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Noblesse is a manhwa about Cadis Etrama di Raizel (or Rai), a guy belonging to a race of not-vampires, who wakes up after sleeping for 820 years.

The start of the series is honestly quite charming, despite the rough art. There’s a lot of humor, and the characters are funny and/or mysterious. Rai decides to go to the school that was built by his servant/butler Frankenstein, and it’s nice to see him trying to live a life in a modern world and interact with some of the children of the school. It’s very much a slice of life with some slight supernatural elements.

However, it swiftly turns into a rather average battle shounen, as bad guys kidnap the kids and Frankenstein and Rai have to go save them – and this repeats several times. The villains seem kind of intimidating at the start, but over time this just becomes laughable.

Luckily, Rai and Frankenstein get other allies/friends – so at a certain point it’s no longer the kids who get kidnapped. Sadly this also means they get less screentime, and the frequency of fight scenes increases while the slice of life elements gradually disappear.

It’s honestly quite sad to see how the quality of the art inversely correlates with the quality of the plot: as the art gets nicer, the plot gets more repetitive. It becomes a sequence of fights without any time for developing characters. So you get often drawn out battles against cartoonish villains who spout lame dialogue about how they’re much stronger, the good guys can never defeat them etc. … and then have them end it with pathetic lines like “I can’t die here” or “no way will I be defeated by this guy!”.

At a certain point these battles also become extra terrible due to regeneration abilities – making fight redundant until the killing shot or one of the many last-minute saves. What is extra annoying because of this, is when characters use a sneak attack – and cut off an arm rather than their head or some other vital part.

Power creep is also a real problem… not to mention the idiotic designs of some enemies.

In the end, it’s only the characters that kept me reading until the end. Frankenstein is a cool “not very good” good guy, and Rai is interesting enough as well. All the others are mostly unnecessary kids and lame villains.

Overall

I’d say you can give it a try if you’re looking for a formulaic supernatural battle series. It’s not the greatest thing ever, but at least the first couple of arcs are enjoyable enough. But don’t be afraid to drop it if you stop liking it: it doesn’t get better, only worse.