Webcomic / SAVE ME

If you could turn back time... do you believe you can straighten out the errors and mistakes... and save everyone?

The Most Beautiful Moment in Life Pt. 0: SAVE ME (or just SAVE ME) is an official Korean webtoon or manhwa created by BigHit Entertainment and LICO (creator of Refund Highschool) that works as a linear retelling of the BTS Universe, the story from the music videos, short films and Notes of Korean group BTS.

SAVE ME is the story of seven boys, the BTS members' Author Avatars from the BU universe. In a school ripe with Sadist Teachers, and with each having to deal with their own share of Abusive Parents and traumas while surrounded by useless adults and poverty, the boys' times together were their only moments of happiness.

The story, however, starts with Seokjin waking up on April 11 after returning to Korea from the US - 2 years after the group's separation. A month later he finds, to his horror and regret, that his six friends' lives have taken tragic turns ^note much like in the "I NEED U (Original ver.)" music video.

Then Seokjin wakes up in his room, on April 11. And then he wakes up again. And again. Will he be able to save his friends from their fates, or is it too late?

SAVE ME was officially announced in January 2019 by the Twitter account Smeraldo_Books and published weekly for free in LINE Webtoons, starting on January 16th and ending in April 11th of the same year, which also happens to be one day before the release of BTS' album MAP OF THE SOUL: PERSONA. You can read it in its official English translation here.

During the run of SAVE ME, BigHit also released The Most Beautiful Moment In Life: The Notes, a novel showing the backstory of the characters and the story after the events of this webcomic in the form of diary-like entries for each character. While the novel is optional to understand SAVE ME, both works are complimentary to each other and required reading to follow the plot of the BTS Universe.

Has no relation to the film of the same name.

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SAVE ME provides examples of:

• Abusive Parents:
  • Taehyung's father was physically abusive towards him and his sister.
  • Downplayed in Jungkook's case, whose family is implied to simply not care about him.
  • Jimin's mother is emotionally and physically abusive, treating him like a burden and forcing him to stay in a hospital for 2 years. She also hits him and victimizes herself for his illness.
• And Then What?: Non-villainous example. In Episode 9, being confronted by Yoongi led Seokjin to ponder this. Even if he saves his friends from immediate danger, what happens next? Will they ever be happy? Will they even remain truly safe afterward, given that the issues that led them to their original fates are still there?
• Anger Born of Worry: Deconstructed. Jin displays this after stopping Jungkook from falling in Episode 04, but it reminds Jungkook of his abusive mother saying the same words to him, whose anger is not exactly implied to come out of worry.
• Author Avatar: Like in the rest of the BTS Universe, each one of the seven boys is partially based on a real-life member of BTS, taking on their appearances, real names, some personality traits and other elements though differing dramatically in other aspects, such as backstory.
• Bleed 'Em and Weep:
  • Like at the end of "I NEED U (Original ver.)" and the beginning of the "Prologue" short film, the first image of the Prologue is Taehyung staring at blood stains on the floor (broken glass all around), followed by a shot of Tae's hands covered in blood, and then his face as he cries while staring at them. As in those videos, we find out one chapter later that he had just murdered his father.
  • In Episode 15, the last thing Seokjin sees after being accidentally killed by Taehyung is the younger weeping inconsolably.
• Bloodier and Gorier: Downplayed. While there were also heavy themes in the BU, the comic shows more graphically what was only implied or partially shown in the videos, though how graphic is limited by the art style. For example, the comic shows a character's bloodied dead body with eyes wide open after falling off a building, while the videos would only show them standing on a rooftop and looking at the distance.
• Breaking the Fellowship: Part of the premise. These seven boys spent a year together, finding happiness in having each other, only for them to split up for 2 years.
• Call-Back:
  • The scene of the boys standing lined up while a teacher scolds and hits them also appears in the BTS LIVE TRILOGY: EPISODE I. BTS BEGINS VCRs from 2015. Even the teacher looks the same!
  • The characters' designs are composites of the members' looks from various eras throughout the BU music videos. Jin has his "Blood, Sweat and Tears (Japanese version)" look, Namjoon, Yoongi, Taehyung and Jungkook have their "I NEED U" attires, Jimin has his hair styled like in "I NEED U" but colored like in "RUN", and Hoseok has his clothes from "I NEED U" but the hair from "Blood, Sweat and Tears".
• Deal with the Devil: Jin is granted his wish to be able to turn back time and change fate by a mysterious entity.
• Determinator: Despite everything, Seokjin keeps trying to save his friends, no matter what.
• Died in Your Arms Tonight: In the last chapter, Jin is stabbed by accident by Taehyung, and dies in Tae's arms as the latter weeps. Fortunately (?), it doesn't last.
• Dies Wide Open: Jungkook, more than once.
• Dissonant Serenity:
  • Yoongi appears completely expressionless as he stands in the middle of a room on fire in the Prologue.
    • In Episode 6, he smiles.
  • Jungkook's neutral yet melancholic expression throughout the Prologue and the first 2 chapters remains almost entirely the same, even as he's falling down a building to his death. It only changes after he's rescued.
• Dreaming of Things to Come:
  • In Episode 1, Seokjin has a nightmare about all of his friends sinking into the bottom of the ocean, with him being unable to reach them. Some weeks later, he learns about what happened to them - and it isn't pretty. Interestingly, all of them in the dream are dressed exactly as in the "I NEED U" music video.
  • As revealed in Episode 6, Taehyung has dreams about events we've seen in previous timelines. He seems to perceive his dreams as these, but it's unclear if they're dreams about the future, the events of a past time loop, or both.
    • As of Episode 8, he has had dreams of Yoongi dying in a fire and Jimin drowning in the sea, the latter of which is very similar to Jin's nightmare in Episode 1. In Episode 13, his dreams lead him to Jin's apartment during Jin's Heroic BSoD, implying that his dreams show him the previous loop(s).
    • In the final chapter, a distraught Taehyung reveals that he has dreams about all of the other boys' fates (minus Seokjin) every night. He also dreams about himself but doesn't remember what happens to him after he wakes up.
• Dream Intro: Episode 08 begins with Taehyung's nightmare, where (in a very similar way to Seokjin's dream in the first chapter), he watches Jimin get dragged down to the bottom of the sea by Jimin himself.
• Driven to Suicide:
  • In the original timeline, Jungkook throws himself off a building rooftop, and (like in "I NEED U") Yoongi sets his room on fire with himself still inside. While is not completely clear whether the former was actively looking to kill himself (though he didn't exactly mind dying, either), the latter definitely was.
  • In Episode 12, Jimin tries to drown himself in a bathtub, though it's not clear how intentional it is.
• Drowning My Sorrows: Yoongi gets drunk in a bar while recalling his father's words on the night of April 11, right before he goes to a hotel room and sets it on fire.
• Dull Eyes of Unhappiness:
  • Namjoon briefly displays these while resigning himself to his fate in Episode 1.
  • In Episode 7, Yoongi displays these after being rescued by Jin, as he still wants to die.
• Fantasy-Forbidding Father: Yoongi's father is this, rejecting his son's wish to make music.
• First-Episode Twist: It's very hard to talk about the story without mentioning that Jungkook and Yoongi die, Taehyung murders his father and gets arrested, Namjoon is in a detention center, and Jin travels through time, all of which happens in Episode 01.
• For Want Of A Nail: Changing things *too* much *too* early can drastically affect the outcome of a loop.
• Friendless Background:
  • The scenes featuring Jungkook in school in the present show him walking alone, never interacting with the numerous cheerful classmates around him.
  • If his mother is to be believed, Jimin never had friends before meeting the others.
• Gory Discretion Shot: In Episode 6, Jin's car collides with the side of a truck, with Namjoon's side getting the worst of the impact. When we jump to the aftermath, we only see Namjoon from behind and then from the front, in which his face is obscured (as he's facing downwards), but with bloodstains on his clothes clearly coming from there.
• Groundhog Peggy Sue: Jin goes back over and over to April 11th, and does so until he can fix his friends' fates.
• Heroic BSoD:
  • Jin's reaction to Jungkook's death in front of him in Episode 2, which follows into the next rewind.
  • Jungkook's reaction to Yoongi's death in Episode 5.
• Hidden Eyes:
  • The art style also tends to obscure the eyes of the characters in wider shots (even when they realistically should be seen) or to convey certain emotions. Jungkook gets this in Episode 5, first after being asked about home, and then when he's asked about Yoongi.
  • Everyone in this world who isn't one of the main seven seems to lack eyeballs. Exceptions being a child in the hospital, and Jimin's mother.
• Interrupted Suicide: In Episode 04, Jin and Namjoon manage to stop Jungkook from falling off the rooftop. Jin starts doing so by himself in later rewinds.
• Lonely Together: Back when they were still together, they only found happiness as long as they were together. Until they weren't anymore.
• Meaningful Background Event: When Jin is asking the gas station employee about Namjoon in Chapter 1, the TV is displaying the news headline "A high school student arrested for killing his father".
• Mental Time Travel: Jin goes back in time by waking up in the same bed, on the same day.
• Mind Screwdriver: SAVE ME seems to work as this for the BTS Universe as a whole (even more so than The Notes), telling the story much less ambiguously, with actual dialogue and a much more linear narrative structure, also working as an alternative starting point for a newcomer.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Turns out in Episode 6 that the more you change things, the more circumstances change for later events, making them harder to control. Jin figures this out rather painfully when he accidentally gets Jungkook, Taehyung and Namjoon killed after colliding with a truck while looking for Yoongi.
• Parental Abandonment: Hoseok's mother abandoned him when he was a child.
• Putting the Band Back Together: Part of the premise, by extension. After a 2-year separation, Jin has to find a way to save his friends from their fates - which means he has to get in contact with them, who in turn also need each other.
• Reset Button: Whenever Jin fails, time resets immediately to April 11th. The reset can happen over hours... or weeks.
• Ripple-Effect-Proof Memory: Double Subverted. Jin initially doesn't remember what happened after waking up, only getting a strange vague feeling that he has forgotten something, but after the third time, he gains the ability to remember every timeline that came before.
• R-Rated Opening: In case you weren't familiar with the tone and content of the BTS Universe, the Prologue chapter starts right off the bat by showing the "bad outcomes" (several from "I NEED U (Original ver.)", itself the R-Rated Opening of the BU), which include a character with blood-covered hands, another one in jail, one standing very close to edge of a rooftop, and one character calmly standing in the middle of a room going down in flames. And at least one of them is still a minor.
  • Any doubts about the tone of the series are completely squashed by Episode 2, where a character kills himself in front of the protagonist. Twice.
• Sadist Teacher: A flashback in Episode 7 has a teacher (the same one from Episode 1, presumably) suddenly appear in the boys' hideout while Jungkook is listening to Yoongi playing piano. The teacher manages to slap Jungkook so hard he falls off the table. Yoongi gets expelled after interfering to defend Jungkook.
• Self-Immolation: Yoongi's fate in the original timeline as he sets himself on fire.
• Self-Made Orphan: In the original timeline, Taehyung kills his abusive father.
• Set Right What Once Went Wrong: Jin's goal is to save his friends from their tragic fates.
• Stepford Smiler: Both Jungkook and Taehyung are shown to hide their problems behind a smile. Jungkook almost immediately starts smiling, talking about the view and dodging questions after being saved from falling to his death in episodes 4 and 5. Having just gotten out of police custody in Episode 5, Taehyung just laughs it off, and cryptically says he's seen Yoongi in his dreams (implied to be Yoongi in the room on fire) while still smiling.
  • Hoseok has a naturally bright and cheerful personality, but he also seems to dodge questions about his condition by laughing it off or smiling anxiously.
• Tareme Eyes: Jungkook, the youngest of the group, is drawn this way, with his big eyes being one of his defining features. Also (though it's more downplayed) Jimin, Hoseok, Namjoon and Yoongi.
• These Hands Have Killed: Like in the "I NEED U" and "Prologue" videos, the Prologue shows Taehyung staring at his blood-covered hands in tears after murdering his father.
• Thousand-Yard Stare: Taehyung's expression as he looks back at Jin while being arrested for killing his father. It affects Jin so much that it keeps reappearing in flashbacks afterward.
• Time Travel: After each failure, Jin finds himself waking up on April 11th.
• Timey-Wimey Ball:
  • Key events vary in time and/or location between loops. Some events vary greatly simply due to the sheer amount of variables present.
    • Due to Yoongi getting drunk beforehand, the hotel he ends up staying at on the night of April 11th randomly changes between each rewind.
    • If Jin changes things too much or too early, circumstances for later events are also altered, making them harder to control. In Episode 6, getting Jungkook, Namjoon and Taehyung on his car early in the morning of April 11th ends up with the three dead in a car crash. From then onwards, Jin starts planning things to help each one of the boys at just the right moment to be able to save the next.
• Tsurime Eyes: Taehyung is drawn this way.
• Unwanted Rescue: In Episode 7, Jin manages to rescue Yoongi from the fire; however, Yoongi really did want to die there, so he doesn't take the rescue well and is still suicidal and depressed afterwards.
• Wham Line:
  • In Episode 1: "He's locked up on a detention center now."
    • "Oh, you didn't know. Jungkook's dead. So is Yoongi."
• Wham Shot:
  • In Episode 1, there's Taehyung's expression after Jin calls out to him while Taehyung is being arrested for killing his father.
  • The end of Episode 4 has Jungkook receiving a call from a familiar ID, followed by Yoongi calling Jungkook unsuccessfully, alone in a motel room playing with a lighter - implied to be the same motel room he burns in the Prologue.