Villain to Kill

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This is a really really good read.

Story 8/10 -
There are two types of people who possess strange powers in this world: villians, who are children of the night and psykers, who are children of the day. Cassian, our protagonist, is a top class psyker who gets killed off and reincarnates as a villain. He seeks revenge on his killers, while trying to navigate life as a villain to society.

The plot starts off very strong, with an interesting twist to the hero/villian set up you would see in something like MHA. The story continues to be very entertaining and engaging throughout the story's progression. ... The cool thing is that we get to experience the story from both the point of view of a hero/psyker and from the point of view of a villian. Cassian tries his best to live as a villain, but still retains his sense of justice and wants to help people which is confusing for the other characters in the story, but very entertaining to view as a reader. As the story progresses, we get to meet many other psykers as well as villians and we realize that the lines between good and evil are much grayer than they seem. Just because a character's a villian, doesn't necessarily make them evil, and just because a character's a psyker doesn't necessarily make them righteous.

Art 9/10 -
The character designs are so slick and awesome looking, especially our main character's villian form and also Driver's villain form. The fight scenes are immersive and the color is very vibrant and well placed. Overall the artwork is very pleasing to the eye and is actually one of the first things that drew me into reading this manhwa.

Characters 8/10 -
I am a huge sucker for anti-hero stories, but the protagonist of this manhwa, Cassian, is a little different. He is sort of an anti-hero, but leans more on the side of good. The only problem is that society has labeled all villains as evil criminals, so no matter what Cassian does, he's always vilified (literally). Cassian as a character is level headed and smart and overall a solid character. The rest of the cast are also interesting and have their own goals and ideals. My only gripe about the characters would be that there aren't that many strong female characters besides Crow, but it's not necessary for every story to have strong female characters as long as the story can continue to be engaging.

Enjoyment 9/10 -
I had a blast reading this series and waited at the edge of my seat for every episode to release. This story is such an entertaining read and hits all the right points that kept me hungry for more chapters. Season 1 is currently completed and left off after a very interesting arc so I'm very excited to see where the story will go from there. Once this series returns, I'll be the first to jump into season two with two bowls of popcorn ready.

This story paint characters as black and white based on their power.
But as we all know, nothing is purely black and white which we will follow with Cassian who was on the justice side and got his memories transferred to another person upon dying.

Currently, so far villains are not the greatest in terms of world building and plot. As unlike the title of the work there is no real killing happening. Everything is quite family friendly in essence as the violence is tone down with the plot and stakes being very low.
The first chapter give us a hint of the story and how it should ... develop with something bigger in the whole picture but as of chapter 135 we have yet to touch that plot again. Following the typical training arc, tournament/competition and character acting arrogant with little backing to their arrogance. Like a chinese work: You dare?! and get steam-rolled.

We have yet to to get to the meat of the subject and the author is constantly side stepping the main plot with side event, I honestly feel like at chapter 200 we might get to start the story at the current pace we are going at.
The power scaling and growth is slow as there is no power trip fantasy. Which is good in a way, since it prevent characters from being excessively strong without good justification.
Romance? No, typical dense and not interested character.
Side character? They don't really contribute to the story or the MC. They don't feel crucial to the plot.
Plot? What plot, get side event. Forgettable at best.
Art? Solid good art, with nice sequence of action that feel impactful and with good tension.

Overall, if you want a story with no real sense of direction but decent side characters and will keep you entertained weekly, this one is a decent read but nothing stunning. As of now, I am bored of the plot and wonder when things are actually going to start moving.
It's like eating your favorite food daily to the point it now taste bland and nothing is changing.

Villain to Kill poses the question, what happens when your motivations are genetic and not necessarily your choice, combined with superpowers? The answer is apparently, you just get your own entire section of town to yourself, no-one really bothers you unless you cause trouble and it gives you the emotional range of a brick. Can't say that's predictable but it's not exactly compelling either.

The story starts off with a semi interesting premise, pitting a story of revenge in a villainous backdrop with conspiracies over motivations and the nature of choice. But within the first few chapters, the revenge plot takes a backseat, the main character ... is on an entirely different continent to those he wants revenge on and the story becomes more about internal villain politics, boring fight scenes with no stakes and almost every line of dialogue seems to be talking about the main character. There isn't a whole lot of things actually happening and most of it is just giving food for theory crafters to try and figure things out before they happen. In 54 chapters nothing moves forward, there's little in the ways of developing characters and most ongoing plot threads are pretty common and cliched, nothing to write home about.

The weakest link of Villain to Kill is its characters. The main character is very boring and emotionally stunted, often not caring about situations he's in, walking away from conversations and keeping a consistent low lidded expression that I found myself mirroring the more I had to follow him. Their trigger of 'anger' for their superpowers very rarely affects them and they meld into a lot of stock dark haired cool boy protagonists you'll see in the industry. Most other characters are fairly flat, mostly there to be knocked over like bowling pins in fights to make our protagonist look strong and cool and their motivations are either vague or just shrouded in mystery, with plenty of manic, evil smiling villainous characters who can be punched in the face. The main Psyker character is the only one who has any kind of arc of slight growth, and even then? He's not the focus and barely shows any more emotional depth than our lead.

The action has very little bite to it. There's never any sense our protagonist is ever in danger as he can perfectly dodge anything thrown at him and knock down 'strong villains' in single hits. Even the final big fight of the first chapter which seems like it may be a challenge, literally ends with our protagonist saying "actually this fight was bad and easy and I wasn't even trying." You’d think with a setup of being reincarnated into a new body, the protagonist would be very weak but have his experience to fall back on, but instead he’s just overpowered from the get-go and nothing poses a challenge, it’s not compelling.

The art is fine, mostly? I wouldn’t think twice about it besides some terrible ‘wcdonalds’ logo nonsense in the background, and fights being difficult to distinguish. It’s a lot of very bright colours and effects without any sense of weight or space to them that makes it hard to map out fights mentally. It certainly looks flashy but it’s hard to recall anything specific about any fight scene.

Ultimately, it comes across very basic and going for commonly tread themes of, light is not good and dark is not evil, with occasionally interesting power sets that are still a little vague and generic. I mean, come on, the main characters powers are fire and darkness, It doesn’t get much more trite than that. Exploring the genetic side of things would have been interesting had the narrative not manufactured ways for villains to just ignore the genetic side of things and never have them be a problem for the lead, rendering it all pretty moot. I would describe this as flashy but shallow and there are better things out there to read.