Jungle Juice Volume 1 Review

Suchan Jang is a 20-year-old university student. He’s popular, or as he likes to put it, he’s at the top of the food chain in his university. However, he has a secret: he has dragonfly wings. He doesn’t know why or how they appeared, but he’s been stuck with them for years.

One day, while out on a movie date with a classmate, he’s suddenly attacked by a man who is a cross between a human and a praying mantis. Suchan doesn’t know what to do other than run away. But when his date is attacked, he fights back and for the first time since he got them, he lets his wings free. However, his hero moment doesn’t come without a cost. People start ostracising him and he falls to the bottom of the food chain.

Then he meets Huijin, a woman who also has the characteristics of an insect. Huijin brings Suchan to the Nest, a university for people like them: half-human, half-insect. Suchan learns more about why he grew wings and the search for a way to turn back into a full human. But things aren’t easy. Only the top students can receive the medicine to remove their insect qualities, so Suchan has to fight to get to the top. He’s not used to it, but he needs to adapt quickly if he wants to survive as even the classes and the professors can be deadly.

When the half-human half-praying mantis comes back for Suchan, he needs to make a decision on where he stands.

I was a little bit sceptical about this new manhwa series. Insects are not really my thing, but as Ize Press hasn’t let me down yet, I decided to give it a try. I felt quite a few emotions while reading this volume. The first impression of Suchan I had was not the best. He was bragging about being at the top of the food chain in his school and how he wasn’t a loser like some of his classmates, and it made me dislike him. Then the author dived into his past, showing how he was when he first got the wings as a way to explain his current behaviour, which (by the way) didn’t excuse it. But by the end of the volume, I had become Suchan’s fan. His character is quite complex, and it develops and grow quite a bit in these 304 pages. He becomes the classical underdog-turned-hero main character which, albeit quite cliché, makes the basis for the story moving forward.

The Nest is like a secret university, hidden by the rest of the world, where half-human half-insect beings can truly be themselves. Classes are weird though. Suchan risks losing his life multiple times, whether due to his classmates, professors or even some villains that will no doubt come back to haunt him. Well, in just a volume there is a lot of drama happening.

The story is quite violent and gory as killing is frequent and the insects are carnivores. Different people gain  different insects’ characteristics, which can include the insect appetite and violence as well. It’s not at the level of Berserk, but if you’re squeamish, I wouldn’t recommend it. There is still a lot that we don’t know about the characters and the villains, but I assume it will get ever more violent in future volumes.

The manhwa is in full colour and the colour palette is on the darker side. The illustrations are full of movement and action to showcase the fighting. The cover is simple, with just Suchan and his insect, but the manhwa title is covered in spot UV (the shiny part).

Jungle Juice (one of the new series released this year by Ize Press) is written by Hyeong Eun and illustrated by Juder. The English print edition has a translation by Ah Cho. Volume 2 is slated for release in December 2023.

Trigger warning: Suicide

Our review copy from Ize Press was supplied by Diamond Book Distributors UK.