by tsubasa22 on January 30th, 2012, 2:13pm

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User rating of this review - 5 out of 5
Story/Plot - 4.5 out of 5
Characters - 5 out of 5
Drawing Style - 5 out of 5
Enjoyment - 5 out of 5
Overall - 4.9 out of 5

Click here for series information

'Noblesse' seems to be rage these days. It is becoming very popular among foreign readers, and is already one of the most popular webtoons in its native country, Korea, as well. It's very, very popular, no doubt about it. Most people will recommend you 'Noblesse' to you if you ask for an action webtoon recommendation.

And it well deserves its popularity.

Plot/Story

Story begins with Rai (whose real name is really too long for me to type up - everybody calls him Rai anyway). Rai may seem like your average hot and aloof teenager student, but he's not. He's actually a vampire. A really old, super strong, ancient nobility-like vampire. 'Noblesse' is basically the story of Rai in modern Korea after 800 years of sleep. He has his trusty right-hand man Frankenstein to help him out, and while attending a Korean school, he meets several humans. Rai, at first, lives a rather peaceful life, assimilating (or trying to assimilate) into the human culture. But things begin to change when dangers from a secret organization approaches...

First of all, points for taking the 'romance' out of vampire, and putting the 'action' in as a replacement. Twilight had romancified the vampire genre too much, and 'Noblesse' puts vampires in the action and adventure. It's refreshing, it's new, and it's very, very interesting. The fresh storyline itself deserves a good round of applause. And the makers make sure to proceed the story in a way that keeps the readers on their toes. It's a very well-made storyline, and it seems like the makers know where they're heading with it.

4.5 for the fresh and well-made Noblesse storyline. I'm taking 0.5 points for...I dunno, it's a very great storyline, but it's not perfect. Just not at that pinnacle of perfection.

Characters

Here we get to the real juicy meat of 'Noblesse.' The characters.

We all know that there's nothing as important as the leading character in a shounen, and Rai is perhaps the most epic shounen lead we've seen in a long time. First of all, he's extremely powerful. The usual shounen lead has to train and develop and fight this 'big bad boss' with all he's got. In 'Noblesse'? Nope. Rai's much more powerful than most, if not all of the big bads in the series. It's really hard to hate a powerful character, especially if he's just really epic while he does it. Secondly, Rai is really, really funny. He doesn't intend to be, but his aloof and out-of-touch personality creates hilarious situations when he's not fightning (there's a running gag about his love for instant noodles). And come on, who hates a funny character? Rai is just an overall epic, funny, and awesome character - it's truly difficult to hate him.

Frankenstein (affectionally called 'Franky') is another great character in the series, not to mention another very important one. He's nice on the outside, but mysterious and a tad bit sadistic side deep inside him. He's an overall mysterious and powerful, but likable character, and his good traits, such as his loyalty for Rai, really shine at times. He's also a nice subtle comedy relief character (but then again, most characters in 'Noblesse' are used for comedy somehow or another). You always need a nice right-hand man...

Most of the supernatural characters are fairly good memorable, all having their little special traits to them (special shout out to Regis,Seria and M21....my favorites)... The human cast is, unfortunately, not as memorable. Shin Woo is probably the only human you'll actually come to like as much as the supernatural cast - yes, I am biased towards Shin Woo, but the rest really never contribute to the plot or the comedy as much as Shin Woo does. But you'll appreciate the otherwise useless human cast at times, since they're the nice, lively comic bits in the series otherswise filled with a lot of dark fantasy elements and action. The makes did a nice job in balancing the darker characters with the lighter characters.

So for the very memorable lead, side characters, and nice balanced cast, 'Noblesse' gets a 5.

Drawing Style

Full color, very stylish art. Especially during later chapters. Oh, the colors make all the difference.
Plus the good looking guys AND girls. For all you men and ladies out there.
What more could you expect?
Big fat 5.

Enjoyment

Awesome action, awesome characters, occasional moments of heartbreak (oh god, the arc about M21 just broke my heart)... nice comedy in between!
What else do you want? There's something for everyone in there.

Overall

Just an overall epic, fresh, and not to mention pretty funny series. For all shounen fans.

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