묵향 디 오리진

MUK-HYANG: THE ORIGIN

MANGA

STATUS
COMPLETE
VOLUMES
Not Available
RELEASE
August 12, 2021
CHAPTERS
48

DESCRIPTION

In this prequel to “Mookhyang: Dark Lady,” we meet Mookhyang in Murim, or the world of martial arts, as a young member of the Demonic Sect. After years of rigorous training, he rises through the ranks and joins an elite squad of first-rate assassins. Despite his impressive achievements, however, he finds himself hungry for more. His obsession for martial arts ultimately leads him down a different path… one that few have ever dared to take. He spends decades learning the way of the sword and cultivating his inner qi, or mana, in hopes of one day reaching a state no warrior of the Demonic Sect has ever reached before—the State of Demon Transcender. Join Mookhyang as he fights powerful masters, takes down evil forces, and pushes himself to the limit... and beyond.

(Source: Tappytoon)

Note: Chapter count includes a prologue

CAST

Muk-Hyang

CHAPTERS

RELATED TO MUK-HYANG: THE ORIGIN

MANGA ActionMuk-Hyang: Dark Lady

REVIEWS

Vesui
60/100
Things happen and characters do stuff I guess
Major spoilers tagged, minor ones are not. I get the feeling that this story is meant to be read in conjunction with another. But it's a standalone comic, so I'm going to judge it as that.

What to say about this one? It's kind of a confusing mess. It's kind of good, but also kind of not. I can't really organize my thoughts on it properly so apologies in advance. People set it up as a backstory you should read before you read Mookhyang: Dark Lady but it's written as if the reader has prior knowledge on everything. Don't get me wrong, the plot itself is decent (major caveat to that but we'll get there) but you only learn anything once you're done with the story. I imagine some people would find it fun. Maybe those who want to sit and mull on each dialogue like some kind of detective to figure out what the actual story is. Before the author tells you after it no longer matters.

It feels like someone rifled through the comic and ripped out any pages containing plot setup or character development. Then they took any pages with important plot development information and randomly stuck them somewhere towards the end. It's like someone gave you a puzzle to do then revealed that they hid a third of the pieces after you were working on it for an hour. Why go through some plot just to reveal why it happened later? It just makes me confused in the interim. Maybe you're thinking it would be good for smart readers who want to try piece together the plot as it's happening. And maybe you're right, maybe I have to reread this story. But if so, then I'm not left feeling the story was good, I'm just left feeling dumb. Like haha you couldn't finish the puzzle cause I hid most of the pieces. That's not the point of a puzzle.

The MC meets a poor village girl and decides to save her and her mom. Give them a house, yada yada. Okay the MC is leaving now, goodbye and you see you for two pages 30 chapters later for no reason. This village girl gets portrayed as a centerpiece in the MC's life but gets very little development. Doesn't get used in the story to do anything interesting. Why even have her in the story? Oh right, she's used as a reason the MC risks friction between him and his clan leader to save some random clan she's in. That's it? This character you've introduced so early into the story and set up to make the reader think she's important, gets used as an extremely minor plot piece. Why?

One more example: Part way through the story, the main character takes a girl from an inn as a hostage after there was a fight between him and the people in the inn (this whole plotline in the inn is terrible but takes way too long to properly explain). The main character and this girl spend some wholesome time together with him teaching her some martial arts. She mediates some disagreement between two clans and then she later backstabs the main character at the order of her grandfather.

We later find out that the grandfather let the BBEG use his granddaughter to take out the MC. This is because she's considered the closest to the MC and she's considered a black sheep of the family (her mother is a concubine). Which would be awesome plot development but it has some fatal flaws. The first is that this girl has very little development. She's together with the MC for like a single roadtrip and she's the one the MC is most attached to? Isn't that telling of all the other characters? The second is that if the grandfather only let the BBEG use her because she's a black sheep, why is his other granddaughter there at the betrayal? Oh and she dies right away too but the BBEG seems to care more than her grandfather that she died. On top of this, the grandfather has the most generic and terrible reason to want to kill the MC. "He's too strong, he's dangerous!". And not to mention, you use a side character as the cause of the downfall of the MC? How pitiful. This entire arc of the story is just terrible.
(All the other plot is like this.)

"MC go here and kill this guy". Why? Who is he? What did he do? Turns out the guy is pretty chill and one of the best side characters in the whole story, too bad he dies like right after you meet him. "It will teach these people that we can stand up to the martial masters." Why do you want to make them fear you? Why this martial master? And like 3/4 of the way through the story, the BBEG gets swapped to just some guy "who wants to rule murim". Like ****ing really? The original villain was infinitely more interesting, even though he still is kinda bad. The original BBEG at least wanted to get rid of the MC because he saw him as a pawn that would be hard to control. Not really interesting but understandable I guess. And guess what, the BBEG dies! But not really. And this other BBEG dies! But not really. And the original BBEG died! But again, not really. And then the MC gets transported to some strange land with some mystical dark magic made by the BBEG. Awesome. Glad the story spent all that time building up the characters only for them to get zero resolution.

In short, this story is a mishmash of events that lack any setup, any strong conclusion, and no good characters. The few decent characters that exist are either ignored or swapped out with worse ones (or just die). It's like if you asked a machine to generate a fantasy story and all you told it was that things happen and characters do stuff. If you've seen a review of the Harry Potter playstation game by JoshStrifeHayes, it's exactly like that. Like we're expected to understand who these characters are, what their motives are, etc. without actually being told any of it. A decent story told in a very frustrating manner.
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