Vanitas vanitatum et omnia vanitas

The horizon is one of the most interesting war stories that I've read so far, it tells a story of a boy who's trying to survive and preserve his humanity but each and every step of his journey reminds him that there are many awful people on our planet. Despite being only 21 chapters long "The horizon" shows us many different ways in which war influences people, but all of them have one thing in common, it changes innocent civilians into withered versions of themselves. This story is universal, it can take place in every single country on the planet and the suffering, death of the innocent and emotional trauma will follow it whereve it goes

Every character has their own way of percieving the world around them and has been influenced by it in many different ways, some are willing to do anything in order to survive, others have been completely destroyed and their life has changed into one long streak of pain and suffering. In this world no one is safe, main character is oftenly walking along hundreds of nameless corpses which belong to regular people who just haven't been lucky. This manhwa tackles topics of existentialism, schopenhauerism, nihilism but most importantly pacifism, right from the get go we see innocent civilians being murdered and later on we get to see that even those who managed to survive will to have to do many morally questionable things in order to survive. This series won't give you an easy answer, each ideology and approach to the situation that characters are in is presented with both flaws and merits but none is presented as the definitive, correct one.

The visuals are simply stunning, every single pannel conveys a message, some are genuinely terryfing, others really sad but all of them tell a story and this manhwa simply wouldn't be as good without them. Pannels can be both expressionistic, naturalistic and symbolistic, and even a combination of all of those styles, it really depends on the context but one things certain, all of them hit hard. Ji-Hoon Jeong is especially good at portraying facial expressions, just all it takes is a glance to understand what a given character is feeling and the more you look at it the more you get it, it almost seems as if the author has seen Dante's hell.

In conclusion, "The horizon" is not the most pleasant manga to read, it tackles many serious topics and presents many deprresing scenes, but despite that it's a masterpiece. The author did his best to show a universal depiction of war, one that can happen everywhere and ruin many lives. Thanks to the impeccable visuals the series emotional climaxes are way more memorable. This story is at it's core a story about how one's psyche can be crushed and how even the most innocent children will suffer, not knowing why or who decided that their life will change forever.