Gwi

casandra29 Mar 28, 2016

7

I've read this manga a few times in the past but I sort of let it slip to the back of my mind and I was surprised when I re-read it recently because I felt I was reunited with some of the interesting characters I meet in other manga. This is one of those manga that didn't manage to reach it's highest potential. In my eyes the biggest faw with it is attributed to an issue with the story and it's characters.  The story is about a guy who has a crossed out Gwi Tattoo traveling all over the place trying to kill anyone who has that same tattoo. The Mangaka seemed to want to wait to reveal his reason's for this until later but without even basic information it's difficult to understand why we should care about this character Mu Sang or why these people really deserve to die without mercy or regret. The story is extremely straight forward and doesn't veer from it's path even though it doesn't really do a good job of revealing that path in the beginning. It makes Mu Sang seem like a robot who has been programed with the soul purpose of wiping these people out. Usually there is more depth to the character or perhaps reasons revealed why he is so one tracked but they don't bother with this for a long time and that makes it kinda get boring quickly. If not for the fights being intense and the art, people may just drop it. Musang for much of the story lacks in character development or ability to grow. His reasons are unknown too making him kinda annoying. He takes on a girl who travels with him and they show him at moments seem to care about her, though it could just be that he doesn't want his guide to die. For the most part he is quiet about anything important through most of the story till near the ending. When they reveal that his reason for hating all the Ill mang lang is because the ultimate bad guy while cutting him told him to, I balked at it and thought... is that really why he's trying to kill all these people? Shouldn't he just go for him alone? The bad guy says that his missfortune is because of all of them so it must be so right? After all why would a bad guy manipulate someone?... that's sarcasm by the way. I won't go into the ending. Suffice to say that it somewhat redeems the story. However, even with the ending I still left slightly unsatisfied.  The art in this is it's strongest point. The artist is super talented and in my opinion it helps people stay with the story up to when things become more clear. I feel it's also important to note that the art for Mu Sang (when not colored in) looks quite a bit like Chunwoo from the breaker in some places and also one of the many crazy badguys the artist drew was nearly a complete likeness to Wylad's humanish form (before his defeat) from the berserk manga. The fights and backgrounds are all drawn spectacularly. The Characters as a whole leave something to be desired. I understand that in the beginning you cannot reveal everything about characters and their motives but usually the best way to do this is to give some information at least key points even if it's later revealed that they were missunderstood as to why things are the way they are for these people. With secondary characters it's fine to know little but with main characters it's important to know something. However, much of this manga you spend in the dark about the majority of people. The only people who really have anything explained about them near to the beginning is the king who is crazy and obsessed with his little sister who is dead and the main bad guy who we find out is much smarter than the main character and most the other characters (to be smarter than the main character doesn't take much). After the 1/2 way point they start revealing things and adding in characters that will help the main character get to his true goal (cause god knows without help that man would be traveling forever) and the new characters help create more depth to Mu Sang. So the Character score becomes closer to average because of what happens in the 2nd half of the story. Overall, I cannot discount the many chapters you spend sort of in limbo with not enough information or justification but I can also say that it gets much better towards the end and so I gave this manga an average overall score. I'd suggest it to people who like darker action manga or people who want to see some good action art.