The Fall 2024 K-Comics Guide

Perfect Buddy (18+)

What's It About? 

As the new Design Team lead for the prestigious men's magazine, City Casual, Seo Hyun-soo wants nothing more than to live a simple, routine life. But Planning Team lead, Baek Youngchan, is proving to be an irritating complication. The two constantly butt heads, and Hyunsoo cannot stand the other man's sunny disposition! Try as he may to avoid Youngchan, Hyunsoo ends up catching the man doing something very not safe for work in the men's bathroom. What's worse, Youngchan won't leave him alone after the awkward encounter! Can Hyunsoo keep his work on track, or will things heat up at the company retreat?

Perfect Buddy has a story by Lash and art by daki, with English translation by Contents First, Inc. This volume was lettered by Karis Page. Published by Seven Seas (September 10, 2024).

This K-Comic is intended for mature audiences only.

Is It Worth Reading?

Perfect Buddy opens with a bit of a bait-and-switch. Its prologue is impressively explicit (albeit with the usual light stick penises) and it gives the impression that we're about to read three hundred pages about the sexual adventures of Hyungsoo Seo. Then that all takes a rapid backseat to the actual plot, which is about Seo making a switch in his workplace based on unspecified issues. That's not necessarily a bad thing, because there are some really interesting aspects to Seo's story. The problem is that the shift is so abrupt and the interesting bits are doled out very, very sparingly.

Seo is an interesting character, albeit not particularly sympathetic. From what we can gather from the clues, he may very well be neurodivergent and have been bullied for it in his previous department. There's one panel that shows lots of talking mouths against a black background as a representation of how it feels to be in a crowd for Seo, and when we pair that with his repeated preference for living an orderly life, it suggests that he just operates in a way that's a little outside of the mainstream. And even in places where that's respected and/or legally required to be accommodated, those of us with invisible differences or disabilities don't always get what we need. What Seo needs is for people to respect his personal space, but that's clearly not happening. In his previous department, it looks like he was bullied for it. In his current one, people mean well, but consistently make him uncomfortable.

Yeongji Kim, his new boss, seems to be the only one with a clue, and whether that's because she's read his personnel file or is just more observant isn't clear. But if there's one person who consistently rubs everyone the wrong way, it's Youngchan Baek, Seo's direct superior. Baek is a sound-and-touch-sensitive person's nightmare, as well as an introvert's natural enemy: he's loud, he's always in your face, and he's so extroverted that he has trouble figuring out that other people might not be the same. Most of the volume is Seo attempting to deal with Baek while Baek tries to become besties with Seo. It's frankly exhausting to read about, and even Baek trying to help with the bullies from Seo's old department can't quite mitigate that. I could see some people trying to bill this as a grumpy/sunshine romance, but that feels like it wouldn't fully acknowledge Seo's very real reasons for being the way he is.

The romance does start to develop just a bit towards the end of the volume. (I'm not counting Seo overhearing Baek masturbating in the men's room as part of that.) It has potential, and I really like the art, which is simple and generally attractive, even if Baek's muscular physique gets a little out of control. I'm honestly not sure if I'd pick up a second volume of this, so I can really only suggest flipping through this before you buy.

What kind of manhwa is Perfect Buddy supposed to be? Is it an office drama, with a huge subplot based on workplace power harassment? Is it a sports manga, with multiple chapters dedicated to dodgeball, then basketball, during a company retreat? Is it porn, for its abrupt and inconclusive turns to the explicit? My best guess is that the genre of this comic is “willful misunderstanding” because just as I'm willfully misunderstanding the subject of this BL romance, the dual romantic leads are similarly each dealing with critical misconceptions about their character that could be cleared up with about 30 seconds of actual communication.

Fastidious, uptight Seo is a new transfer to the editorial department, where Baek is the reigning ace. Despite his high social standing, he's affable and even willing to play the buffoon with his colleagues. But during Seo's awkward welcome dinner, he takes a breather in the bathroom and overhears some strange noises coming from a stall. “Oh, that must be the sound of Baek having gay sex,” he thinks with zero prompting or investigation and proceeds to interact with his coworker from then on based on that misconceived opinion. Seo is not immune to being misunderstood himself; everyone thinks he is a complainer with a bad attitude… it never occurs to anyone that he's actually reasonable and right. Seo tries to avoid Baek, but every office conflict only brings them closer together.

If you like the “black cat meets Labrador retriever” dynamic, you'll still want to give Perfect Buddy a try. But keep in mind that despite the many warnings for explicit content, the whole thing is a tease. This lengthy manhwa concludes with Seo accidentally walking in on Baek and his censored monster cock—and fin. Seriously!? Even though I found this volume overlong and overly complex as characters grasped at straws to maintain the plot's load-bearing misunderstandings, I still wanted to know when and how they'll finally get together.