| “ | Without any power, you can't protect shit. |
” |
— Johan Seong, Ep. 242
|
Johan Seong (성요한 Seong Yo-Han) is a supporting character in Lookism. He was a childhood friend of Mira and Zack, as well as the leader of God Dog. He also used to be one of the successors of Gun Park. During the reign of the God Dog, he ruled all of Gangbuk, but after the gang's collapse, he refused this position. He also makes an appearance in Taejun Pak's another webtoon Questism as a secondary character.
Appearance[]
Johan has a child-like appearance, a lean and slender physique; when he cross dressed, he was said to have nice hips.[3] Johan's hair is styled into a brown mullet, with bangs barely covering his eyes. His eye color is black; however, it has been noted after the God Dog arc that his left eye has started to turn gray, signifying his growing blindness. which was possibly passed onto from his mother.
His attire once consisted of a black hoodie with the God Dog logo on the back, but ever since the disbanding of the group, he is usually seen wearing dark clothing, boots, and a cap. In the past, he wore two wish bracelets, one to wish for his mother's eyesight to get better and the other to wish that he'd be able take care of Mira forever, but gave them both up after the Cult and God Dog arcs.
He has been referred to as handsome and hot.
Personality[]
Johan is first introduced as a timid child in love with Mira, his friend; similar to his other friend, Zack Lee. He was shown to care more for others than for himself, allowing himself to get beaten up by bullies to avoid getting in trouble for the sake of his mother. When he was younger, he was very obedient and cared dearly about his mother and Mira. He was also very faithful to his religion.
During his middle school years, Johan had low self esteem and thought of himself as a loser, ostracizing himself from his only friends, Mira and Zack. He overcame his jealousy by beating Zack in the boxing championship, only to completely disappear from their lives soon after.
After the incident with the cult, Johan turns more reserved and cold. He has a bitter view of the world and believes power is the most important thing. He cannot stand optimistic characters like Vasco who have a bright worldview, and he takes defeat to such characters personally. However, it is implied by Vasco that the reason he is so cold is because he is lonely and is afraid to trust in others.[3]
Johan is stubborn, especially when it comes to other gang members. He can be commanding, as demonstrated when he did not hesitate to order around two members of Hostel after he defeated them[4]. He can also be incredibly childish when jealous of others,[3] as seen in the 'One Night' arc where he teamed up with Jace Park and became evidently jealous of Jace and Vasco's close friendship as described by Jace, going out of his way to prove his own worth. His selfishness is cited as a major character flaw by both Gun and Jin Jang,[5] the former giving it as the reason why Johan was disqualified as his successor.
Although Johan claims that his only family are his dogs, Eden and Miro, it's implied he still cares about his mother. This is seen when he continued to go back to her hair salon, despite her deteriorating vision meaning he never got a good haircut. Which also caused her to continually think he was Zack instead. Also the fact that he formed a crew to pay for his mothers cornea transplant.
Fighting Prowess[]
See article: Copy Technique
Johan is a member of the fearsome Four Major Crews and is the leader of the crew "God Dog". Jace has stated that Johan, unlike the other crews, never needed a right-hand man or extra muscle to back him up.[3] Johan's true potential was always held back because he did not want to cause trouble for his mom by fighting. However, he finally decided to reach his fighting potential in order to save his mom from being stoned to death during the Cult arc.
Much like Daniel Park, Johan is another character (the only other one besides these two is Jinyoung Park) in the series who has been shown to be able to execute a technique perfectly just by having seen it once. This is shown when Johan mastered Zack's jabs just by seeing it in action once. A few years later he would use that very technique to save his mom's life, by jabbing stones thrown at her before they hit her. However, unlike Daniel, he seems to stick with the first fighting style he learned (boxing from Zack) and has only improved upon it, whereas Daniel switches between various fighting styles to better suit himself in a fight.
Johan uses the same fighting style as Zack - boxing, heavily relying on speed and bursts of power to increase the force of his punches. Johan's talent even surpasses Zack, someone who has trained in boxing since he was young. He is faster than Zack, as stated by many characters, and was the first to beat Daniel in a race (albeit Daniel had run 3 miles prior to their race). He defeated Zack in a boxing match as his punches were too fast for Zack to dodge.
As displayed in his fights against Gun and Eli, he seems to lack the natural build of a fighter. While he looks like he has a weak physicality, he is actually quite strong.[4], despite his build seemingly being more suited for speed. Johan can unleash all his energy in a single moment, creating immense burst power and strength enough to forcefully open a locked steel door, as seen in the Animal Cruelty arc. Gun, a legendary fighter, chooses Johan as a candidate for his successor, but later disqualifies him. However, the only weakness he faced was that his physicality was lacking in comparison to his skill. Gun himself compares Johan to a computer with "software (that) is cutting edge but... hardware from the 90s", stating that in that regard, he is the opposite of Vasco, who possesses poor skill but high physical abilities.
Ever since his defeat at the hands of Gun, Johan has increased his physicality to the point where he could overpower Seth Lee in a contest of strength (someone who can bend metal rods with his thumb) while copying Vasco. He has also managed to copy Jake Kim's MMA flip, which he used on Goo.
Despite these advances, Johan's eyes have degraded to some extent as well, whilst this doesn't cause a dramatic reduction in his fighting abilities. This led to him missing an attack on Zack Lee.
In Chapter 421 Johan gains the ability to imitate Daniel by using all of his muscles and nerves for a limit of ten seconds.
In the fight against Yuseong, Johan ended up being able to copy CQC (after a brief exchange with Manager Kim) and made Yuseong pass out with a combo from it (after the fight and wanting to take out Eugene). Also, the fact that Johan was having such an effect on Yuseong pshycology, Eugene was wondering if Johan was powerful beyond measure and that he might be stronger than Tom Lee .
Johan's Infinite Technique
The Infinite Technique[]
This technique was the amalgamation of all the techniques Johan copied before his fight with Gun. The Technique is totally unpredictable and fluid as it was catching Gun Park off-guard. On getting inspiration from Tom Lee before "Hunt for Gun" Johan's fighting style improved a lot he fought on almost equal footing with an injured Gun using his Copy, who was still hard to be defeated, with his temporarily improved vision he almost sent Gun to his death point. Gun noticed that Johan merged his countless copied techniques into a single fighting style which caught even Gun Park off-guard. Gun reached the conclusion that Johan has finally found his own path and named this fighting style the Infinite technique.
Quotes[]
- "Spare me the bullshit. Friends? I've cut myself off from everyone. Even from my family, because I knew they were all useless. Without any power, you can't protect shit. Look.. look at what having no power gets you."[6]
- Without any power, you can't protect shit.[7]
Trivia[]
- His name in English strictly translates to "St. John", which is notably a character in Jane Eyre.
- He is the only one of his friends to have asked for two wish bracelets, both of which are broken, but neither of which came true.
- Johan has a soft spot for animals, and is often seen with his dogs Miro and Eden.
- Despite stating that that he hated dogfights, Johan was seen using a human shield, and dirty boxing during the One Night arc.
- After God Dog arc, his left eye consistently becomes drawn as gray. This is later revealed to be the fact that Johan is going blind, much like his mother.
- Johan is implied to have learnt Taekwondo from Seong Taehoon, a character of Viral Hit, another manhwa in the same universe as Lookism.[8]
- Johan's distant relative Haru Seong used to cut their hair at his mothers shop but stopped cutting their hair as his mother is now blind, Haru Seong is a character from Questism, another manhwa in the same universe as Lookism.
- Johan was requested to aid and did aid Suhyeon Kim, the protagonist of Questism, because he was indebted to Haru Seong in some way. This significantly impacted the story of Questism.
References[]
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 Listed in the Japanese Profile
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 Webtoon, Questism Episode 151: Here He Comes
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 Webtoon, Episode 259: One Night (2)
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 Webtoon, Episode 261: One Night (4)
- ↑ Webtoon, Episode 210: God Dog (12)
- ↑ Webtoon, Episode 242: Eli Jang (11)
- ↑ Webtoon, Episode 211: God Dog (13)
- ↑ Webtoon, Episode 324: One Night II (End)