Throughout the school year, most of myblog posts have been reviews of books I’ve read. Although, I haven’t reallytalked about any manhwa (basically South Korean graphic novels). Since this isalso my last blog post, I decided I should do a return to form of sorts andtalk about a regression manhwa I’ve be enjoying recently. But first, what is aregression manhwa?
Regression manhwa are extremelypopular in South Korea and there are as many of them as pieces of plastic inthe ocean; way too many. The main crux of regression manhwa stories is in thename: regression. Usually, the story starts with a character that has gonethrough all sorts of hardships, along with having tons of regrets, dying andgetting the chance to turn back time to relive their life. This premise in andof itself may sound pretty interesting, but unfortunately, to continue thecomparison from earlier: most of these manhwa are garbage. Most fall into thetrap of becoming boring, edgy power fantasies all about revenge with blandcharacters clearly built for any reader to be able to project onto them.However, there are a few stories that manage to balance these elements andcraft a pretty interesting story.
The story I mainly wanted to cover isknown as “Geomsulmyeongga Mangnaeadeul” or “Swordmaster’s Youngest Son” and isfairly popular for regression manhwa. This manhwa has a fair number of tropesfound in this genre, but uses them in interesting enough ways that it doesn’tget boring. Now, this manhwa begins with a chain of events all good manhwa do:main character gets bullied by their family, main character is then exiled fromsaid family for a lack of talent, main character later killed by, you guessed it,their family for some nondescript reason, and finally, main character regressesto when they were a child to fix all their mistakes. Oh, along with the partwhere the main character makes a deal with an ancient god that unlocks theirsealed talent they actually had all along!
From that short synopsis, you can probably tell thegeneral premise is a bit melodramatic and kinda leans into wish fulfillment alittle too much. But once this story gets off the ground, its world building ispretty interesting and it’s fun to watch how the now overpowered main characterdeals with his abusive siblings. This manhwa also has some okay humor andrunning gags that normally at least put a smile on my face (if the over the toppremise wasn't doing that already). The part I like the most is, of course, theworld building. “Swordmaster’s Youngest Son” primarily takes place in a worldwith a rigid structure of magic/swordsmanship/spirit that is divided into clearcut ranks. However most only ever advance in one area because spirit powershave to come directly from gods, so very few ever get them. Next,magic/swordsmanship are divided between two powerful families (the one focusedon swordsmanship is the main character’s family) and their territories. Thesefamilies have a treaty preventing the other one from learning their respectivepowers. The main character is where this seemingly rigid and boring powersystem is given a more interesting spin because the main character possessesand uses all three powers. This unique usage of power lets the main characterbecome far more powerful (in his first life he discovered his talent as amage). This world also has lots of mythical creatures and interesting lorebetween them. All in all, “Swordmaster’s Youngest Son” is a bit cliche and overdramatic but also interesting and a worthwhile read.
Now, before this blog gets too long, I wanted tomention my all time favorite regression manhwa; “SSS-Class Revival Hunter.” Ilove this manhwa so much because of what it does a little later in the story.There is a huge amount of really cool world building and intricacy to the waythe world works. The basic premise is a guy entered a tower with 100 floorsthat all need to be cleared and basically gets the ability to steal the skillsfrom people that kill him, which seems useless until, by a stroke of luck, aguy with an ability to turn back time by one day when he dies, kills him. Now,this guy was a horrible person, so he abused his ability and made the tower aworse place. But the main character decides to got back to before the guy gotthe skill to kill him and basically ascend the tower in a better way. This istechnically for revenge, but ends soon enough that it doesn’t consume thenarrative. After that, the main character starts going up the floors of thetower which gets to some of my favorite world building in literature.
All in all, regression manhwa are some of my favoritestories as I really love the ways they can do their world building and theintriguing themes they can present. Finally, I just want to say thank you forreading my final blog post and the final post on this blog. These blogs havebeen really fun for me to both write and read all year and I hope this was agood send off for this blog!
