Chu-Gong

Seong Jinu teve um Segundo despertar. O pior caçador de sempre é agora…um nível S.
Seong Jinu subiu cinco níveis e foi notícia em toda a parte. O interesse dos mestres das guildas aumenta, agora que sabem quem tem participado, sob disfarce, nos seus raids e tem salvado os seus membros.
Entretanto, Jinho é expulso de casa por defender Seong Jinu à revelia do pai, recusando a posição de mestre de guilda. A quem irá ele pedir guarida?
No castelo demoníaco, Jinu continua a missão: quer chegar ao 100.º piso, derrotar o último boss e produzir o elixir que salvará a mãe. Desta vez, com a companhia inesperada de um demónio com uma aparência humana e muito feminina….… (plus d'informations)

A largely enjoyable continuation of the series. There are a few hiccups in the story, and I think I'm a bit biased in that I enjoy the manhwa and like the anime adaptation (thus far), so that shades how I feel about this, but overall it's a neat way to see where things began.

A number of things were added to the manhwa adaptation, and expanded further in the anime, but some things were lost in the adaptation phase, too. In the novel, we learn more about Jinwoo's background of growing up poor and having to help raise his sister. The novel really emphasizes that his father was gone from their lives since he turned 14, and he had to give up on college because by that point, his mother was comatose/too ill to support their family. Jinwoo is also much more supportive and closer to his sister in the novel. They have a nice relationship in the manhwa, but it's not emphasized as much, at least this early on.

But not everything that was removed in adaptation was bad. For instance, a lot of the weirdness with women is removed: 1) a number of female characters show particular interest in Jinwoo in the novel, including a nurse who gets his number (whom he later ignores), a hunter who has a particular fascination about him, and a bank teller. These are all removed in the manhwa adaptation, and have yet to manifest in the anime. 2) At one point, Jinho wrongly thinks that Jinwoo, a 24-year-old, is romantically/physically pursuing a minor. Jinho is impressed with Jinwoo over this. The manhwa cuts the scene to just show Jinho's alarm at the idea. None of this adds anything to the story and it's overall very bizarre. The manhwa changes keep the women characters more professional and less "see power fantasy man go mad over it". It's an appreciated change.

The adaptations also generally do a better job of introducing characters and worldbuilding earlier, and the anime really does this even better. Woo Jinchul has a much bigger role in the story in the manhwa, Kim Sangshik, Chiyul Song, and Dongsoo Hwang also have expanded roles. The manhwa also slightly trims some things to make the story flow better. The whole plotline with the cellphones is a bit odd, and its loss is an improvement with the manhwa. But the novel also includes a lot of worldbuilding that gets trimmed out of the manhwa, which is unfortunate, because it makes certain moments later in the narrative not have as great an impact, or not make sense.

All in all though, this is still the story by and large that you like if you like the manhwa and/or the anime. It's an interesting action-adventure power fantasy, with some cute moments, and intriguing protagonist who's sometimes a bit of a dick to people but also has compelling soft sides. Looking forward to volume 3.… (plus d'informations)

An interesting continuation of the story, with some neat character and less than stellar moments from Sung Jinwoo in terms of dealing with female characters. Coming from the manhwa and anime adaptations, it's still interesting to see how much was removed/changed/expanded.

One thing that makes this rating kind of bounce between a 3 and a 4 is the treatment of female characters and the sometimes truly strange plot beats. The story isn't exactly the worst in the former area: Jinwoo can at times be kind of patronizing to women, particularly the female healer in the A-rank dungeon. The story is weirdly focused on how she brings her purse with her in the dungeon, which is incredibly stupid. This is a truly unnecessary detail and I'm not sure why it's here, when all these characters are meant to be experienced and intelligent. Cha Haein also kind of has moments of the same intelligence disease, and some bizarre design choices: she's interested in Sung Jinwoo because he has protagonist energy and that's how that works. On top of this, she senses mana by her noise, and Sung Jinwoo, for some reason, smells nice. This is despite the fact she discovers this after he's been working in a mine for some hours, and should be quite sweaty. To each their own kink, maybe his sweat just smells really nice to her or he doesn't sweat after mining, but it's kind of strange all the same. Jinwoo does at least respect her a bit, at least to the point he thinks she's stronger than Choi Jongin. All in all, it's not the worst way to design a female character, it's just weird, on top of how the whole pick-axe situation is handled, again treating her like she's an idiot.

Jinwoo is also just generally clueless about interacting with people, which can make for entertaining and bizarre interactions that are usually pretty weirdly interpreted by other people. Sometimes he just truly doesn't care and has better things to do (which makes his encounters with Jongin and Baek hilarious), and sometimes he just doesn't understand personal boundaries (like with Esil). This might be down to his lack of socialization: he seemingly has been working to support his family and nearly dying in the doing straight out of high school, though I guess he just never interacted with his coworkers before he became a hunter? But it's also just sometimes strange, like how he interacts with Esil and the female Hunters hunter. He's kind of one-track minded, and fiercely protective of people he cares about, so some of it makes sense. It's just off-putting at times.

As a power fantasy, the story is generally fun and exhilarating, and there are a lot of actually cute moments where Jinwoo is fond of his minions, and excited for them. That being said, the plot where Go Gunhee offers a successor position to Jinwoo with no knowledge whatsoever of Jinwoo's qualifications - other than his physical capability - is truly bizarre. Yes, he's a protagonist in an action-adventure RPG, so of course he's going to be offered positions of power by strange authority figures, even without their knowing anything other than he's physically strong. But we're meant to believe Go Gunhee is intelligent and good at what he does... and he just jumps into it. This is solved in the manhwa (and seemingly also in the anime) by expanding Woo Jinchul's character so that he spends a lot more time closely following Sung Jinwoo, and likely informs Go Gunhee of more of Jinwoo's life and antics in advance, giving Go Gunhee more of a reason to offer the keys to the kingdom to him. But in the webnovel it's just kind of silly.

The webnovel also goes a lot more into the thoughts of Go Gunhee, Choi Jongin, Baek Yoonho, Goto Ryuji, and Matsumoto Shigeo than the manhwa does, and the actions of Japan are a lot more sinister, with plans to essentially turn Korea into a biddable servant of Japan, not just to kill off the S-rank hunters to leave them vulnerable. It's an interesting plot, and I'm wondering if the anime will follow the manhwa route and mellow it down a bit, or add its own twist, given the anime is being made by a Japanese company for a primarily Japanese audience.

The power fantasy is still largely entertaining, when women aren't involved, and he's not being kind of dickish to Jinho, Jinwoo is a pretty fun character. Still interesting to see how the story goes. The writing at least in the translation can be hit or miss, but it flows pretty decently. If you like this and want more, I would recommend giving the manhwa and anime a shot, since they expand on a lot of the cast in fun ways and make the story flow better, and most of my criticisms in re: Jinwoo's character aren't present there.… (plus d'informations)

This wavers between a 3 to a 3.5. There are some lovely character moments, particularly with Jinwoo's affection for his soldiers, his affection for Jinho, and healing his mother, which is one of the most poignant parts of the story, focusing on how hard Jinwoo has been working to protect and raise his sister and support himself in the absence of his parents, despite the fact that he's been raising a teenager since he was a teenager, and it just highlights the whole tragedy of the situation, and finally has someone who can do something about it recognize the burden he's been carrying. The conclusion of the Jeju Island raid is also still decently enjoyable, if a bit less punchy than the manhwa adaptation made it. The best joke in the series is probably in this book, too, which is when Jinwoo tries to name his guild "Masturbation Guild", and has absolutely zero clue why this is a problem, because he doesn't realize what "Solo Play" also means. There's an additional element to this in the novel, when Jinah also seemingly has no idea that's what it means: she just doesn't think the name makes sense. They truly are related.

There's also the incredibly random relationship between Jinwoo and Haein. It's just... not built up well at all. It's kind of cute in the way that two awkward, introverted people who aren't that great at socializing can be when getting into a relationship in a novel. But it feels so forced, and a lot of this novel is a lot of Jinwoo's not great sides poking out. Not necessarily his complete social unawareness, but at times he's just mean, and that's aggravating. It doesn't help that the novel tries to narratively excuse his Just That Special protagonist status, which is just poor writing. The manhwa softened some of this, improving flow and focusing more on Jinwoo's relationship with his mother, and her relationship with Jinah, and the anime is also focusing more on Jinwoo's relationship with Jinah. The novel is unfortunately just painful at times.

All in all, it's interesting, development-wise, and features some of the best moments and some of the weakest moments in the series thus far. Looking forward to volume 5.… (plus d'informations)