Is I Was the Final Boss Worth Reading? Review & Where to Read

Quick facts
Format	Manhwa (seinen), 130 chapters
Run	2022–present · ongoing
Community score	AniList 7.0 · MangaUpdates 6.9
Content	Violence, mature themes
Where to read	WEBTOON — official

Overview

Baphomet ruled the Abyssal Tower for centuries as its final boss, the demonic force every Hunter in the world was trying to bring down. Then Raven, the strongest Hunter alive, finally kills him — and Baphomet wakes up in the body of a weak, powerless human boy, memories and reputation intact, abilities gone. I Was the Final Boss follows what happens when a tyrant who spent his entire existence looking down on humanity has to actually live as one of them.

It's an isekai-adjacent premise built on a clean inversion: instead of an ordinary person getting overpowered abilities, an overpowered monster gets ordinary limitations. That flip is the engine of the whole story, and it's a smarter starting point than it sounds.

What it does well

The strongest thing here is how seriously the story takes Baphomet's guilt. He's not just adjusting to weakness for comedic effect — the manhwa keeps circling back to what he actually did as a demon lord, and makes him sit with it instead of hand-waving his past as edgy backstory. That gives the whole redemption angle real teeth, because it's earned through discomfort rather than a quick apology arc.

The comedy that runs alongside that heavier material mostly works because it's rooted in Baphomet's genuine cluelessness about ordinary human life — he's baffled by things that would be trivial to anyone who grew up human, and that fish-out-of-water friction gets used for laughs without undercutting the more serious threads running underneath. When the story does slow down to let him just exist among people he used to view as beneath him, those quieter chapters carry more weight than you'd expect from the premise.

And because the story spends so much time establishing exactly how much Baphomet has lost, any moment where a flicker of his old power resurfaces actually lands — the stakes of whether he starts remembering what he used to be feel real rather than assumed.

Where it falls short

The front stretch of chapters takes its time setting up Baphomet's new life before the story's bigger hooks kick in, which can test the patience of anyone expecting immediate tower-climbing action from the premise. The human characters around him are also uneven — some get real arcs of their own, but a handful mostly exist to react to Baphomet rather than pull their own weight in the story. The tonal shifts between the lighter comedic material and the tragedy elements aren't always seamless, either; a few transitions feel more abrupt than deliberate.

Verdict

I Was the Final Boss earns its premise by committing to the harder question underneath it — not "how strong can this guy get again" but "what does a monster owe the people he terrorized." It's a slower burn than the setup suggests, but the emotional core holds up, and it's an easy, free read to try for anyone tired of straightforward power fantasies.