Spotlight: The Breaker

Time for Badass!

Welcome one! Welcome all!

This Spotlight we review our first Korean work, The Breaker!

The Setting

Welcome to Modern Korea! A perfectly nice country where normal people go about their lives in a perfectly normal way. Adults go to work. Kids go to school. The usual.

But! Something moves under the shadow of everyday life. Even as people live their perfectly normal  lives, the Murim moves. Martial Artists train daily to gain spectacular powers that would put any Olympic Athlete to shame. Secret techniques are passed down through ancient clans. Supernatural Kung Fu is alive and well in modern times. 

Political struggle and old feuds are just waiting to burst into the open. Just one, single push is needed to bring massive change.

This is the world of our story.

The Story

Make me Awesome!

Shi-Woon(Shioon) is a normal high school student.

Actually, guy’s kinda wimpy. Make that really wimpy. Like, seriously dude, go get a spine or something.

Shioon lived a life of going around being bullied until something happened. His school got a new teacher. But not just any teacher, a total badass. A Kung Fu Fighting Badass. Upon witnessing his incredible skills, Shioon decides he needed to get some of them badass martial arts, and he is willing to go to great lengths to get the guy to teach him.

What Shioon doesn't know? His new master is the great Nine Arts Dragon, the strongest guy around, and one hell of a problematic figure for the Murim.

Without knowing it, Shioon signed up for one hell of a ride.

How it Manages

Overwhelmed

Awesomely!

The first few chapters are average, and it wouldn't be odd if some people got tired of the wimpy main character. Don’t quit. I assure you, sticking with this manhwa pays off. Shioon starts off as a wimpy kid, and slowly starts to evolve into a determined man who will never, ever give up. To crazy extremes.

The battles are fun and some fight sequences are damn good. We get plenty of variety. From Shioon fighting mooks to his Master being challenged by high tier opponents. Plus, the relation that develops between Shioon and his master is pretty nice to see. This similarities and differences resonate well with each other.  

If there is any problem in this manga is that it takes its time to get to the point. Shioon’s evolution does take some time. This problem continues in the sequel, The Breaker: New Waves (which is also good).

That said, maybe it is because it takes its time that the awesome moments are just so awesome. There is a lot of build up being done. The audience waits for these moments and when they arrive they don’t disappoint.

The first image I put on this post? It took a long time to get there, but it was worth every single chapter.

The Breaker is a fun, martial arts story. I definitely recommend it to anyone that likes his Kung Fu fighting action.