Noblesse

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No explicit story spoilers, but story and character structure

If i had to condense my review in one sentence: Huge wasted potential.

The plot usually goes like this: Strong enemies appear -> non-important Heroes losen - > Boss Heroes appear -> win -> research data found -> now we are stronger! -> Rinse and repeat 500 times.

It has the Dragonball Z element into it without an equally likeable cast or story structure. The reason are the two Characters Frankenstein and Raizel. They are always so on top of things, like extremely on top, there is no real danger or any lasting consequence. They just walk through things. ... If i had to explain it in RPG-terms it would be like level 1000 and lvl 600 characters go to a lvl 5 dungeon and then 10 and then 12 and so on.

Enemies just appear and disappear. Raizel and Frankenstein are interesting characters but at the same time, really bad for the plot.

The character designs are awesome and the world building is handled pretty well. The constant we are too cool for this world stares and looks get annoying though. It is the Aizen stare from bleach, without the mocking smile.

It still is a fine Manhwa and worth a read in spare time but especially in the end and at some parts you get the feeling the author just wanted to be done with this.

I picked up this manhwa a few months ago because a lot of my friends were raving on about this nonstop and I saw this being on the top 30 manhwas in MAL.

Noblesse is that manhwa where everybody hypes up to be the THING. But for me, it's just a shounen manhwa bordering between a 7 and an 8 on the first half and a 5 or a 6 in the second half.

I will admit, even if the art is a bit average to say the least(as far as Korean manhwas go), I can say it's slightly distinct against the cesspool of average works ... in the same genre.

The arcs go up and down(up, meaning slightly average, down meaning average as hell) and I had to will my horny on main self to keep reading it till the end for me to make some sort of opinion about it. It was a very arduous journey to self control from reading Tower of God for the umpteenth time.

Before we move on, I will preface by saying I actually enjoyed reading Noblesse, before it devolved into a painfully average piece of work. I like the way it delivers dry humor and the character designs were actually really good.


My biggest gripe about this manhwa is the fact that the dialogues are very tongue and cheek, a pain to read and are unnecessarily long. We readers don't need to hear their monologues for the millionth time. We get it, you love humans at the point of sacrificing yourself. The author only needs to put that in our face once.

I tested the waters and read 5 chapters without skipping or skimming any dialogues and my god I never would've thought to be more bored than having to survive a day on a blackout.

And it took me 1 hour to read it all.

But my efforts weren't wasted for nothing as I realized at that point that nobody needs to read all of these; they're the same thing repasted and the characters always repeat themselves. I would appreciate it more if the boring dialogues and expositions be paired with some visualization, like what Nisio isin did with the manga adaptation of bakemonogatari. This is awful writing on it's finest and it is disheartening that not many people noticed that. Might as well write a novel if the author wanted to and it wouldn't make any difference.

The second thing I noticed that the manhwa delivered awfully is the characters. We have raizel, the handsome Kuudere bae that I really wanted to like because of that quirky personality of his, but the execution of Raizel in the manhwa just fell flat the more I think about the character. Instead of making him this reserved and cool character, he's a one dimensional character that was eventually downgraded to a boring deus ex machina.

Frankenstein is a henchman of Raizel and I can't seem to grasp why he submitted himself to Raizel at first sight. A good reason for this is the fujoshi fanbase. I never realized I read a whole fujo bait piece of work without even realizing it.

Tae-soo's dynamic with Ken Kitano was way more believable than Frank's and Raizel, to be honest. Both dynamics are surface level, but there was way more character in the former the more we see them having a conversation. Whereas Raizel's speech bubble were mainly composed of trails of periods.

I don't need to go over all the characters because of how forgettable they are. The orange haired guy is basically beta -Itadori(from Jujutsu Kaisen). Apart from him, all others were very very forgettable.

The art quality is a gradually evolving thing you see in mangas where the artist uses his/her work to improve his/her skills because it is a weekly release. This in itself is a double edged sword because 1) One can appreciate that this artist wouldn't settle for less but 2) it's very hard, as a reader, to go back to that scene in the first chapters. That's kinda why I never would want to read the first 50 chapters of Tower of God regardless of how good the story is. The moment I see a butt ugly panel of Endorsi my Waifu, that's where I draw the line.

And then... There's the plot progression.

I already mentioned before that I preferred the first half(<chapter 250 and below) rather than the second half.

Here's why...

The way that the manhwa ended in a semi-cliffhanger didn't sit well with me. Not to mention, it ended in a flash and I was never given the chance to absorb what was going on. It's not a cliffhanger as much as it's an open ended one. The only resolution we get is the bad guy dying and that's it(I won't get to too much spoilers).

But that's not the only problem I had with the second half. I also mentioned before about the lame ass dialogue of the characters; they all happened on the second half. At that point, they were just spouting nonsense over and over again that those were the times when I repeatedly put this manhwa on hold.

Also forgot mention that on the second part, the manhwa took itself too seriously and there was no point on getting invested to anything: to the characters nor to the story. The comedy skits they used always do in the beginning were just thrown away and the first human character to appear in the first chapter (and his friends) were downgraded to mob characters until the last chapter.


Plotwise, I could not remember a single thing about the second half and I won't bother to remember it. The formulaic pattern I remembered was: bad guys appear and wreak havoc, good guys are notified, big battle commences, bad guys defeated. It was rinse and repeat until the last big battle and the finale flopped.

Tldr: Noblesse is a decent manhwa until the second half where everything just flopped. I'm not gonna stop you from reading it, but if you want a manhwa that structured its story and characters very well even in the long run, read tower of god. You won't regret it.

‘Noble blood is an accident of fortune; noble actions characterize the great.’

‘Noblesse’ is a web manhwa co-written by the two Korean authors: story Son Jae-Ho and illustrator Lee, Gwang-Su. The story begins exactly as it should begin in any good shounen manga/manhwa: with the awakening of the main character; Cadis Etrama Di Raizel literally rises from the coffin, after no less than 820 years of sleep. It is easy to guess, that our protagonist is a vampire. Yet, in the world of the manhwa, his kind is known as Noblesse. Our hero wakes up in an abandoned building in South Korea, all alone and ... immediately gets out. You can imagine what Ray's reaction was... he did not even think about it. The vampire is surprisingly ‘cold-blooded’, not used to being surprised. And so, wandering around the city, he accidentally stumbles upon the Ye Ran High School. And who would have thought - the headmaster of this school is none other than the obedient servants of his vampire Excellency, Frankenstein. Frankenstein immediately decides to accept the master in his school and to tell everyone that he is an exchange student. And then the story begins…

As the story develops, more and more often you are starting to think - is it really what South Korea is like? Ordinary students are either hackers or masters of hand-to-hand combat. There are many mutants prowling around the city, all of them without exception are members of a certain ‘organization’. On top of that, behind the scenes, there is the lord of the Noblesse race and new opponents appear faster than they can be killed. And it is not a bad thing. What I mean is that you will not have even a second to feel bored. Interestingly enough, the characters of ‘Noblesse’ are not just some copypasta from the more famous ‘vampire’ manga like ‘Hellsing’, ‘Blood +’ and others. In fact, the manhwa introduces us to a completely new and unique world that has not been featured anywhere else yet. As for the characters, we have: an ordinary Korean schoolboy, ‘modified people’, and, well, of course, vampires. Their ‘tribe’ kind, however, is different from what we know. The local ghouls do not drink blood; ‘ Noblesse oblige’. (Meaning that nobility extends beyond mere entitlements and requires the person who holds such a status to fulfill social responsibilities.) According to the story, Noblesse have always protected and led people to prosperity until the mankind began to see them as a threat. After all, they were way too strong, so that the humanity started seeing them as enemies. This is the reason why we see them that rarely.

For those who are used to the Japanese manga, the style of this manhwa might seem a bit unusual. The differences start from the reading order, and end with the background that are not as detailed as in most manga. On top of that, when you start reading the manhwa, it looks… bad. However, after a while, the art will begin to improve and it is going to be okay. So, give it some time, do not drop it immediately. All in all, what can be said in conclusion? Those who watched, or planning to watch the anime, which is utter garbage, I highly recommend you to read the manhwa for you to understand the story and the characters better. I am not going to tell you something like ‘it is going to be the best manhwa ever,’ however, one simply cannot deny the fact that this manhwa is quite good and unique. All I can recommend you is to read it little by little, do not rush it.