Reader – also known as Omniscient Readers Viewpoint/ORV – is a fantasy fiction about an apocalyptic world. It originated as a web novel written by Korean author duo Sing Shong – pen name. The web novel then got translated into English by web-novel translator Rainbow Turtle (1-362) and then by A_Passing_Wandere who continued from where RT left. The story though it was not an official translation created a buzz inside the reader community. And Webnovel then started officially translating it.
As a web-novel Omniscient Reader was divided into 5 volumes, each having a few episodes. Each episode was then again divided into 4-8 chapters. A 5 part epilogue was also given at the end with each volume.
The Omniscient Reader web-novel quickly rose to popularity in the Korean web-novel reader’s community, with 26 million views on Munpia by September 2019.
If you want to read the official English translation of the web-novel, just Click me.
As the novel continued to bring more and more readers, Munpia announced in September 2019 that a contract was signed with Realize Pictures. Omniscient Reader is going to be converted into five-part feature films. A release date has yet to be announced.
In February 2020, a day after the end of the web-novel, it was announced that Omniscient Reader webtoon is going to be published in Naver Webtoon (Korean line webtoon app) produced by Redice Studio. On August 19th, 2020 the English version of the webtoon was published in Line Webtoon. The original story by Singshong, adapted by UMI, and the art is by Sleepy-C.
Just click here to read the webtoon.
With all that information about its origin, you are probably curious about what is Omniscient Reader is actually about? If you haven’t figured it out already. I gave a gist of its theme at the beginning of the review.
But let’s see what the official synopsis has to say.
“Back then, Dokja had no idea. He had no idea his favorite web novel ‘Three Ways to Survive the Apocalypse’ was going to come to life, and that he would become the only person to know how the world was going to end. He also had no idea he would end up becoming the protagonist of this novel-turned-reality. Now, Dokja will go on a journey to change the course of the story and save humankind once and for all.” –Source Line Webtoon.
As mentioned Omniscient Reader is a fantasy-apocalyptic webtoon. It is a story within a story. Everything started with a novel called Three Ways to Survive in a Ruined World – the link takes you to fandom wiki, where the world-building is discussed in detail – also known as TWSA in the webtoon, written by the anonymous author tls123. TWSA was written and published over the course of 10 years.
And Kim Dokja – our MC – is the only reader who had read the story throughout the decade to its end. So when the real world is dipped into the premise of TWSA Dokja’s knowledge of the novel becomes vital for his survival. As the story progresses we are now on this journey as Dokja tries to survive through the dangers that lurk around them. With a question, what will happen if he meets the actual protagonist of the novel?
Dokja as a character is just phenomenal. I have yet to see a protagonist who thinks realistically and takes proper decisions like him. He doesn’t try to be nice or giving. In a world where you can die any moment he is using his brain, being a little manipulative at times, and surviving.
What he is doing is not morally wrong. It is somewhat like a gray morality.
It asks you how far will you go to survive? Will you just kill everyone cause you can? Or will you play smart?
And this is what I really like about him as a character. He kills but he saves those who try to survive. Definitely my favorite character, so far. As we are still in the early stages of the webtoon with only 25 episodes, not a lot of characters have been introduced or had time to shine yet. But I am excited about how the story will develop.
The story is gender-equal. We have strong female characters, who aren’t there for the show or as the future love interest for the MC. Instead, they are on equal footing and as strong. They are part of the main cast. And is treated as such.
From a reader’s viewpoint, the Omniscient reader is truly an exceptional story. The way it is written and now being presented to us in the webtoon is, just amazing. I am truly loving it.
That being said, I have yet to read the novel because I don’t want to spoil myself for the webtoon. But after the first 10 chapters were out I did read the first chapter of the webnovel cause I couldn’t stop myself.
It is quite good. But I am going to hold off reading it until the webtoon is completed. I think it will ruin the overall experience of the webtoon.
Now the art.
I love it. I absolutely love it. The way the action parts are drawn and the use of color are great. There isn’t a dominant color throughout the story – though blue is a pallet that is used in the dramatic sessions. So it looks very cold and calm.
It does give this feeling that you are inside the webtoon. The colors are vibrant. The direction of the panels is beautifully done.
The art is, it gives out this sense that you are watching an anime just without the background music.
It makes you feel like you are inside of it. This deserves an anime! Until then adding music to the webtoon would be amazing if Line does decide to put on it. It is a feature that a few webtoons are using. The experience Omniscient Reader provides would become even better with background music to back it up with.
Overall as someone who loves a good story, Omniscient Reader tik’s off my checklist. I have a great story, with a smart character and amazing art.
I honestly can’t ask more.
Recently Line Webtoon posted about the webtoons that will be getting TV, anime, or movie adaptation in -probably – 2021, and Omniscient Reader was one of them. So we might get the adaptation sooner than we think.
So if this review somehow piqued your curiosity then click here to read Omniscient Reader. Currently, there are over 25+ chapters available to read. The webtoon updates every Wednesday.
Until next time, happy reading! And an early Happy New Year!!
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Literary Hana 
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