Another day, another story has come to an end.
DICE is a seriously underrated webtoon that I would hesitate to recommend haha. Yes I typed that correctly.
DICE was amazing for the first two seasons, and the first half of the third season was pretty good too. The focus there was on greed, desire, clash of ideals, as everyone danced in the palm of the mastermind. They also had music on some key chapters, which was pretty cool.
The story declined in quality after that. It seemed like the author didn't really know how to bring the story to a conclusion, especially in how to deal with the omnipotent godlike mastermind. Another character, Mooyoung had such great potential but it fizzled out as well. The clash of ideals faded into the background despite it being such a key part of the story before, in favour of fighting just because they were forced to by whims and fancies of the mastermind.
That's a great pity, DICE could have been so much more.
Still, it seems that many people have not heard of DICE. Which I think it's a pity because compared to it's contemporaries like Noblesse and Tower of God, I actually think it's much better than Noblesse and slightly edges out Tower of God. Yet those two get all the attention. I would love to see a DICE anime for the first two seasons.
The afterword is a pretty interesting read. The author explains he went through depression and panic attacks in season 3 and 4, and acknowledges that this has led to a lower quality webtoon. I imagine it likely cut both ways, that the stresses from trying to figure out how to continue to story and live up to the quality of the first two seasons led to poor mental health. It's also interesting to read about how the author's perspective on life has shifted over the eight years, and that in turn affected how the story transformed over time.
So the end. Hope the author gets some good rest before starting on his next work. Goodbye to DICE.
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