Shounen [Webtoon] DICE by Yunhyunseok

[kendama]

I'm also curious as to what will happen when she finds out the truth about Taebin. But I'd say that her natural reaction would be to break up with him, not because he is a Dicer, but because he kept it secret from her, implying that a) he is privately ashamed of being a Dicer and/or b) he doesn't trust her.

Also, I wonder whether Taebin (and also Mio, to be honest) have accepted quests that harm other people while improving themselves. I think that's what matters most to Eunju. It's also what I think is more important in the whole story: how moral can one remain under those circumstances. We know for sure that Taebin is not above playing with other people's feelings to complete quests: he approached Eunju as part of a quest, and only later seems to have started to care for her genuinely. Dongtae never crossed that line.

 

[Jammin]

I'm also curious as to what will happen when she finds out the truth about Taebin. But I'd say that her natural reaction would be to break up with him, not because he is a Dicer, but because he kept it secret from her, implying that a) he is privately ashamed of being a Dicer and/or b) he doesn't trust her.

Also, I wonder whether Taebin (and also Mio, to be honest) have accepted quests that harm other people while improving themselves. I think that's what matters most to Eunju. It's also what I think is more important in the whole story: how moral can one remain under those circumstances. We know for sure that Taebin is not above playing with other people's feelings to complete quests: he approached Eunju as part of a quest, and only later seems to have started to care for her genuinely. Dongtae never crossed that line.

Yeah, that quest to get close to her thing early on was pretty slimey.

With Dongtae he looks worse than he really is. Since, even if he screwed up sometimes, he never had that kind of deceit in him. Taebin on the other hand didn't seem to bat an eye about manipulating the emotions of others. It wouldn't surprise me one bit to hear that he'd gone even further over that line before.

---------- Post added at 12:19 PM ---------- Previous post was at 12:16 PM ----------

It would surprise me a bit with Mio because she seems similar to Dongtae in a lot of ways. Desperate to not be what she was but focused on being a better person rather than a more powerful one.

 

[kendama]

(Previous comment hidden under spoilers to highlight the newer one, since they are consecutive, but three weeks apart.)

Spoiler

Yeah, that quest to get close to her thing early on was pretty slimey.

With Dongtae he looks worse than he really is. Since, even if he screwed up sometimes, he never had that kind of deceit in him. Taebin on the other hand didn't seem to bat an eye about manipulating the emotions of others. It wouldn't surprise me one bit to hear that he'd gone even further over that line before.

---------- Post added at 12:19 PM ---------- Previous post was at 12:16 PM ----------

It would surprise me a bit with Mio because she seems similar to Dongtae in a lot of ways. Desperate to not be what she was but focused on being a better person rather than a more powerful one.

Hear, hear, we are on the same page on this.

As for Dongtae, I don't even think he looks bad. In my (maddeningly long) posts from earlier, I mention that in my opinion he believes in Dice as means to improve himself, but won't harm other people in the way. My only problem with that is that his reasoning seems naïve: he believes that just by refusing quests that involve harming other people he can remain clean. However, we have seen that X can disguise vicious intent behind innocent-looking quests, so if he wants, he can make Dongtae into an useful idiot and an instrument to disaster whenever he wants. Indeed, he seems to be brewing something of the kind: the next arc is called "Dominoes", which sounds ominous to me. Not to mention that this sudden emphasis on how quests are not distributed equally and X seems to prefer some people over others sounds very suspicious. Byungchul was much more intelligent than Dongtae and X was able to dupe him easily.

Eunju seems to have noticed the inherent malice of the Dice system from the outset, and she adopts a "no compromise" stance by avoiding them completely. In face of the current evidence, that looks like the only correct approach to the problem right now, but I'll wait and see how things evolve.

As for Mio, she may be the same as Dongtae, well-intentioned but naïve, but she has now been shown receiving a yellow die quest. I am curious as to what X has asked her to do to become an A ranker, and if it is a suspicious quest, whether she can resist it or not.

---------- Post added May 21, 2014 at 04:50 AM ---------- Previous post was May 02, 2014 at 01:08 PM ----------

Well, the events of this chapter (42) are very ominous, but since we don't know yet what X is preparing, I'll comment on what we saw and avoid speculation.

First, the three girls with similar faces are very reminiscent of the film Stepford wives - both the original and the Nicole Kidman remake. Basically, the point is that Dicership erases diversity from a society as everyone - even those who don't need it and didn't suffer - change their looks towards something they perceive as ideal.

Second, Sungchul - I called him "the fair weather friend" in my mind, as he was the first one to jump to befriend Dongtae when he became a Dicer - sounded very ominous by hiding the contents of his Golden Die quest. I do think it must be something horrible, but I guess it is not against Eunju. But Dongtae's guild is about to fall apart, as I predicted.

Third, it seems that X has set in motion whatever he is planning, and Dongtae seems to have been excluded. It has to be mischief, and X doesn't want Dongtae interfering. However, this drives home the point that no matter how moral Dongtae is, X can corrupt any scheme he comes up with to rein in the Dicers. Since the next arc is called "Dominoes", I can only guess the first one is about to be toppled.

Fourth, there is a nice simmetry in the latest conversation between Dongtae and Eunju. Not only are they making amends, but I like the rhetorical effect: back in the Pandora arc, she told him he "had changed", although she didn't mean appearance. Now she is saying he "hasn't changed at all", which is as big a compliment as possible under the circumstances. And the bit of swagger from Dongtae was a nice touch. He really cannot let Eunju out of his mind and heart, no matter how much he tries.

Which of course, will mess Mio's mind up. The girl doesn't seem to understand that in this kind of situation, enquiring people about their feelings and intentions offers no assurance at all, because when love is involved, feelings and intentions change every minute. And Mio had it coming: if she hadn't made Eunju realise the reasons for Dongtae's creation of the guild, Eunju might have been more hesitant to approach Dongtae and apologise. And when she did, the flame Dongtae was trying his best to put out burst up again with trebled strength.

Finally, Taebin has changed. He is now gloomy and dismissive of Eunju. She is worried, but she doesn't know he is a Dicer. I wonder if he received the global quest or whether he is up to something else.

Cannot wait for the next chapter. DICE now has no less than nine people on the Edited Manga team, but they still need typesetters. Damn, I wish I could help! We are seven chapters behind!

 

[shaheer]

The last quest is whats bugging me, he didnt get any quest. May be X has noticed something distinct about dontage and is trying to test him with various kind of pressure/oddities.
Also i am interested in the top tier dicer which X mentioned and said they were missing tabein. Now that dontage became sth like low level of top tier i hope things goes to main stream ie he takes in tougher stuffs and gets more unique powers

 

[Son-Derling]

i wonder if you are allowed to have more than 1 gold dice skill....that might be the only reason he did not get a quest for a new gold dice

 

[kendama]

I have been wondering about that as well. I do think it is possible, because X seems to have intimated that to become the Top Ranker one needs to max out everything. This means that Taebin is not that powerful after all: he only has one special skill, just like Dongtae. But this may also suggest that Taebin deliberately refused to collect more Golden Dice, which may mean that there is danger in doing that.

But the new quest is not for Golden Dice, it is just a summon to the school grounds. Why Dongtae didn't get it is anyone's guess at this moment (well, there are summaries for the next chapters at the Batoto discussion forums, but I for one won't read them). If I were to guess, I'd say X doesn't want Dongtae in the way… which must mean something nasty is going to happen.

Also, it has just occurred to me: don't you think it strange that Dicers haven't become a major issue in society at large? I mean, just a few weeks were enough for almost everyone in Dongtae's school to become Dicers. In blunt evolutionary terms, they are fitter and should become the majority soon. And since this is the second school Taebin enters (he could be called the founder of Dice populations everywhere he goes), and he is not the very first Dicer, how come Dicers are not prominent enough for the TV to be reporting their existence, for example?

I can only answer that in the longer term, Dicers may not be fitter. Something must stop them from spreading, and the boom in Dicership must end in a bust after a while, with only a few Dicers like Taebin surviving.

Yeah, I mean surviving. At least as Dicers.

What I'm getting at is that X may have something very bad in store for most Dicers. And I believe this is starting now. Whatever it is that he is scheming, it must involve all or most of the B rankers, and maybe some A rankers too. The people left out are probably the ones X is interested in and wants to spare. So I'm guessing Taebin did not get the quest and has left the room for other reasons.

I wonder why Dongtae hasn't realised that… he really needs to add more points to intelligence.

 

[Son-Derling]

well i do not understand the system
we already know that it has its limits
let´s say every dice makes your skill better by 1%
we also know that you can not go much beyond 100%....so let´s say 110% is the limit until you damage yourself (as seen with the strength on one hand)
those numbers are of course made up but just to bring my idea to you guys i need those examples.

that means when you want to bring the 6 main skillz appearance, height, physical strength, speed/agility, intelligence and vision to its maximum you need 660 normale dice
also you need 6 golden dice (we already got the confirmation that it must have the same 6 abilitys every time by the comment like "oh so he was very lucky and got that one. the best one)....and then you need as huge a storage of normale dice to make full use of your gold skillz.
now then....with time going on....wouldn´t everyone be at the exact same point again? i wonder if chapter 0 (you dice for your starting skillz) will play a role later where our main character got the worsest starting skillz possible. of course if you go for speed and 2 dicers are running that are at 110% already....there will never be a winner....then some will of course go higher to get to 111% or 115% or 120% etc...but will at some point come to the point where they damage themselves. so naturaly there is a border...the one that stays at 110% will lose many battles but at the end in the long run be the winner.

also when it comes to gold dicers fighting each other the deciding factor will be the pool of normale dice you have.
everything has it´s limits...i do not see where the manga will get going at that point once the setting goes out of our school and we will see other top dicers that are maxed out and have gold skillz.

 

[kendama]

This was a setup chapter that ended in a horrible cliffhanger that will have me on the edge of the chair till the next release (whenever that happens). But I am not complaining.

Just as Eunju knew all along, something horrible has started. But that's not the most important thing: we are finally going to know X's criterion for giving people more or less Dice. The fuel, so to say. And what's even better, we're going to find out what exactly changed about Dongtae, and he himself came to that conclusion!

As I expected, the guild didn't last long: just one mass quest was all it took for them to forget about the rules. And they can fight anyone, from how the quest sounds, so I wonder if non-Dicers will be hit, too.

In another front, I think Taebin's cover has finally been exposed: I mean, Eunju is sitting right inside the class: there's no way she didn't hear Mio say to Taebin that he is a Dicer, and the three are having their conversation within hearing distance from her. I wonder how she will react to that knowledge.

And what is Mio thinking, grabbing an A Ranker by the collar in a threatening attitude? She should be more careful, Taebin may not be a gentleman...

 

[shaheer]

WOW the chap ws really good i loved it. The flash back ws really something, it seems time pause is very special move what i didnt get it from the chap is if each user have their own affinity for the powers they have. Like tabein has teleport and dontage and the perky white hair guy has time paulse and the girl has ability to fly or sth.

 

[Son-Derling]

did we see in one of the earlier chapters what all the 6 special skillz (gold dice skillz) where?

 

[kendama]

Yes, the six skills are most likely: time pause, teleportation, seeing through opaque objects, invisibility, telekinesis and flight.

In an earlier comment, I had already pointed out that, in my opinion, time pause is the strongest, with the possible exception of invisibility. This chapter drove the same point home.

@shaheer: no the skills are not bestowed based on natural affinity of the person. It's simply a matter of luck, since you get the skill facing up when you roll the Golden Die.

Still, I'm sure that the author deliberately chose to give Dongtae the same skill as that of the most powerful Dicer we've seen so far, Mooyoung. There will probably be a showdown between the two in the future.

What I found interesting about this chapter is that Taebin is sweating cold in the end. I think he remembered Mooyoung's words and how everything is playing out exactly as he predicted. My guess is that Taebin has realised that if the Dicer small fries, currently fighting in the school grounds, keep raising havoc and making themselves noticeable, Mooyoung will get wind of it and come after Taebin.

I'm curious about what exactly drove Mooyoung to kill the other A Rankers. Maybe it was a quest by X, but I find it unlikely. I'm thinking that Mooyoung believes that if he kills the other A rankers, he will get a final level of Dice and become the Top Ranker. The logic behind this reasoning beats me, though. We'll have to see more to understand.

But yes, Mooyoung will probably arrive at that school soon, and the A Rankers had better be prepared. He is quite something, isn't he? Even more than Taebin, he seems to have maxed out all of his physical attributes, and maybe his intellectual ones, too: he can lift a grown man by the neck with one arm, he can take kicks and punches of an A Ranker like Taebin without even flinching, and he can crush a man's spinal cord with his bare hands. But if he is that powerful, how much more powerful would a Top Ranker, and then X himself, be?

I find it ironic that only two people seem completely to understand the implications of the quest system so far. One is Mooyoung, and he is completely fine with using the system to become more powerful, regardless of whom he has to destroy to get there (even the kid who admired him most, Taebin).

The other is Eunju, who understands perfectly what using Dice to pursue one's desires entails. In the previous chapter, she is shown trembling in fear and anxiety the moment the other students run out of the room. She knows what is probably going to happen, even though she hasn't seen the contents of the quest.

I also find interesting that things are playing out differently in Dongtae's school. In Taebin's, Mooyoung seemed to have avoided an outbreak of Dicers: instead, he formed just a small clique of Dicers and waited until all became A Rankers to act. I wonder whether there will be a massacre now that there are so many Dicers. Will he try to kill everyone again?

This series keeps getting better and better, I cannot wait for the next chapter!

 

[shaheer]

LOL you are really into Enju, frankly i dont find her intriguing at all. By natural affinity i ws more into thinking that X manipulates the dice rather than letting it go on chance. I also think Dontages friend got information to that third kind of dice and ws terminated since he got the info way before his time came or sth.
However i agree desire can never be over it will come in a new shape and in more complex way for Dontage i hope he is ready for the fight will go to the next level soon sth even with a hec loads of A rankers tabein couldnt manage to accomplish.

 

[kendama]

I actually don't find Eunju intriguing. She simply knows, she can see ahead of the other people who find Dice a wonderful thing. It's not even a very difficult thing, one only has to think a little. When I read the first chapters, I realised where this series was going. What amuses me is that Dongtae, Taebin, Mio, all of them are deluded, to a certain extent, that Dice can be a good thing. Mooyoung understands that X is a warped entity, and that pursuing desires without restraint leads one to do things that will harm other people, but he is fine with that. The only difference between the two is that Eunju chooses not to accept that, whereas Mooyoung embraces it completely thinking that it's fine if he can be on top in the end.

In other words, X is amoral, Mooyoung is immoral and Eunju is moral. Everyone else is somewhere in between. It's as simple as that, in my opinion. The reason many people probably dislike Eunju as unrealistic (I don't think she is, but whatever) is that, but I believe a character like her is necessary for the author to develop the conflict. The protagonist, Dongtae, and the other important characters will eventually have to decide which side to take.

 

[shaheer]

I dont really think you can say Dontage is grey for trying to change a state he was in in the best of ways he could. That seems to be fallacious in my op nor can we say Enju is dunce for not doing so each has own way of changing and living their life and rightfully so. I am more interested in what really happend than Enjus state of mind tbh

 

[kendama]

I'm not saying Dongtae is grey. He means well, but he is naïve. He was decent enough to refuse any quests that involved harming other people: I can respect him for that. He understood it very early on, when he felt bad for being told to tell a minor lie in exchange of Dice in chapter eight. His initiative of creating the guild to restrain Dicers' worst instincts was also well-intentioned. And we have just seen how much of a spectacular failure that plan was.

A person can be good and still be used as an instrument to evil if they are not wise. Dongtae had every right to think that improving himself the best way he could and escaping that horrible life was justifiable. However, he never thought about the implications of the quest system. He never gave it careful consideration. He went to the extent of telling Taebin "why should we contain them? Isn't it good that they are improving themselves and getting happier?". He said that when it was already obvious that people were getting hurt in the process.

I don't believe the author's thesis is that "everyone has their own way of changing and living their life and rightfully so". His point is precisely that not all ways of changing are valid: one must not harm another to get what one wants. The Dice and the quests are the precise opposite of that, because X is the one in control and he does not mean well. He is deliberately making people harm each other. And while Dongtae may not take part in that, he shares responsibility to the extent that he uses Dice. Especially because he is not able to tell when X is manipulating him. For all we know, X can give Dongtae an innocent-looking task and Dongtae, on carrying it out, may do a lot of harm without knowing until it is too late.

In other words, even after all that has happened, Dongtae still refuses to abandon Dice. I believe he will only realise his mistake when something really terrible happens.

My point is that Eunju knew about that all along. I don't really care about her state of mind, her role in the story is of someone who sees below the surface. Her decision and Dongtae's, as far as Dice are regarded, may be morally equivalent - both decided to go about it in ways that did not corrupt them; but they are intellectually different, and Eunju's is superior, because she thought about the consequences of the quest system. So both Dongtae and Eunju are good, but Eunju is also wise (although I believe Dongtae is much better now and will eventually reach her level if he tries hard ).

However, to be honest, Dongtae has two things that excuse him (in part):

i. He became a Dicer by accident.

ii. For a long time, he was the only Dicer around and he probably thought that, so long as he refused morally objectionable quests, he would be fine. In that sense, he can be forgiven because he did not have to think about implications, since the outcome depended only on his decisions and not those of other people. When Eunju learned about Dice much later, she had better evidence to reflect on. She knew by then that the quests led people slowly towards wickedness, and that's when she said "if that's so, I don't think these things should exist". She had a much better panorama of the situation than Dongtae when she made her decision. But if you ask me, if she had been offered Dice under the same circumstances as Dongtae, she would still have refused to use them.

But I've written too much about that. We had better agree to disagree on the subject.

 

[shaheer]

I dont really think she knew about any consequence she didnt use dice because she is not the kind to use it not because of some problem which might occur afterwards. Also she may have some trauma which hurts her inside but she stellar in school so didnt get the level of pressure as dontage did or tabein or the girl i forget the name did have. They were mocked or bullied daily or ignored of their existance.

 

[kendama]

Not really, in the Pandora Arc it is crystal clear what Eunju is thinking. The toothy boy who had locked her in the room told her that everyone was hurting everyone else, and treating people like trash, only to get those Dice she was holding. She heard the explanation and then said: "If that's true, then I think those things shouldn't exist. I'll never use these."

Later, in the Long Day arc, she asked the crowd: "So it is okay if you hurt other people if you can get Dice? Look at yourselves!"

She has plenty of evidence, after all, having been the major victim of the quest system: she has been persecuted by the whole school, locked in a cupboard, lost her friends, three random girls tried to attack her with a razor blade, her music club dissolved… watching from the outside, she has seen how ugly people get while pursuing their desires without regard for other people, and she wants none of that for her. That's why I said earlier that her greatest compliment to Dongtae was to tell him he hadn't changed despite using Dice.

So it's not just her nature or the kind of person she is. She said, in uncontroversial words, what her opinion of Dice is and why she won't use them. She saw what they led people to do and took a stance against them. In other words, she understands the consequences of the Dice system, there is no denying that.

Would it have been different if her first encounter with Dice had not been traumatic? If X had offered her innocent quests in exchange for Dice? If no violence had been involved? Maybe, but if you remember chapter five, even Dongtae thought there was something suspicious in X's offer. So Eunju, who clearly thinks more carefully than Dongtae, would have probably at least taken longer to decide.

I don't condemn Dongtae for what he did in the beginning. He was desperate, and it was his thought that if he didn't do anything Taebin would conquer Eunju that caused him to set aside all his misgivings and use Dice (again, chapter five). But by the end of the Long Day Arc he should have had plenty of time and evidence to abandon Dice for good. He still didn't, and that's why I think he is hopelessly naïve (even Mio seems to think that, as she called his guild utopian). Of course, he also wanted to protect Eunju, and for that I praise him, but he needs to add points to his intelligence and wisdom, stop and think carefully about all of this, in my opinion.

 

[Jammin]

Wow, Taebin turns out to be pretty pathetic. It seems like he had all the clues about what DICE are but he either decided not to share them with Dongtae or didn't really understand them.

The DICE don't just change skills. That's the bait. They change who you are. That's the hook.

Dongtae is definitely young and naive but he also doesn't know what we do or what Taebin does (because the D-bag didn't tell him). The DICE clearly are more dangerous than he ever could have realized. I always assumed the main danger of DICE was the inherent flaws in people. Like one of my favorite quotes.

"Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power." - Abraham Lincoln​

But now I think maybe that's wrong. It seems like it's a trap. The DICE lure people in. Changing them bit by bit. Until they're not human at all. In other words the more they change themselves the less of the original person is left.

 

[kendama]

Hear, hear!

Yes, I agree about Taebin. He lacks a backbone. Trying to run away from Mooyoung and simply start anew is the ostrich strategy, hiding your head in the sand and ignoring the problem.

He is also a fool. He could have stayed strong, popular and handsome, having conquered the most popular girl in the school, but no, he had to keep asking X for new quests. That gave X the opportunity to lure Dongtae in. And once an inexperienced Dicer came into being, any wise restraint Taebin might have became pointless. It's no surprise that a good heart like Dongtae tried to help Byungchul, and that pretty much unleashed hell.

I agree that Dongtae never got the information Taebin had. And I may be unfair to him when I say that he ought to have thought more before taking the bait, line and sinker. I don't know how I would have reacted with my 17-year-old mindset of long ago. Now, having read Faust and Macbeth and watched Needful things, it's probably not right to demand the same understanding from a teenager, especially one in such dire straits as he was.

But I give Taebin and Dongtae some praise. The two are A Rankers, have amazing powers at their command, but haven't taken the Mooyoung route. Their desires did not keep inflating: once they became what they originally considered ideal, they didn't keep raising their own bars like Mooyoung did.

Of course, that's not the point of the series. They are the exception: the rule is the others. Mr No-eyes and that Wannabe who tried to kidnap Eunju would probably do exactly as Mooyoung did - and I can see them as his underlings if he appears in the school.

 

[shaheer]

Well if i remember right Tabein didnt give dontage the dice he just found it by accident. Why is tabein obliged to tell any one any thing really? He is not and neither does it wants to much it seems