Ravages of Time, revisited
PostPosted:Fri Jul 30, 2010 8:40 pm
Since nothing good has been out recently and HXH is back to a permanent hiatus I went back and took out some of my older mangas. Perhaps it's fitting that Ravages of Time stars the 8 Enigmas since that's a very good way to describe the quality of this series. Out of the 38 volumes so far, you'd probably want to read like 12, 15, 16, 20-30, 35, and 37. If you read more than that you'll probably decide this sucks because rest of the story sucks, but Ravages of Time is brilliant in the erractic intervals where it's at its best.
The story backdrop is the Three Kingdoms period near the end of Han Dynasty. If you don't know anything about the period, that's okay because most of what happens in the story doesn't resemble the history anyway. Don't worry about not following the plot by skipping around since it's an incoherent mess anyway.
The main characters in the story are supposed to be Sima Yi and Zhao Yun, even though it is pretty obvious they're not once you read into it. In fact just about all content that features Sima Yi can be safely skipped since it's either about him getting owned, or going Super Saiyan level 623 intellect. In fact if you start out the series by reading the Super Saiyan intellect stuff that'd probably lead you to conclude this stuff absolutely sucks, which happens to be where I picked it up at first.
The real main character is Lu Bu, generally viewed as the strongest warrior in the period. Normally he's portrayed as someone with all brawn and no brain, but Ravages of Time decides to have a different take. Again skipping the first 10 volumes where Lu Bu is also some kind of super genius is a good idea since it's just really far out even for fiction. Toward about the midteens, Lu Bu decided to stop using his power for intelligence so he can concentrate only on fighting (and hired a new advisor). He doesn't become stupid but he is no longer involved in the often frivilous thinking games, and he is a very well developed character. Even the guys under him, like Gao Shun, Zhang Liao, and Chen Gong are surprisingly good characters. Although historically Lu Bu just got bulldozed by Cao Cao and was killed, in RoT his battle against Cao Cao is like a 15 volume epic battle that seems to never end.
Although this is historical fiction, some of the research is surprisingly accurate. Gao Shun never lost a battle in the campaign against Cao Cao accordingly to the manga, and if you look it up, that was actually true. In the manga, when he was defeated, Cao Cao says to salute the last, nay, the ONLY hero of Lu Bu's army, and even though that was probably made up, it's probably a lot more accurate than any ROTK based on folklore.
In fact, since the author did a good job creating Lu Bu, after he died, he just had Zhang Liao put on Lu Bu's hat and now Lu Bu basically lives again as Zhang Liao. It's actually pretty impressive foresight since the author has been drawing Zhang Liao and Lu Bu with the same face and it's needed to get around the fact that Lu Bu, after all, did die rather early, so he needs a way to bring back a popular character.
Another major character RoT focuses on is Sun Ce, a promising warlord who was assassinated at a very young age. While at some point it got to a Dragonball-esque 'Lu Bu+' level of power, this is probably a good idea since after Sun Ce died, the Sun family was effectively out of the picture for a very long time, and in terms of creating drama it just doesn't make much sense when one of the three eventual powers is missing during most of the action. The way RoT handles it, Sun Ce apparently was always a thorn even in period where he was mostly irrelevent (his power base is too far away to threaten the mainland), including a hypothetical battle near He Fei between the Wei and Wu kingdom (and Guan Yu joined from middle of nowhere, so even Shu kingdom was involved). That said, most of this fiction is based on reality. Sun Ce always planned for a surprise assault on the capital through He Fei but he was assassinated before he can put his plan to action. In RoT he conducted his surprise attack and was defeated and then was assassinated on the way back.
Although RoT is historical fiction, there are some times where it does a good job looking like some kind of action manga. For example The Nameless Advisor (that was his name) might as well be a major boss for Sima Yi to overcome. Guo Jia, the strongest (this context means smartest) of the 8 Enigmas, is likely the series's effective final boss even though that technically should be Yuan Fan. It's hard to top a character where crows follow and lightning strikes where he goes (which, accordingly to him, are all just pure coincidental). RoT also has a very heavy dosage of irony, as clearly the characters will talk about things that they'd only know if they know the outcome ahead of time. When Sima Yi and Zhuge Liang teamed up to defeat Guo Jia (about the only part that stars Sima Yi that is worth reading), they both remarked if it wasn't Guo Jia they can't imagine ever working with each other. Of course, those two are pretty much the biggest rivals and spent a very significant part later in their life trying to kill each other. When Guo Jia fell off from his horse (and lightning strikes at the same time, of course), he said, "Long live and prosper, Mr. Sima!" Although clearly it's meant to be a curse, it's ironic in the sense that Sima Yi indeed lived long and prospered. Lu Meng, as a kid, said he was going to be the one who will bring down the God of War (Guan Yu), and of course that was exactly what happened historically.
Of course, where RoT is bad it is also very bad. Most of the other Enigmas seem to just rely on saying stuff like: "We need more troops." and that magically translates to a good strategy. Right now the last two Enigmas (Zhuge Liang + ???) still hasn't taken off their mask yet, which is supposed to be a way of indicating now they're for real. Presumably this is because it is difficult to come up with a more powerful character than Guo Jia (the 4th) so most likely the last 2 will just do nothing until Guo Jia died and then they no longer need to be super duper awesome since the bar has been lowered. In fact, I'd go on to say if it talks about strategy and it isn't Guo Jia (4th) or Zhou Yu (5th), you can just skip the entire section and you wouldn't miss anything, because none of the other guys can remotely make a convincing case that they're really smart people. It doesn't hurt those two guys get the cool weather effects whenever they show up.
The story backdrop is the Three Kingdoms period near the end of Han Dynasty. If you don't know anything about the period, that's okay because most of what happens in the story doesn't resemble the history anyway. Don't worry about not following the plot by skipping around since it's an incoherent mess anyway.
The main characters in the story are supposed to be Sima Yi and Zhao Yun, even though it is pretty obvious they're not once you read into it. In fact just about all content that features Sima Yi can be safely skipped since it's either about him getting owned, or going Super Saiyan level 623 intellect. In fact if you start out the series by reading the Super Saiyan intellect stuff that'd probably lead you to conclude this stuff absolutely sucks, which happens to be where I picked it up at first.
The real main character is Lu Bu, generally viewed as the strongest warrior in the period. Normally he's portrayed as someone with all brawn and no brain, but Ravages of Time decides to have a different take. Again skipping the first 10 volumes where Lu Bu is also some kind of super genius is a good idea since it's just really far out even for fiction. Toward about the midteens, Lu Bu decided to stop using his power for intelligence so he can concentrate only on fighting (and hired a new advisor). He doesn't become stupid but he is no longer involved in the often frivilous thinking games, and he is a very well developed character. Even the guys under him, like Gao Shun, Zhang Liao, and Chen Gong are surprisingly good characters. Although historically Lu Bu just got bulldozed by Cao Cao and was killed, in RoT his battle against Cao Cao is like a 15 volume epic battle that seems to never end.
Although this is historical fiction, some of the research is surprisingly accurate. Gao Shun never lost a battle in the campaign against Cao Cao accordingly to the manga, and if you look it up, that was actually true. In the manga, when he was defeated, Cao Cao says to salute the last, nay, the ONLY hero of Lu Bu's army, and even though that was probably made up, it's probably a lot more accurate than any ROTK based on folklore.
In fact, since the author did a good job creating Lu Bu, after he died, he just had Zhang Liao put on Lu Bu's hat and now Lu Bu basically lives again as Zhang Liao. It's actually pretty impressive foresight since the author has been drawing Zhang Liao and Lu Bu with the same face and it's needed to get around the fact that Lu Bu, after all, did die rather early, so he needs a way to bring back a popular character.
Another major character RoT focuses on is Sun Ce, a promising warlord who was assassinated at a very young age. While at some point it got to a Dragonball-esque 'Lu Bu+' level of power, this is probably a good idea since after Sun Ce died, the Sun family was effectively out of the picture for a very long time, and in terms of creating drama it just doesn't make much sense when one of the three eventual powers is missing during most of the action. The way RoT handles it, Sun Ce apparently was always a thorn even in period where he was mostly irrelevent (his power base is too far away to threaten the mainland), including a hypothetical battle near He Fei between the Wei and Wu kingdom (and Guan Yu joined from middle of nowhere, so even Shu kingdom was involved). That said, most of this fiction is based on reality. Sun Ce always planned for a surprise assault on the capital through He Fei but he was assassinated before he can put his plan to action. In RoT he conducted his surprise attack and was defeated and then was assassinated on the way back.
Although RoT is historical fiction, there are some times where it does a good job looking like some kind of action manga. For example The Nameless Advisor (that was his name) might as well be a major boss for Sima Yi to overcome. Guo Jia, the strongest (this context means smartest) of the 8 Enigmas, is likely the series's effective final boss even though that technically should be Yuan Fan. It's hard to top a character where crows follow and lightning strikes where he goes (which, accordingly to him, are all just pure coincidental). RoT also has a very heavy dosage of irony, as clearly the characters will talk about things that they'd only know if they know the outcome ahead of time. When Sima Yi and Zhuge Liang teamed up to defeat Guo Jia (about the only part that stars Sima Yi that is worth reading), they both remarked if it wasn't Guo Jia they can't imagine ever working with each other. Of course, those two are pretty much the biggest rivals and spent a very significant part later in their life trying to kill each other. When Guo Jia fell off from his horse (and lightning strikes at the same time, of course), he said, "Long live and prosper, Mr. Sima!" Although clearly it's meant to be a curse, it's ironic in the sense that Sima Yi indeed lived long and prospered. Lu Meng, as a kid, said he was going to be the one who will bring down the God of War (Guan Yu), and of course that was exactly what happened historically.
Of course, where RoT is bad it is also very bad. Most of the other Enigmas seem to just rely on saying stuff like: "We need more troops." and that magically translates to a good strategy. Right now the last two Enigmas (Zhuge Liang + ???) still hasn't taken off their mask yet, which is supposed to be a way of indicating now they're for real. Presumably this is because it is difficult to come up with a more powerful character than Guo Jia (the 4th) so most likely the last 2 will just do nothing until Guo Jia died and then they no longer need to be super duper awesome since the bar has been lowered. In fact, I'd go on to say if it talks about strategy and it isn't Guo Jia (4th) or Zhou Yu (5th), you can just skip the entire section and you wouldn't miss anything, because none of the other guys can remotely make a convincing case that they're really smart people. It doesn't hurt those two guys get the cool weather effects whenever they show up.