The Fall 2024 K-Comics Guide

The Swordmaster's Reincarnation

What's It About? 

Despite his ordinary skills, Sir Shake, captain of the guard, dedicates his life to defeating the demons and bringing about an era of peace with the immortal swordmasters. However, when Shake finally succeeds and also becomes a swordmaster, he dies, only to reincarnate 20 years later as Asher. He's shocked to find that his comrades have vanished and demons are rumored to have returned. In the midst of all this chaos, can Asher find his former allies and vanquish the enemy for good?

The Swordmaster's Reincarnation has a story by Blue-Soul and art by BLACK RING, with adaptation by Drawways (Bongsu) and English translation by Tapas Entertainment. This volume was lettered by Tapas Entertainment. Published by Tapas Entertainment.

Is It Worth Reading?

I'll start by admitting that I'm underexperienced with the modern Korean webcomic format, at least partially due to aversion. I'm sure there's some piece of art out there that can truly take advantage of this setup optimized for quickly scrolling through on your phone, but I have yet to see it. The Swordmaster's Reincarnation, as of the first twenty chapters, doesn't seem like it'll be the one, but it certainly is trying. Occasionally. In places. This format lends itself to big pictures of characters and combat filling your screen one phase of battle at a time, and BLACK RING on art duty here is not above drawing in those big, colorful images. They even play with the format itself several times, reorienting the action sideways, going down the screen to show wider angles of attack and help things flow in an even less static way. There is an effort.

Unfortunately, the art overall on The Swordmaster's Reincarnation still feels amateurish compared to most published comics, and indeed, plenty of other webcomics. Those big colorful characters are its main virtue, and they still wobble off model from shot to shot. They're drag-and-dropped onto stock CGI used for backgrounds and everything else, and in general the cramped screen/page real estate means it's hard to get more than one-and-a-half of them interacting at a time. But the biggest flaw is in the basics of what this comic is presenting: so much of the story and its ideas are predicated on the tangible differences, the reactions to and underestimations of different swordsmanship styles, yet BLACK RING can't really artistically articulate any tells or differences between said styles. The audience is left to go off of character exposition for these points, and that does not lend itself to tangible drama in your battle action.

Just as well, the rest of the storytelling in The Swordmaster's Reincarnation isn't much to write home about. It's part of the emergent "fantasy character reincarnated in their own world" genre, with a lead character who regrets not being an empowered, overachieving hero in his past life. Thing is, as the audience learns more about the Captain who reincarnated as "Asher" it becomes clear he was an impressive, respectable badass anyway, and that's just now tempered by people being suspicious and doubtful of his new incarnation's abilities. It's the old issue with stories like these of trying to have their persecution cake and eat it too, transparently. The one upshot is that a lot of the writing mechanics are actually pretty solid, with a good grasp of basic stuff like foreshadowing, payoff, and when to drop backstory nuggets. Simple stuff, sure, but when the main appeal of a comic like this is that there is a lot of it you can breeze through while you're waiting for your friends to arrive at the bar, it's a benefit that it won't have you throwing your hands up in frustration. At worst you'll get a little annoyed and just zone out.