Ruler of the land review chapter 1

Ruler of the land review chapter 1
Creative Talent
Writer/Artist:Jeon Keuk-Jin/Yang Jae-Hyun
Translated by:Jason An
Adapted by:

What They Say
When the callow young Bi-Kwang meets fellow fighter Hwa-Rin Dahm, he has no idea how much his life will change. He joins Hwa-Rin, a beautiful woman disguised as a man, on her desperate quest to find her missing grandfather.


All they have are each other and the powerful Sword of Flowers. The search is complicated when the infamous and debauched assassin Sang Pil "Gold Cobra" Jin decides he too wants the Sword of Flowers...

The Review
The Review: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
Bi-Kwang Han is a swordsman and martial artist with an overactive libido, but not the common sense to actually score with the women. He meets a very handsome young man at a tavern who not only has all the women hanging all over him, but dispatches some thugs with a single swing of his sword. The stranger, named Hwa-Rin Dahm, us looking for an old man named Geum-Hwang. Bi-Kwang knows him, but won't reveal where he is until the handsome stranger sets him up with a date with one of the local beauties. They end up travelling together, crafting a strange partnership.

The secret is that Hwa-Rin is actually a very beautiful young woman travelling in disguise, and Geum-Hwang is her grandfather, who is missing. He leads a group called the Establishment Faction, and the creater of the White Lightning art of fighting. Bi-Kwang's inability to figure out Hwa-Rin is a woman is a constant running joke. Bi-Kwang is also more than he appears. The Lord of a Thousand Horses is the leader of the Reform Faction, and dispatches two of his bodyguards to watch over Bi-Kwang in secrecy, despite the fact that Bi-Kwang doesn't want them. Bi-Kwang is an idiot whenever there's a pretty girl around, but he has a knack for getting both into and out of trouble, as well as a gift for learning new techniques quickly.

The complications come from Master Yoo, who has hired a dangerous assassin, Sang-Pil "Gold Cobra" Jin, to kill Hwa-Rin. Yoo's ulterior motive is to take Hwa-Rin's sword for himself. The Sword of Flowers is a legendary sword and Yoo will stop at nothing to obtain it. The Gold Cobra learns of Yoo's real motive for hiring him, and decides to take the sword for himself.

Comments
The story is fairly straightforward. Bi-Kwang and Hwa-Rin are either adherents to or under the protection of opposing factions. Hwa-Rin's disquised gender adds humor to Bi-Kwang's amazingly stupid and out of control lechery. It's just that there's nothing really new or unusual in how the characters are created or depicted. There's nothing you haven't seen already in a thousand other martial arts manga and manhwa.

The art is very solid and even simple. The style looks slightly dated, not really distinguishing itself in any way. Fight scenes are well-composed and easy to follow, which is good, because there are a lot of them.

The front cover is an attractive image of Hwa-Rin against a white background looking quite sexy. The kanji characters over a Chinese dragon image and the choice of muted colors gives it the look of an older Chinese print. The back cover has no blurb describing the story, just a large image of Bi-Kwang with his hand over the shoulder of Hwa-Rin, who is showing an amazing amount of cleavage. The sound effects are all translated into English and printed right next to the Korean sfx. The art reproduction is acceptable, with only a small amount of moiring in the screentones. There are two pages of translator's notes, a great extra from ADV Manga.

The Ruler of the Land is solidly written and illustrated. If you've never read any martial-arts manwha before, this would be a good title to start with. If you've read any before, you won't find anything particularily new or unique here.