OK, so the MC is super smart, super strong, super hardworking, and just plain super good at whatever he does. He has a old grandma and a little sister to take care of, he would sacrifice anything for them, he has to deal with debt that his dead parents left, his sister is even perfect (smart, beautiful, popular, etc.), his potential GF is ridiculously beautiful and smart and strong and kind, and etc. etc. etc. Basically, your perfectly cliched hero with a cliched setting and cliched plot. Overdone? Hell yeah.

BUT! Man, but I really just can't dislike it. I think it's super awesome. His personality is just too hilarious, I think... The author turns a overdone character and plot and makes it interesting and fun. This novel really shows that it's the how something is written, not what it writes about, that matters. Great so far, makes me wish I could read it in its original language.

... Last updated on May 5th, 2013, 6:34am

For the purposes of this review, I will recreate a bunch of posts I made at another forum as I read this.

• I'm currently about eight volumes in on Legendary Moonlight Sculptor, so that might take a couple of years.
  
  Preliminary review:
  
  Benign gamer-wank that is readable and enjoyable despite its emphasis on the gaming elements and how gaming will be the panacea of a new world, because it has actual characters and things that happen and the MC is not childishly OP but just somewhere high on a bellcurve. Too much serendipity and coincidences and stumbling upon unique secrets, but whatyagonnado?
  
  
• If anyone's interested to know, I'm wading through Moonlight Sculptor still, up to volume 15.
  
  It's mostly what I expected based on earlier volumes, but I'm not hating it yet. Which is quite an achievement with 15 volumes! This might be the best we can get out of a grinding-focussed VMMO story that takes its game elements seriously.
  
  The glimpses of Korean culture I get that contrast with, say, Japanese equivalent bits, is interesting. Of course if I took some story written by a Korean MMO-addict (probably) at face-value, I probably wouldn't get a pretty picture.
  
  Annoyed by how the story is set X decades into the future, but the mores, standards, living conditions, everything is basically what I assume is the writer's childhood or to-day, which feels often like a few decades past Japanese media.
  
  
• Continuing Moonlight Sculptor, posting to kvetch.
  
  
  Oh my GOD, I can just feel the awkwardness of this oncoming Cartoonish Africa sequence.
  
  First thing after getting off the plain in Cairo, our main character gets assigned as the driver of a car to learn driving because apparently no traffic laws in Egypt.
  
  Next paragraph is about bandits or militias on camel shooting guns. Literally, they witness that.
  
  Paragraph after that there's starving and dead-eyed African children and they dump a box of medicine at a mud shack. Somehow it feels like this kind of aid could be a bit more efficient than two dudes getting on a tourist plain and bringing with them a couple of boxes of pills.
  
  Usually it takes more text than this to describe the status screen of some new drop the MC picks up!
  
  The story is set at least a few decades into the future.
  
  
• STILL reading Moonlight Sculptor.
  
  I *knew* this was going to be a grind, but it's been an ok-ish one. Up to vol... 35 is it? At least 34.
  
  But the author is a master of stringing you along. The story is divided into volumes, but the volumes are lies, this is pure and unadulterated serial content that just keeps on going, ne-ver stops.
  
  The worst pattern are the unending, ceaseless skill quests. The MC has been on the CUSP, on the CUUUUSP of getting a skill for the past several volumes, and the quest just never seems to be stop. There's ALWAYS some other hurdle, some extraordinarily ridiculous thing needed to be done, it never, ever ends. I've gone out loud "oh my F***ING god" a few times already, just waiting for the last boss of whatever to come, but it's never the last stage of the quest, it's never the last boss.
  
  This is Namek.
  
  But the writing is so light and actually readable (though the quality of writing is colorless and devoid of anything good, it's just serviceable snack writing) that I've persevered.
  
  EDIT:
  
  please just spare me, get on with it
  
  
• aaaaaaaayaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaAAAAAAAAAAAa aaaaaaaaaaaAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
  
  oh my f***ing god
  
  this quest NEVER STOPS
  
  aasddgggggg
  
  just stop, PLEASE STOP, fopr the LOVE of GOD please stop
  
  i can't take this anymore

... Last updated on December 24th, 2016, 1:35am

This Novel is amazing. Specially so if you have played fantasy games and MMO games. The only problem is the translations, it makes it so hard to enjoy and understand what the hell is going on. Constantly changing character names and halfassed explanations that make no sense. Still worth reading, and if an english version ever comes out, I may consider buying it, if the price is low enough. P.S Dont listen to TheMagicKnight kid below me. He seems butthurt for no reason other than the novel didnt go the way he wanted. Crafting profession in the game allow you to have several proffesions to make up for the fact that they are weaker in combat, because leveling up proffesions will give stat boosts. The whole martial arts vs gamer thing would only apply in a game like those we play today. This is a virtual reality game where things like real life experience and state of mind can make a difference since the game is not much different than real life but with some tweaks, ofcourse this is all science fiction, but its part of the story and I dont understand why it would upset you. The game has a hidden agenda behind it (games creator its a bit like that dude from SAO) which I wont spoil revolving around the emperor which is how he got his hidden class which explains why his class is so good. Even then there are characters in the game much stronger than him, Bardray the strongest guy in the game has several dozens of thousands of high level users and millions of NPCs under his control. The only thing I agree with is the whole being poor backstory which the author abuses a lot in the early volumes but knocks it down a notch later on when the main character goes to africa and sees those who had it worse than him. Also Shield hero is nowhere near as good as this.

... Last updated on March 13th, 2015, 11:18am

One of my fave due to the fact that the MC chosen path in his life and his lack of talent in every field can be overcome through shear hard work.

He came from a close knitted but debt ridden family, so his childhood was crappier than most. But you dont see him running around acting tough, join a gang, beat people up to relieve him of his anger and his position in life. No, he decided at a helluva young age that he's gunna work for the sake of his only two remaining family members. No one gave him hand-me-downs, no one offered him help; so he learned that the only thing he can rely on is himself, and worked through the pain for the grandmother that raised him, and the little sister he have to take care of as a father.

The MC caught on lucky break in his life when he sold his game account, but ultimately was taken from him about a day after he gotten it. Then he figured as 'i did it once, i can do it again,' and devoted a year into researching the games and building up his body. Both requires a ridiculous amount of hardwork: researching by means of gaining all the information from those before him, and building up his body by means of swinging his sword till his blisters oozes with blood. Tell me, where's is his expert-in-every-skill appears here? Just hard work.

In game, he's a true socialpath; he tends to use people, but they usually received a boost or some kind of reward for their hardwork and going along with his flow. That's why even those that knows how he is doesnt stray from him, because he never once use-then-toss them away. He worked hard to get to where he's at: at the beginning where he mind-numblingly swung his blade(in game) for hours to earn just one stat point, to fighting stronger monsters that resulted in his death many times over. Sculpting statues for days to increase stats, cooking thousands of meals raise stats, repairing hundreds of thousands of times on equipment to raise stats; there aint any talent here, just constant work because he knows the second chance he'd get isnt gunna be given out in the real world, but to be earn in the game world. He also cleared multiples of hard quests for his level where spectators deemed impossible for those doubled his level using his smarts...and he died plenty of times during so.

Like i've said, reading isnt experiencing. You may know how things flow from reading an already written text, but the moment you actually stepped in their shoes and tread the path they chose to take.............ur screwed because ur mindset is 'i got talents, i can do anything/ i got powers, i can crush anything/ i got smarts, i can use anything.' Respect for this MC, everything he got, he earned as he worked.

... Last updated on March 1st, 2012, 1:59pm

It seems recently the author found out that his writings is translated by fan (odd squad), and he made a statement that he permit Moonlight Sculptor novel to be translated and published, as long as no one uses it for commercial purpose.

Really, he is generous. Live long Heesung Nam.

I'm torn. I want to give LMS(Legendary Moonlight Sculptor) a 10, while simultaneously I want to give it a 7. This is because the first couple volumes of LMS are easily a 10. The first couple volumes are so well written and addictive, I lost myself in the entire series. I've read from volume 1 to volume 20 with nearly no breaks.

The problems start after the first couple volumes. More padding and filler starts popping up. The pacing slows down because of it. Then more and more contradictory sentences pop up. I understand some of this is due to the translators probably rushing or whatever, though I'm not complaining about the translators as they allowed me to read LMS, so a big thank you to them! Anyway, at one point the padding, slow pacing, contradictions, and numerous loop holes become so bad, I'm not sure it's even the original author writing it. In fact, I seriously think someone else wrote one of the arcs. Anyway, at that point I was thinking of dropping LMS, it was that bad. Luckily, after struggling through the terribly written tautology, padding, and story itself, things got better again. It still wasn't at the level of the first couple volumes but at the very least it had improved a good amount from the low point of the series.

In the beginning, as the author added more elements to the story, it was gradually improving and becoming more complex. I loved every second of it. At some point the author lost control. He constantly added more elements when there was already more than enough, to the point where he couldn't juggle them well and the extra pieces started falling here and there. As a result the story is a jumbled mess at times.

The loopholes and contradictions were one of the worst offenders I had to learn how to overlook. I think that if I had read the volumes spaced out over time then the impact they would have would be much lower. Instead, I read a good amount of the series all at once, so it was easy to spot inconsistencies. When these started appearing it was heartbreaking. Somehow I was able to start ignoring these and push forward. They don't bother me as much now but it feels as if the author is rushing to write as much as possible without checking his previous works and making sure he's got all the facts right. At one point I looked at when this series was created and how many volumes the author put out. I was shocked. It does seem like he wrote as fast as he could and started ignoring quality, and instead opting for quantity. While I would definitely prefer quality over quantity, it's hard to complain when I want more volumes to read.

Some character relationships are well written and others grate on your nerves. One example, which is IMO the most grating is There are other relationships between characters I'm not too fond of but what I wrote just above was IMO the worst of them.

I've got more to complain about but I'm getting lazy and want to end it so I'll just say this. The author is great at writing adventure stories but terrible at writing comedy. Every single time he tried to do some comedy early on, it was a definite miss. When he focuses on the adventure, LMS shines brightest. Unfortunately, when all the padding, inconsistencies, and pacing problems started popping up, the author made another fatal flaw, he started focusing almost solely on comedy instead of the adventure. This made it nearly unbearable to continue reading. Luckily, after the arc I listed earlier, he gets better in all aspects. He still focuses too much on comedy, but at the very least he seemed to realize what he's best at. Sure, his comedic writing did improve a bit. There were a couple parts that made me laugh, but so much of it was a miss that I really wish he would focus on the adventure and leave the humor for when it made sense, instead of forcing it nearly all the time.

Despite my gripes, I love this series. I had a lot to rant about but all in all LMS is still a really addictive and great adventure story. It's creative and there's a lot to read, so if you can look passed its faults, you'll come to love LMS as much as I do.

Moonlight Sculptor was a series I had high hopes for going in. The premise was enough to get me interested, and at first things were moving along at a brisk pace, but pretty early on certain aspects of the story began to fall apart for me. I suppose I'll just get the elephant in the room dealt with first: I think the author has no idea how MMOs really work. Normally this may be a little nitpicky, but this is what the entire story revolves around and it's specifically made to make the MC seem that much smarter.

Let me give you a prime example. Weed goes into the game world, and there finds out that during your first 7 days you're not allowed to leave your starting city or kill any monsters. While this is already dumb because seriously what dev would FORCE you to spend a week not actually playing the game, that's not even the stupidest part. You see, Weed finds out that there are training dummies, and if you sit there an attack the training dummies for long enough then your strength goes up. And you can do this multiple times. Other PCs scoff at the idea, saying it's "too much effort for so little gain" but frankly, due to him completing this training (which NOBODY else has ever done by the way) he absolutely dominates every monster his own level, often in one shot. Now, you probably already see the problem with this. Namely, why didn't EVERYONE do this? You're stuck in town for a week anyhow unable to fight monsters, why wouldn't every single player grind out those strength points when they're obviously SUPER advantageous? This is even dumber because of the fact that this is one of the most popular games around with millions of people playing it and yet not one person ever tried to do the thing that increases your stats. Heck, the guy even got a rare sword and special quest from doing this, and one PC even mentions that everyone has been scouring the world looking for these rare quests. Even though (once again) nobody bothered to check the most obvious location somehow.

Really, this is just another one of those "everyone is stupid so the MC can seem much smarter" stories. Because that is the ONLY reason the guy is successful at all. Another example is with the cooking skill. Namely, the MC is one of the few people who actually levels up his cooking skill. Except that in actual MMOs, people do this all the time and in this game you can actually TASTE the food! Why wouldn't everyone be leveling this skill up? Oh right, it's so the MC can seem that much smarter for doing something every character should be.

I honestly wish that I could say a little more positive about this story. It's not godawful, but it IS built on plot convenience and extreme coincidence. It's built on you not questioning the game world or story too much and just going with the flow, and I'm not ok with that.

... Last updated on January 17th, 2019, 8:41am

If ever there were a time for the korean-english translators to unite and translate, this would be the series. If ever there were a time for Japan to animate korean works, this would be the time. If ever there were a manhwa artist to illustrate this series this would be the time. Hell if I could overthrow the world order to get this drawn, animated or translated this would be series to do it over. What's that say about the series well if you know me I'm rather reserved about the whole overthrow the world thing, but this is different. Greatest Main Character Ever. Also if you like this one see Sword Art Online, Yureka or Id.

Well now that a good chunk has been translated it's been 2 years, and frankly here is the new review:
First the character stays true to his character he only ever thinks of money and his motivations are always money, but beyond that he is good person.
Second the author has a way of devising scenarios and finding ways to make them so it isn't an overpowered man fighting them but a struggle with the main character outmatched, and he solves them not through a power-up or training montage but with a unique methodology that leads him to a better outcome.
I still find this series unique and he still remains a fun dark hero to read about, and I hear there is a webtoon inbound, so here is for hope that I won't have to go down the path of world domination to see an animation.

... Last updated on December 10th, 2014, 11:26am

An amazing read if I may say so myself. The first chapter started kinda slow, where we got the background info on the main character and how the story came about. Then we enters the gaming phase which just had to be AMAZING I tell you.

It's just great how he's able to brainwash everyone (npc/users/friends/acquaintances) he met into going along with his pace and making them think he's a hero in shining armors when he's almost the exact opposite but instead of gaining benefits only for himself and make us hate him, by the end of the day everyone got what they deserve and we adore him more. Given that he has such a worthless class in the game (one that he refuses at first but got trick into accepting LOL) people have low expectations of him and then BAMM he did what others has a hard time doing seemingly effortlessly just increase my expectation for his next surprise. The battle scenes are ones that you would just have to love. Instead of going through a steady pace, we got our heart racing, then let down..then woohoo again the main character amazes us. Ohh mann..those moments are precious, thank you google translator.

One might think that his talent just stuck in-game, and that's where this novel's juicy tidbits comes next. Royal Road(a complete virtual-reality game) allows the users to apply what they have learned in-game to the real world. The abilities he learned in-game like sculpting, cooking etc made him an all-around man in real world. It's gaming+learning. Not to mention he got such good martial arts basic=win!! Having real-world and in-game girls+fans go ga-ga. over him, but almost completely oblivious to it, is just precious.

Would I recommend you to read it? Yes!! Go!! Look it up, now!! Get hooked like me!! And then we can go scavenging for even the tiniest bits of spoilers together x33

As entelegent commented before me, the idea is is good (though hardly original with similar stories around like Yureka, SAO, log horizon, .hack, 1/2 prince, ark, etc...) and the story is pretty addicting - you're always wondering what stat is going to level up next and the adventures are, overall, good premises (though again, hardly original considering all the actual MMORPGs around).

But... I think the biggest problem can be summed up in a single sentence: the author never tries to 'show' anything in his writing, whether it be character relations, thoughts or actions, but always 'tells' the reader what to think.

This style essentially results in us being told, every chapter that Weed is amazing, smart, cunning, powerful and somehow smarter or more capable than everyone else. There is no character who I would particularly call interesting in the series - all the girls introduced are the simplest of stereotypes, and all of them are somehow the most beautiful girl you can imagine - in fact, I'm not sure any of the women introduced were not introduced in this way (minus Seoyong's psychologist or Weed's grandmother), whether it be Seoyong, Lee Hayan, the shaman girl, Hwaryeong or Jihoon... even Surka and Meyoon were supposed to be hot, if not 'the most in the world' like all the others... (And the male characters who are friends with Weed are all the same - Zephyr the closet heir to a big company, Ahn, the greatest master of the sword in Korean martial arts... well, Pale isn't anything special, just has a TV anchor as his girlfriend... and Mapan was never really more than a side character, and I don't remember if there was any other male character that lasted more than a paragraph...)

Then, the story essentially devolves into 'Weed' or "Lee" does this and that, is idolised by all, is smarter than all, and somehow is the only person (of 100 million) in the game who cares about his stats and skill levels (rather than character level). As a result, he easily surpasses everyone and goes around stumbling into badass supper hidden quests that he hoodwinks NPCs into doing for him with his cooking skills. Not only that, but on one side, he is always described as stingy and money-obsessed, scamming people out of their money or gold, or labour (in the pyramids for instance) and yet a) everyone who meets him likes him and he treats them super well (if patronisingly), b) whenever it comes to NPCs, they seem to react only to Weed's charms and never to anyone else... Not only that, but in any matter except money, he is described as a paragon of virtue - helping his family and extending charity to the his friends who can't do anything without him.

Even more problematic is that most of his 'badassedness' appears to be luck... he just happened to get quests for grinding scarecrows, just happened to be pushed into his legendary class, just happened to meet supermodels playing the game, just happened to be the first to discover tons of new dungeons and regions, just happened to say the write thing to trigger NPC events...

As for setting, the beginning was not so bad with the Rosenheim capital city's specific places, but later on Weed just appears everywhere and nowhere and there is very little that isn't superficial RPG environments. Description is also pretty much non-existant, most of the places, cities, monsters, foods, items or anything else are assumed to be recognised by anyone with the most basic of RPG knowledge (?). The author does not hesitate to tell us point blank what people and things are 'beautiful' or 'special' though... so if you like that type of description, you'll enjoy it for sure...

So as for all the comments about how the writing style is good but the translations are bad... I'd like to say that the writing style (original) sucks, but the translations are pretty good, all considering. There are grammar problems here and there, but hardly every paragraph and never anything that makes it difficult it understand, and the layout and presentation was nice. Note that I was reading the Royal Road translations or at least uploads on their site. It takes a ton of work to translate novels like that, particularly if they're pretty monotonous, so I think they did an impressive job.

Anyway, no reread or literary value, in the slightest, but it is an addicting and uplifting tale of someone who excels above others in a game. So it does have appeal in that respect.

... Last updated on May 17th, 2014, 3:13am