Spoiler Free
Plot:
The story revolves around a highschooler, Kitano Ken, who went to Korea in hopes to follow Yumi (his love interest who rejected him early on in the story) and her footsteps of bringing justice. However, all of that went crashing down as he had been living as a shut-in for a year and felt that there is no hope to follow Yumi’s dream and during that Yumi achieved being a police officer. On one night, an incident happened where Ken was at a food stall who was ran by an old man who was just so happened to owe some gangsters money. With the old man saying that he doesn’t have any, the two gangsters started to violently beat him but Ken stood up for the old man and fought the two, successfully fending them off. A leader of a gang, Tae- Soo, saw Ken and his bravery and thought of recruiting him as their boss as he sees he has potential to be a leader and later, Ken became their boss. This story follows Ken and his gang the ‘Sun-ken Rock Group’ through hardship, unity, gang life and importance of power.
Thoughts:
I read this a couple of years ago but didn’t continue since until this. I picked this up again as the story, which was blurred from my memory, had made realize that there were points that seemed ‘cool’ and that time I left it at CH.40. Seeing the number of chapters, I thought this would be a short read. With all that, I started at square one or ‘level one’, as I need to grasp the story better instead of going in blind. This is also because it is so that I could make a proper review such as this.
As I started to read the manga, the first chapter instantly hits you with the author’s amazing art which is consistent through all of the story. In terms of plot and storytelling, pacing-wise it does good but was rushed in the end. It does well balancing between action and comedy which is difficult to achieve especially in the serious and adult genres of manga because the two do not synergise but the manga pulled it off seamlessly. Being a mature manga, it has a lot of explicit panels, from gruesome to full-on naked sex. Unfortunately, the fights that involve a woman or women are sure to meet with shots of their bare skin which you can tell is because of fan-service and fan-service runs through this manga. To me (and I hope to some or MOST people), the fan-service is way too excessive and really unnecessary especially in fights which are intended to be COMBAT only.
Speaking of the story, putting aside the comedy and the ecchi, the plot felt similar to HOKUTO-NO KEN for most of it because in my opinion, the plot did not feel special or had any standouts and you’re just reading because their fighting and not because of the story which I felt when reading Hokuto-No Ken. However that does not mean that I did not enjoy both of them, I did, but in terms of story content it’s not unique. At one point In Sun-ken Rock, I felt that the story had found it’s direction and this pulled me, but In the end, the story fell apart and was rushed and did not conclude the way everyone wanted to. Looking back now, the Author could have ended it smoothly and without adding unnecessary obstruction which in my opinion could have made me given a better rating. Other than that, the characters, other than Ken, were all average. Just characters with a backstory or purpose just to be or oppose Ken instead of captivating the reader. The journey of the gang could have been formidable but it didn’t feel that way after you finished it and I felt like the main character, Ken, was sabotaged by the author as Boichi broke the build-up that was essential to make him the stand out character but in the last few chapters, he just felt like a character, losing his personality and purpose.
All and all, 7/10, I’ll give it.
It was an 8/10 but as I explained from the review, I dropped it to a 7/10. The rating was mostly because of enjoyment and the art which so far is one of the best manga art that I’ve ever seen.
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