The Breaker: New Waves

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The Breaker will be considered the prequel and New Waves the sequel.

Martial arts has always been intriguing and looking at stories where characters who are weak, wanting to get stronger is a journey of self discovery. In some ways, media that projects this topic is relateable to viewers because most of us want to follow our bliss and find a path that truly fits us. For The Breaker, Shi-Woon is the young boy we follow to search for his path of self discovery. This review reflects the series as a whole rather than just this sequel.

I'll do my best without spoilers for the prequel ... or this, but the story seems to follow a linear path for the predecessor, where as prequel opens the world up to other factions within the Martial Arts community(Murim). The Breaker does a great job fleshing out it's story with giving us the perspective of other factions, but the same cannot be said about New Waves. The premise is run of the mill and seen elsewhere, but the series has an edge with the awesomeness of Chun Woo. The dude is a beast and is the most feared existence within the story and his effect on the plot and characters are executed well. While it is a broken record by the end of the series, his existence brings meaning to each character. At the end though, the series leaves a lot to be desired mainly because of inconclusive ending and some plot holes(eggs).

Characters are a mixed bag, most development comes from Chun Woo and Shi Woon. Nothing is wrong with that though since they are probably the only interesting characters within the series and the oldhead in New Waves. The first season handles Chun Woo and Shi Woon with care and we see both of them blossom, whether it is a good or bad thing. However, I did feel like the flash back memories that we see are out of place and always come up in convenient times. Not only for these two, but for other characters as well. It is not the best way to go about justifying the character's actions and beliefs and seems a bit forced. Also, New Waves becomes awfully stagnant in character development. There is a limit to how naive some can be and to push that limit creates a repetitive vibe.
The side characters are very forgettable, I mean all they do is contribute to the plot. It's what their there for but at least give them some characterization instead of sexualizing the females and showing us how emo some of the male characters are. Some female characters I have in mind are definitely useless to the series as a whole. A LOT of plot convenience and flash backs drive some of these characters and I wasn't fond of that while reading The Breaker and New Waves.

Art is pretty cool, really brings out the characters emotions and action scenes are well defined. Picturing the scene in my mind with the SFX already seems really intense. Wasn't expecting in this series, but fan service was existent and probably was the only form of comedic relief which was eh.

Overall, The Breaker has more ups than downs. Obviously all reviews are subjective and people are titled to their own beliefs and enjoyment, but the inconsistent flow of The Breaker can turn off people. It is an enjoyable, action shounen read. Looking for a good cast of characters, you may or may not find it with this one but there are certainly some interesting characters in this series. The story was OKAY; it deviated from what I thought was gonna be and went into bumblefuck direction honestly. Give it a read if you like a protagonist in search of self-discovery.

So I was surprised when I went to my manga reading site to find that this manga, sequel to one of the my favorite manga's ever, had a 'Completed' tag. As a loyal fan that read the weekly release I feel a sense of duty to review the sequel, having already done the first entry.

(*DISCLAIMER*I HIGHLY recommend that you read the prequel 'The Breaker' to have all the necessary knowledge going into this one.)

The short version:
(+)The majority of the characters are well done.
(+)Story leads in well with the prequel.
(+)Fight scenes are the best of they're kind.
(+)Arts gives great emotion weights when it's needed.
(-)The MC ... doesn't change. At all.
(-)The story does drag in parts.
(-)Those without prior knowledge of the series will have many questions.


THE GOOD: Being a 200 and bit chapter manga about martial arts, you are going to need many good things to present to the reader to keep the coming back every week for your story. That said, there are two things that The Breaker: New Waves has in spades, a good art style and good action segments.

One of the things that this manga never failed on for me was to show the reader just how emotional these characters were in the situation they were in, when they're joking around with each other outside of the actual fighting, you can tell. When someone important to the characters in question has been killed in front of their eyes, you see that impactful shock, and when the sadness hits soon after the amount of tears and snot running down their face Just shows you how much they cared for that person, but the moment that I enjoy the most when it comes to the art is when you see someone, normally the MC, get really angry, you get that same feeling from the picture that you would if you happened to piss off someone like Gilgamesh or Guts for example, and the Black Origin Threshold is still as terrifying as when I first saw it.

The action is one of the key stones in any fighting, second only to the story, because the story lends tension to the actual fight scenes so you're even more invested in it, failing that the fights still need to be good, even if they only serve as spectacle. I'm glad to say that the fights in this manga are similar to a firework show, they're built over a couple of chapters and then when the moment finally comes you are gifted with a very satisfying, and occasionally frightening BOOM. Some of the fights do go for more chapter that other's, but fights in martial arts manga are like games, you spend a lot of time on the smaller fights to make sure you're ready for hen the boss finally comes around to destroy you, they pace the fights in a similar manner.

The story continues more or less straight from where The Breaker left off, with only a couple months worth of time skipped and for the ones that jumped straight in after reading the prequel, you settle back into the whole world and feeling that the first entry gave you within a couple pages, this is why myself and everyone else recommends reading the prequel because if you start with this one you're going to have plenty of question that won't be answered anytime soon like, "What's a ki center? Who the nine arts dragon? the fucks a Murim? What's the S.U.C?" But when you've properly enter the Breaker world, you will feel right at home with everything going on.


THE BAD: Now let me get off that the characters, for the most part, are not bad, there's just some that kneel-cap the rest of the group. The MC for example, after having his ki center smashed, and after all the shit he has seen, is still persisting with his "I shall save everyone and make everyone love each-other." view on the martial arts world, granted is working so far, but after close to 300 chapters of following this guy around across two mangas, his outlook hasn't once changed. In my mind he has become a static character, like in a lot of shounens, his opinion never, ever changes, no matter how much he sees, or how much he losses he sticks to that belief. I know it's for the whole purpose of showing the other characters how determined he is, but we've already seen that, it was called The Breaker, just be a bit more dynamic dude please. Also he apparently has some sort of shield protecting his romantic virginity because, like with the prequel, he doesn't become romantically involved with any of the chicks, granted there is one that he will PROBABLY get with, but until I see that I'm sticking to my guns.

Another thing with the characters is that, from memory, some of them straight drop off the map, they don't appear later in the manga, they just *poof* into smoke, like one of the MC's old bullies joins up with the 'bad' guys and they fight once then *poof* that character disappears. Other guy that had a SWEET pair of gauntlets had about three or so scuffles with the MC then I never saw him again for the remaining 60 chapters.

The story also tended to drag a bit, but I thinks that's more to do with the fact I had to wait a week for the next 20 pages of story to happen, but read one after the other with no interruptions, it only got the point where I thought, "Come on let's make something happen." Then lo and behold the next page made something happen. Still I felt the story did slow down in places.

THE VERDICT: The Breaker: New Waves is a solid sequel to it's predecessor and I look forward to the third entry. While I started to loose faith in the MC as a character and a few characters turned into magicians on me, the rest of the cast, fight scenes, story and art all scored high enough in my charts to keep me coming back for more every week. After reading The Breaker I highly recommend that you move straight on to this one. Go. Fly, FLY MY PRETTIES!!

Goodbye my brethren, see you in the next one.

I'll keep this short and simple.

The premise of the story is amusing, very unique and enjoyable. It surpassed my expectations, at first it was really annoying how Shi-Woon (MC) was defenseless, naive and weak; I thought it would be Tokyo Ghoul-esque battles all over again. However, Geuk-jin brings back focus on Shi-Woon again with him being somewhat competent in the series.

The art was satisfactory for the most part. While detailed and attractive to the eye, the only problem is that it's monochromatic. I haven't read much manhwa, but the ones I've been exposed to have been poly-chromatic. Doesn't hurt the manhwa itself but the ... artistic potential was deterred, I feel. Jin-Hwan, great job.

The characters themselves are fine, and that's what saved the manhwa for the most part. Except the character development was kind of poor, it always appeared to me that Shi-Woon had extreme bipolar tendencies, not sure what to make of that if it was intentionally written in the script by Geuk-jin. It introduced many countless new characters that are mediocre, most of them stayed the same through out the manhwa. I won't forgive the lack of Goomoonryong in the first part of the manhwa though. What the actual fuck? Geuk-jin seemingly deleted the single most interesting character in the series for around 120 chapters in favour of "character development" by the end of the manhwa, which if I may reiterate, is virtually non-existent. It stretches to the bipolar MC that gets his ass smashed every other chapter of the first half and it's agonizing.

The lack of a sequel is self-evident of the mistakes of the authors. While flawed, I thoroughly enjoyed this during my teenage years, so the sentiment is high. But none have been portrayed in this review, I hope.