Wen Rai An Megamix 2
PostPosted:Sat Aug 25, 2012 2:03 am
Recently I've been more into Hong Kong manga because they at least have evolved past the era of black and white so even if the manga usually turns out to be just as bad as their Japanese counterpart, it's at least in color. That said, sometimes you can be pleasantly surprised. I'd say right now the best Hong Kong manga is Sealing of the Gods but you really have to know the background story of the epic of the same name, or it's like playing Suikoden without reading Suikoden... okay bad example, but this one you really have to know how the original story went to understand why it's cool since it deviates from the original but still enough so that it's actually related to the story of the same name, unlike Suikoden where the only thing it has in common with the original is that there are 108 Stars of Destiny, and the previous leader of the rebellion dies immediately but that's only true in Suikoden 1 (Odessa).
Wen Rai An is supposedly one of the literary greats in martial arts fiction. In reality I think his writing sucks hard but thankfully since Chinese do not respect copyright this also means none of the story in the manga adapation pays any attention to what originally happened and it's sort of like two wrongs make a right. Wen Rai An Megamix, like the name suggests, features characters from various books that are together for no reason. The hero of the story is Guan Chi, shown on the cover:
He's a time traveling martial artist who is neither good nor bad, and generally goes beat up everyone. After the end of the first Wen Rai An Megamix (which sucked hard, so you're not missing anything), Guan Chi lost his martial arts power but he tricked a random super power dude into killing him, to get enough energy to activate his time traveling powers (this apparently requires a lot of energy, something he can no longer do since he lost his martial arts power) and travel to modern day Hong Kong to reunite with his true love (this actually is better than what it sounds like). In WRA2 Guan Chi returns to the Song Dynasty to reunite with his only friend, Wang Xiao Shi, because his time traveling power creates who knows what and Wang Xiao Shi holds the key to resolve it, or something. However the act of his time traveling created a parallel universe and in this universe there is no Guan Chi, so he's now a complete stranger to a world that he once conquered.
Wen Rai An usually has a good mix of special abilities in his books though most of them are totally crazy. Like if you think people in Naruto or One Piece have cool powers you never seen anything from Wen Rai An where people can rewind time and stuff (martial arts is amazing). Aside from Guan Chi, who still retains his time traveling powers, this has been thankfully toned down, though it's still a pretty interesting mix of stuff. Guan Chi also possesses one of the coolest martial arts move ever. He can shoot aura blade from his hands, and he powers up by swearing at his enemies. If you swear at your enemy enough you can go from shooting aura blades to shooting completely invisible aura blades (the drawing shows them as black, but it's supposed to be invisible and is only there for the reader to see them). At the end of WRA1, after Guan Chi supposedly die (even though he really just time traveled to the future), Wang Xiao Shi, an otherwise boy scout goody two shoes, remember his friend's words of wisdom and started swearing at the guy who allegedly killed Guan Chi and made short work of him by his aura blades. Guan Chi's moves, at least by the series so far, is the second most powerful move in the series. Although he was taught this by The Crazy Guy, The Crazy Guy never figured out that you're supposed to swear at your enemies to power up the aura blades, so he has to do stuff like drain enemy sells or suck power out of nature to power his attacks, which is why The Crazy Guy is supposed to be the lead bad guy.
The number 1 strongest move in this series is the Tome of Unlove. In WRA1, this tome teaches you elemental superpowers and oneness with the universe and whatnot, but after you learn it you'll cease to be interested in the opposite sex (or the same sex, for that matter), and probably causes impotency and the effect is supposed to be irreversible. This art is practiced by the lead good guy, Autumn Water. Guan Chi once got tricked into learning this technique (his girlfriend was trying to dump him) from Autumn Water, but Guan Chi accidentally brought a letter from Autumn Water's girlfriend, and due to the power of love Autumn Water remembered that he used to have a girlfriend and he quickly burned the tome to ensure it won't claim any more victims. It reminds to me seen what would happen in this parallel universe that started out without Guan Chi, though it looks like since Guan Chi never existed, Autumn Water would have no reason to learn the Tome of Unlove (because he was supposed to be the strongest martial artist in the WRA universe until Guan Chi came along).
Finally there is The Tricky 36, the 3rd strongest move in this universe. It's practiced by The Fist, your typical rival to Guan Chi. While the moves aren't anything really interesting, every one of the 36 moves has the word 'Tricky' and has a name that forms a 7 word verse. In WRA1, The Fist only used 20 out of the 36 moves before the writer ran out of artistic talent to create new moves, which resulted in a crushing defeat in Guan Chi's hands, as The Fist ended up having to use Tricky Cataclysm: Tricky Love Reunited In Next Life, which is a pure power move but Guan Chi has higher power level and can take it head on. In all honestly Tricky 36 probably has more variety than even the Tome of Unlove (for example, The Fist can actually fly with Tricky Flight) but having 16 out of the 36 moves missing kind of hurts it. In this parallel universe the tome that teaches the Tricky 36 only contains the first 16 moves, and presumably Guan Chi knows the other 20 Tricky moves (he's faced all 20 of them before in their duel).
I don't know if any Hong Kong manga are being tranlated to English, but if they're being translated at all there's a pretty good chance this gets translated, so it's really good and have a lot of sales. Guan Chi is a well characterized main character and even though the story is essentially just about him beating everyone up, it's pretty refreshing and there's no bogus training or miraculous come back from behind nonsense since he starts out as the second most powerful character in the universe (Autumn Water with Tome of Unlove is stronger). In WRA1 he pretty much fought every martial artist in China at the same, and then fought The Fist (his rival) and probably could still take on The Crazy Guy after since he was only getting started with his explective barrage. In WRA2, Guan Chi said his power level has dropped some because time traveling uses up immense amount of energy so he went from 'totally ridculous' to 'just pretty ridiculous', i.e. probably slightly weaker The Crazy Guy but that'd put him at #3 overall and he hasn't even regained his invisible aura blades yet. He's also one of the few heroes from a Hong Kong manga that shows a good grasp of reality. In WRA2, we can see his time in modern Hong Kong where Guan Chi quickly realized an atomic bomb is a lot more powerful than he is, and he acknowledges that even his invisible aura blades are not better than just someone with a gun. This is a sharp contrast to the normal Hong Kong manga where you got guys who probably won't even beat Bruce Lee in real life but can block machine guns and rocket launchers with their martial arts.
Wen Rai An is supposedly one of the literary greats in martial arts fiction. In reality I think his writing sucks hard but thankfully since Chinese do not respect copyright this also means none of the story in the manga adapation pays any attention to what originally happened and it's sort of like two wrongs make a right. Wen Rai An Megamix, like the name suggests, features characters from various books that are together for no reason. The hero of the story is Guan Chi, shown on the cover:
He's a time traveling martial artist who is neither good nor bad, and generally goes beat up everyone. After the end of the first Wen Rai An Megamix (which sucked hard, so you're not missing anything), Guan Chi lost his martial arts power but he tricked a random super power dude into killing him, to get enough energy to activate his time traveling powers (this apparently requires a lot of energy, something he can no longer do since he lost his martial arts power) and travel to modern day Hong Kong to reunite with his true love (this actually is better than what it sounds like). In WRA2 Guan Chi returns to the Song Dynasty to reunite with his only friend, Wang Xiao Shi, because his time traveling power creates who knows what and Wang Xiao Shi holds the key to resolve it, or something. However the act of his time traveling created a parallel universe and in this universe there is no Guan Chi, so he's now a complete stranger to a world that he once conquered.
Wen Rai An usually has a good mix of special abilities in his books though most of them are totally crazy. Like if you think people in Naruto or One Piece have cool powers you never seen anything from Wen Rai An where people can rewind time and stuff (martial arts is amazing). Aside from Guan Chi, who still retains his time traveling powers, this has been thankfully toned down, though it's still a pretty interesting mix of stuff. Guan Chi also possesses one of the coolest martial arts move ever. He can shoot aura blade from his hands, and he powers up by swearing at his enemies. If you swear at your enemy enough you can go from shooting aura blades to shooting completely invisible aura blades (the drawing shows them as black, but it's supposed to be invisible and is only there for the reader to see them). At the end of WRA1, after Guan Chi supposedly die (even though he really just time traveled to the future), Wang Xiao Shi, an otherwise boy scout goody two shoes, remember his friend's words of wisdom and started swearing at the guy who allegedly killed Guan Chi and made short work of him by his aura blades. Guan Chi's moves, at least by the series so far, is the second most powerful move in the series. Although he was taught this by The Crazy Guy, The Crazy Guy never figured out that you're supposed to swear at your enemies to power up the aura blades, so he has to do stuff like drain enemy sells or suck power out of nature to power his attacks, which is why The Crazy Guy is supposed to be the lead bad guy.
The number 1 strongest move in this series is the Tome of Unlove. In WRA1, this tome teaches you elemental superpowers and oneness with the universe and whatnot, but after you learn it you'll cease to be interested in the opposite sex (or the same sex, for that matter), and probably causes impotency and the effect is supposed to be irreversible. This art is practiced by the lead good guy, Autumn Water. Guan Chi once got tricked into learning this technique (his girlfriend was trying to dump him) from Autumn Water, but Guan Chi accidentally brought a letter from Autumn Water's girlfriend, and due to the power of love Autumn Water remembered that he used to have a girlfriend and he quickly burned the tome to ensure it won't claim any more victims. It reminds to me seen what would happen in this parallel universe that started out without Guan Chi, though it looks like since Guan Chi never existed, Autumn Water would have no reason to learn the Tome of Unlove (because he was supposed to be the strongest martial artist in the WRA universe until Guan Chi came along).
Finally there is The Tricky 36, the 3rd strongest move in this universe. It's practiced by The Fist, your typical rival to Guan Chi. While the moves aren't anything really interesting, every one of the 36 moves has the word 'Tricky' and has a name that forms a 7 word verse. In WRA1, The Fist only used 20 out of the 36 moves before the writer ran out of artistic talent to create new moves, which resulted in a crushing defeat in Guan Chi's hands, as The Fist ended up having to use Tricky Cataclysm: Tricky Love Reunited In Next Life, which is a pure power move but Guan Chi has higher power level and can take it head on. In all honestly Tricky 36 probably has more variety than even the Tome of Unlove (for example, The Fist can actually fly with Tricky Flight) but having 16 out of the 36 moves missing kind of hurts it. In this parallel universe the tome that teaches the Tricky 36 only contains the first 16 moves, and presumably Guan Chi knows the other 20 Tricky moves (he's faced all 20 of them before in their duel).
I don't know if any Hong Kong manga are being tranlated to English, but if they're being translated at all there's a pretty good chance this gets translated, so it's really good and have a lot of sales. Guan Chi is a well characterized main character and even though the story is essentially just about him beating everyone up, it's pretty refreshing and there's no bogus training or miraculous come back from behind nonsense since he starts out as the second most powerful character in the universe (Autumn Water with Tome of Unlove is stronger). In WRA1 he pretty much fought every martial artist in China at the same, and then fought The Fist (his rival) and probably could still take on The Crazy Guy after since he was only getting started with his explective barrage. In WRA2, Guan Chi said his power level has dropped some because time traveling uses up immense amount of energy so he went from 'totally ridculous' to 'just pretty ridiculous', i.e. probably slightly weaker The Crazy Guy but that'd put him at #3 overall and he hasn't even regained his invisible aura blades yet. He's also one of the few heroes from a Hong Kong manga that shows a good grasp of reality. In WRA2, we can see his time in modern Hong Kong where Guan Chi quickly realized an atomic bomb is a lot more powerful than he is, and he acknowledges that even his invisible aura blades are not better than just someone with a gun. This is a sharp contrast to the normal Hong Kong manga where you got guys who probably won't even beat Bruce Lee in real life but can block machine guns and rocket launchers with their martial arts.