The Fall 2024 K-Comics Guide

Be RF Savvy or Die

What's It About? 

One day I was in a world that I did not know. [The entrance to the quest has been successfully completed! ]. [Quest (Main) – «Fix the world!». Content: This world was created by mixing four novels – Child Care, Contract Marriage, XXX, XXX. Genres are unknown. You must return the four distorted novels to the original. ]. But… I have no memory of their content. If I make a mistake… then I'm going to die?! Besides, the distorted web novel characters are interested in me! What should I do?!

Be RF Savvy or Die has a story by Moon Sihyun and art by Bammi, adapted by 1004 with English localization by Kakao Entertainment. Published by Tapas.

Is It Worth Reading?

Oh no, I thought at first, Is Be RF Savvy or Die just another boilerplate isekai webtoon? It is, but thankfully not in the way you're thinking. Be RF Savvy or Die is very much a standard transmigration story, but it's 100% aware of that – in fact, the “RF” in its title stands for “romance fantasy,” and heroine Daline has to use all of her considerable knowledge of the genre to survive. She's been transported into a story world where four of the many, many web novels in various subgenres of fantasy romance she's read have become mixed up, and if she wants to make it home to Korea alive, she'll have to separate the stories and restore their tropes. The catch? Daline is dying, so if she screws up, it's all over, both for Daline and the young woman who has been transferred into her body.

These first fifteen chapters remind me of nothing so much as Life with an Ordinary Guy Who Reincarnated into a Total Fantasy Knockout. The “fairy” who's supposedly helping Daline is a total troll, tossing emojis at her instead of answers and playing around with the information they dole out. Sure, they give her a wristwatch that will light up when she encounters one of the main characters, but it's a world based on a time before wristwatches were a thing – and one that flashes certainly attracts attention to her weird “bracelet.” Daline also has none of her original body's memories when she wakes up, so she's at a total disadvantage as she tries to sort through tropes, genres, and characters to save herself.

The story is spot-on with its skewering of the typical clichés. Daline's first thought is to collect portraits of all of the guys with weird hair colors or specific physical traits to find the heroes, and when she figures out which novel she's working with for the first of the four, we get a fake cover and hashtags along with internet comments about it. The book is in the “adored baby” subgenre, and the translation does an astounding job with the overexaggerated baby talk the toddler heroine uses – poor Daline can barely understand her, it's so overdone. That the baby princess is also the reincarnation of a warmongering king and constantly wants alcohol and cigarettes is just the icing on the cake. This series knows its clichés.

The art isn't quite as good as the writing, although it is still good enough. Daline's clothes seem to be from a different era than everyone else's, although that may be deliberate to make her stand out, and there's an unpolished quality to a lot of it. The artist also doesn't do anything spectacular with the vertical format, although, again, it's definitely good enough to read. If you're ready to see some shoujo-style isekai tropes skewered, it's worth checking this out.