**THIS REVIEW CONTAINS MINOR SPOILERS FOR THE FIRST ARC OF THE WEBTOON**

Omniscient Reader's Viewpoint is one of those webnovel stories that needed to be rewritten from the beginning in order to better fit a visual format. From the unneeded RPG elements to the simplistic plot conveniences to boring world building, ORV has many elements that might work in a webnovel but frankly are just bad when translated to a webtoon.

Starting with the good stuff. ORV is visually stunning. The paneling is superb, the art is clear and easy to understand, and everything is clean and detailed. The only issue is that the character design and world is painfully generic. It's the apocalypse and people look like they're unironically cosplaying for comic con on a budget.

Now... with the stuff I don't like.

1. The main character is a gary stu but it doesn't make sense for him to be proficient in the world he's in. While he might have the "cheat" of being in an apocalypse world, that does not mean that he is actually capable of pulling from that information in a meaningful way. If anything, the story quickly shows in the beginning that Dokja (the MC), is a person who chooses escapism over everything. He is in a dead-end job, in part because he is choosing to not try and better himself and get the life he wants to have.

While I don't mind that the story has the main character rise up to the occassion, the ease and quickness in which he does so to the point of being perfect is just too much. The person who refused an opportunity to make the life (that it seems like he wants) happen in order to escape into a webnovel is suddenly mr. perfect is unearned. Imagine reading I Am a Hero and having the main character suddenly be proficient in surviving the apocalypse instead of being a blundering and confused idiot. The story is pretty much making the case that you can become a doctor by reading a medical textbook, which is obviously not the case.

2. The RPG elements drag the story down and frankly don't belong in the story. This is a case of webnovel elements not translating well into a visual format. RPG elements in webnovels are there to essentially simplify what's going on for the reader and tell them exactly what's going on without needing them to think. It makes sense for a pulpy serialized story to do this because most readers aren't there to actually deeply think about what's going on, and that's works well with limited information with text. However, it makes much less sense in a visual format because there's much more information. We, as readers, don't more help to understand that something is going on when we can see it.

Without going into too much more detail, for anyone reading this webtoon, try to block out the RPG popups and see how much more creepy the story gets. It legitimately improves the story and characters significantly. This might be a 7-8 webtoon without it.

3. The "omniscience" is mostly just deus ex machina for every situation. The solutions that the main character comes up with are frankly just plot convenience most of the time. I think to best illustrate this, is to show the first action scene of the story.

So in the first part of the story, there's this event where people have to kill something in order to live. Naturally everyone assumes that they gotta kill someone. Dokja, however, is a smarty-pants and realizes that someone has a cage full of grasshoppers. Cleverly he kills a grasshopper and is able to live. However, and this is where the story becomes stupid, Dokja is challenged by another passenger who is much stronger than him. So Dokja, in his perfection, saved a female grasshopper full of eggs to kill but because of PLOT CONVENIENCE eggs count as living things so he kills the grasshopper and all the eggs inside of it in order to out-level the strong guy and become stronger than him. I just.... have so many questions with this plot development. If eggs are living things, what about bacteria and other microbes living in the subway car. Can someone just use hand sanitizer and become a god? The human body is murdering worms and parasites on the regular, do those count as living and being killed by someone?

This is the level of "omniscience" that dokja has in multiple instances in the story. It's not clever, it's plot convenience. And I've had webnovel people tell me that "this is explained later" to this I say bullshit, explaining stupid shit at the beginning of the story because of a hand-wavy plot convenience towards the end is not good writing. It's like saying something stupid and saying "Hah! I was just acting stupid". No you weren't and don't pretend like you're smarter than you are.

4. It's not introspective at all about reading. While this is more of a personal gripe with the story and why my enjoyment score is so low. My biggest subjective issue with this story is that Dokja has gotten perfect information from the story he read, as in, his interpretation is perfect. While this makes the "cheat" work, it's a pretty terrible plot element for a story about reading. I challenge anyone to read, watch, or listen to any piece of media and try and interpret it with a group of people. I would be hard pressed to believe that everyone had the same interpretation. Check out the reviews surrounding a movie like Mother! and see how little people actually agree on that.

However this is the beautiful part about reading and I think the author has taken a stance that seriously sucks out what makes art and reading beautiful. Art having multiple interpretations gives depth to art. Dokja shouldn't be able to perfectly predict how people are going to react and/or see how a story will unfold. His interpretation is limited because of his life and point of view. The fact that he can perfectly navigate situations, read people, and understand the world is a travesty and not at all introspective about reading.

In conclusion, ORV is one of those stories that has bravado but lacks depth. While the art is great and the pacing and action are well done, I don't think the story offers much else. It's a stupid power fantasy that's trying to act like it's something else. I think it might be more worth reading compared to other webnovel adaptions like Overgeared or Tomb Raider King, but it's still a middling story at best.