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μ λ Ήμ
28
7
Finished
Jul 15, 2009 to 2012
7.5/10
Average Review Score
100%
Recommend It
2
Reviews Worldwide
Known for his cheesy plot lines, weak main characters, and rushed endings, Im Dal Young tells the story about a supernatural force that destroyed a town many years ago. The disaster killed almost everyone but a few that survived thanks to the mysterious Phantom King and an elite group of fighters. Now with the Phantom King missing, the main character Eun Sung-Min and his maid, survivors of the tragedy years ago, face the battle of their lives to uncover the secret behind this supernatural catastrophe and the evil that dwells behind it all. The story focuses on the "Evil Phenomenon", the antagonist, which manifests from thethoughts of evil that humans might have such as anger, greed, jealousy, etc; and therefore fuels the creation of monsters and evil spirits that our main characters have to fight. Since the evil can manifest in anyone, including allies, it poses a great threat to the town and survival of the human race. Like most Im Dal Young's manhwas, the main character is weak in the beginning and as the story progresses, he realizes he has strong abilities and powers that he can use to protect his loved ones. Shockingly, as weak as he is at first, he's a ladies man and some of the character development revolve around his harem. The main cover of the manhwa with the maid is a bit misleading. Sure she plays a big part on the story and her interactions with Eun Sung-Min are really important(emotionally), but she's hardly the main character or the tough girl with a huge scythe that we imagine at first glance. It does have it's share of comedy at times(or tries) which works fine to complement the seriousness of the story, but it's mainly a rush of drama involving loss, love triangles, action, and survival. The art is great, the weight of Im Dal Young's name can be recognized with every detail that's put into the characters. Some parts can be defined as ecchi since it's Dal Young we're talking about, with big boobs and a few up-skirts but the style and quality are top notch throughout the story. With endless plot twists you hardly get bored, although some of them felt like quick fixes to plot holes the mangaka encountered, specially towards the end. Dal Young is known for working on many manhwas at the same time and most of his ideas are great enough to be developed further, but having countless projects at the same time could have been the cause of such rushed ending, as always. Nevertheless, this dramatic story filled with looming mystery at every turn is a great one and one that's very underrated.
Eleven years ago, Eun Sung-min was one of the few survivors from a village that experienced the "Evil Phenomenon." He and his maid were saved by the mysterious Phantom King and his group, Phantom. Now the Special Environmental Protection Agency is searching for the answers to what happened on that fateful day, and how to combat the "Evil Spirits" that caused such mayhem. (Source: MU)
The basic system for this manga wasn't too original or deep, but it was one that works. Certain people have the special ability to deal with monsters that suddenly appear, with an extra layer of depth added from the fact that these monsters are the manifestation of the negative emotions humans feel. The action too regarding this was solid enough and it looked pretty cool. There was a decent amount of variety to the power users, and it seemed like it was getting to the point that they would be adding more structure and depth to the combat itself. However, the overarching story and the characters as wellas their relationships were pretty weak and turned into a complete mess towards the end of the story. There are too many characters introduced, with not enough development for most of them. Really, it's hard to tell who the main characters even are most of the time because no one really gets focused on that much other than Sung-min. Furthermore, a lot of aspects related to the characters felt really inconsistent throughout, such as it opening in a way that felt completely inconsistent with the characters of both Sung-nim and Yu-min, and Maid being blind never mattering at all other than occasionally mentioning that it was strange that she could do things even though she was blind. And all these problems get even more ridiculous at the end. The overarching story isn't that bad for the most part, in that it pushes things along, albeit somewhat slowly, with hints of a much larger narrative in the background, but as we get to the end the larger narrative turns out to be a train wreck. It's pretty much an instance of nothing that happened actually happened, which isn't always bad, but really hard to get right, and they didn't get it right at all. The key to these is making the story despite that still have an impact on the world and still give the feeling that it was worth it for the reader to be invested in it, but this failed to do either of these. The easiest way to do this is to show that the relationships and character development that occurred and that the reader is invested in are still having a major impact, but rather than accomplishing this, I feel the attempts at doing so, with the final major advancement in Sung-nim's relationship with Maid and the flashback like scene all the way at the end did more to highlight how little there was to be properly invested in any of this, and hence it all seemed pointless. I also did not like how the plot suddenly got tremendously more convoluted and turned into something completely different from the rest of the manga right before the ending, wherein I understand that it's based on a novel and that there's more to come, but I felt like this was a bad place to end it, in that it should have been done sooner or later. The art and designs were all really good. tl;dr: A manga that is decent for the most part due to some solid action and a decent general plot, but that turns into a mess towards the end due to how it relies completely on it's far weaker aspects.