Sihong is a prodigy on track to make a splash in the world of engineering, until mysterious alien creatures named yomis, as adorable as they are bloodthirsty, invade Earth. Three years later, he's confined to his apartment as the outside world goes to hell, surviving on weekly rations handed out by the government. One day, he is visited by a talking squirrel-like creature who asks him to help end the invasion by killing his mother—the leader of the yomis who is masterminding their takeover of Earth, disguised as the popular human K-pop star Hyo-i…

Cute War has a story by and art by sooriboo. English localization by WEBTOON. Published by WEBTOON (June 20, 2026). Rated YA.

Erica Friedman
Rating:

The premise here is solid. I've seen it in other media as well—an enemy that is impossibly cute, too cute for humans to fight, but that will hunt and kill humans with no qualms. To what end have the small, squishy creatures known as the yomis come earth? We so don't know, or if they are aliens or a created race. All we know is that they are small and cute, but hunt in packs and will kill humans when they can. They don't eat them, however. Once they've killed, they move on to the next.

It's been like this for a while on Earth. Bodies litter the streets, while most humans stay inside buildings, getting decreasingly small rations from government forces and arguing with each other over those. Sihong may once have been a prodigy, but now he's a miserable nobody in a building of survivors he hates.

And herein lies the main problem with Cute War. It's unremitting. There's no light, just a slow, nasty grind through a survival story. Shinong's unlikeable which makes it hard to care whether he survives and the one character who seems likeable is running from unimaginable horror as her favorite pop idol slaughtered her entire division as they gathered to watch her sing.

There are seven chapters currently, which seemed like a good place to stop, even though this is apparently where the story truly starts. I have one small complaint about this comic, which may seem incredibly petty. In a comic about murder, starving and extreme violence…every curse word—including “Damn”—is asterisked out. Obviously people curse constantly in this world of privation and horror. The asterisks seem juvenile. Just let 'em curse. I would be.