A manga based on Japanese historical figures is almost always difficult to understand. Mangakas usually jump right into the story because the assumption is you already know who the important historical characters are and what happened. Its like if you write/draw a manga about George Washington...we already know he kicked some English butt and became president. Its a good idea to google it just to get some historical context - that way you learn some japanese history and the story makes more sense. The translator sometimes will write technical notes so you understand whats going on but that doesn't always happen.
I have this theory that whenever Sangwoo is in a sexy mood the color tint in the panel is violet/bluish but when he feels like killing or scaring the beejesus out of Bum or anyone else its red. Then I started thinking that although these colors are close in terms of reddish undertones if you look at the spectrum of colors they are actually the farthest apart! Like Red is the first color in the spectrum followed by orange and then onwards till you get to violet. Sangwoo never has like a green tint or a yellow tint and I think it's because he is so mentally fucked up he has only two default settings Red for violence and violet/blueish for passion/sex. He doesn't have like a yellow tint for happy fluffy feelings. I think Koogi also uses this color tint to foreshadow what's coming next. I just wish Sangwoo had a yellow - happy eating ice cream tint.
...so did James die? OR did he not die? It ended on a cliffhanger. It feels like a loose end.
They said he transferred and King hypnotized him so that he wouldn't remember Ace. So no, James didn't die.