Before you tell me that there are like 2 million other Manhwa that went completely under the radar in western countries, YES that is true but here is the thing: This one has like 240 mio readers on Kakao and thats a lot (Korea has like 58 mio citizen how does this number even work in the first place), yet no one seems to be talking about it!
Well anyways. Todays review will be about the Manhwa “Elqueeness” which I found on some crappy manga website on like page 99 or some shit. After reading like 80 chapters I must really say that I find the story quite interesting and therefore wanted to share my opinion!
A unique story
The concept of this Manhwa is something that I have honestly never seen before. And don’t get me wrong, I read a ton of basic ass isekai, my standards for a good read really aren’t that high. But this one is just something different.
The protagonist of this story is Kang Ji-hoon an ordinary high school student that has a somewhat difficult relationship with his family. One day, Truck-kun comes to visit and just straight up runs him over. Ahh yes ze good ol’ truck kun… But what’s that? Instead of getting isekaied into another world and getting tons of opai, he instead wanders the world for 10 full days until so-called “Guides” pick up his soul. After being brought to the god of death “Arehis”, who is way more bright than his name would suggest, he finds out that his soul was actually never destined to be human. Instead, he is the lost soul of the Spirit King “Elqueness”, the King of Water who was mistakenly been sent into the human world. He then gets reincarnated into the spirit realm where he meets the other 3 spirit king, each having their specific element (earth, fire, wind, you know the drill). The story later continues with our protagonist, now under the name of “Elqueeness” or short “El”, fulfilling his duties as the Water Spirit King.
This already sounds like a lot, but bear with me, the main arc hasn’t even started yet. El gets summoned as a spirit into the human world by a young emperor who is trying to save his empire. And without spoiling too much… Let’s just say that the first big arc of this Manhwa tells the story of their travel through the empire and all the people they met on their way.
Personally I just really like to read some new ideas even if they aren’t as perfectly executed as they could be and to be honest if you are searching for amazing fight scenes, you are probably at the wrong place. (There was so much potential! Maybe check out our Berserk of Gluttony Review instead?) But still… Just hearing the background stories about all the characters in this Manhwa and really getting a feeling for this journey makes this one of my favorite Manhwa. It comes with a lot of cool plot twists and maybe that’s just my opinion, but there’s just something cool about having a protagonist that is actually a Spirit, but also someone Reincarnated, but also has connections to several gods, (spoiler-alert) but also becomes pope in the middle of the Manhwa for no fucking reason and has super op spirit powers (because why the hell not?)
Characters
I really like the character design in this Manhwa it has just something refreshing to it, seeing how everyone evolves during their travels. The main characters all have a small different twist to their character which just make their conversations way more fun to read.
Art Style & Panels
All panels are in good old webtoon style, available in full color. There isn’t really much to say here, it’s just the classic look of a digital web comic as it has existed for several years now.
Genre
This Manhwa is tagged with the genre: Adventure, Fantasy, Slice of Life and Comedy. I personally think that this really fits. Funny enough tho, I actually found this manga through the crossdressing tag on the crappy manga website if mentioned above. This only really fits if you count the fact that Spirit Kings are technically genderless and our protagonist (he considers himself male because of his human life) just looks like a girl (because fan service yk lmao).
Also just saying: There is a reason why this isn’t tagged as an action and more as an slice of life manhwa!
Criticism
As already mentioned above, I personally like the stories I read to have more action in them. While I actually really enjoy watching Slice-Of-Life Anime, I still struggle to really appreciate the manga version of this genre. Furthermore, there were multiple instances where I had to take a pause from reading for a few days because the story just got a bit monotone and maybe inhaling 50 chapters in one day wasn’t such a good idea.
Conclusion
Quite an interesting story. If you like Slice of Life Manhwa then this should be really interesting for you. It might get boring from time to time, but I can guarantee you that there will be always some kind of new story arc or big turn of events that will keep you reading. Currently, about 177 Chapters are translated into English by tritinia scans, around 220 are currently available in Korean from the official comic website (all links above in the manga details section). All in all, I can say that I really like this Manhwa and will therefore give it a rating of:
