Hive - Reviews

Don't listen to the guy who rated it 2/10. Yes the characters can be stupid sometimes, but overall the story is pretty good and the art is between decent and good. I hilghly recommend this, it may seems stupid at the start, but the more you read it, the it is.

This arc was quite intriguing, I felt kinda disgusted at the start because it was a bit graphic but after 10 chapters I was used to it, and like the art, this story is quite straightforward of the mc finding his wife in a world full of giant bugs and somehow it is written amazingly. i absolutely recommend this

The other person who reviewed this is an idiot. This was such a unique read and I would love to see it in anime form. I think you should take the time to read this.

Insect horror stories always end up with the most insane plots. Feels like it must be some sort of genre requirement that you can't just have man vs bugs - there have to be body-horror hybrids or government plots to control them with artificial pheromones or some other ancillary plot. Nedless to say, this one has it in spades, which I think is really to its benefit. That said, there are a few moments early in the development of the story where things feel a bit awkward and I saw a number of comments on the site I was reading from indicating that people were dropping it at those moments... their loss I suppose.

Story - Polar caps have melted, changing the earth's atmosphere back to prehistoric levels of oxygen, and gigantic bugs have started appearing and taking over skyscrapers in major cities around the world to build their nests in. Our MC and his primary travelling companion were working in one such skyscraper in Seoul, and are only narrowly able to escape. We follow them as they encounter a handful of prominent characters in their attempt to find the MC's wife and kid - some characters join them while others go their own way or even fight them. As is typical in apocalypse settings, groups of survivors are just as dangerous as the apocalypse itself, as people shoot on sight out of fear or even greed, but luckily for our protagonists they've got just the right blend of badassery and kindness between them that they manage to scrape by each encounter. Along the way we have a slow-burn reveal of deeper and deeper elements to the environment, calling into question not only the organization of various survivor groups, and not just the nature of the bug-pocalypse itself, but even the composition of the very people they've been encountering. I'm very pleased with how the story developed over the course of these 99 chapters, and ultimately found it more and more engaging the further I read. However, I do admit that there were some very rough moments early in the plot, before things really started picking up, and I don't blame folks for dropping it during those moments. 9/10; Almost perfect, but needed some polishing in the early chapters.

Art - I'm already head-over-heels for webtoons of this caliber for having full color and such great effects, so the baseline on these is pretty high. That said, this one is a little rough around the edges at times and leaves a bit to be desired from some of the character designs. I do appreciate the detail in the backgrounds, so it all balances out for me at a pretty high grade. 8/10; Just needs a tiny bit more polish on the character faces.

Characters - This is the category that is likely the most divisive for the work. I find the characters to be well composed, consistent, and diverse in their personalities, which is a huge thing for me. However, some of the characters' consistency can be... grating at times; when those characters keeping to their ideals makes a situation worse for everyone, it can be a frustrating moment that makes you want to yell at them for not learning their lesson yet. Even so, I prefer slightly frustrating-but-believable consistency over a character who feels like they aren't rooted in anything and just make whatever optimal decision the plot presents them with. My favorite character is by far the old man, not just because he's a hardass that helps keep some of the softer characters in line, but because he's not *so much* of a hardass that he can't accept someone else's suggestions from time to time. 9/10; One of the better apocalypse-survivor teams out there.

Overall - There's a lot to be said for how a work makes you *feel*, independent from how its individual components are graded, and in this instance, I think that overall feeling makes a significant impact on the work. I have qualms and gripes with several parts of this work, but those complaints fall to the wayside in the grand scheme of things, and I felt extremely happy to be reading this for the vast majority of my time with it, most importantly with how the end sets up for part 2. 10/10; The rule of cool makes this greater than the sum of its parts.

Worst manga I've ever read. This was a waste of time and MC was always losing while his enemies always won. I honestly thought the enemies were the MC with how this story went. This story is annoying and it's like you make every chapter bad just so we can keep reading to see if there is ever a good ending. I had to drop this the first time I read it and I still haven't finished it. I really don't want to😭.