Kubera is a work that claims to be the 'unidentified genre / mixed fantasy that a girl with a name of God and a wizard reveal’. For reference, Kubera is another name of the heroine and the name of the God of the earth. The work is described as an unidentified genre / mixed fantasy, but the artist says it is a romance genre.

 

 

Kubera has been published serially in Linewebtoons since 2010. It’s still being published, so I can’t only imagine how magnificent and long the story would be. I believe this work is the best of all other works that I’ve read –for the record, I know it’s ridiculous to compare one work to others- in terms of the size of the story, setting, and worldview. It’ll join the ranks of a masterpiece, and I should do my best to review this work. If I seriously review this work, the review will be a vast amount so I will write the key factors and parts that I felt were intriguing. I think these will be a vast amount as well. 

 

The beginning of Episode 1 is simple. In a mountain village, there lives a girl called Kubera. She is a girl with a cheerful personality and loved by everyone. On her birthday, she feels very happy, receiving birthday gifts from her mom and village people. And she heads to the woods near the village to pick some curry mushrooms. There, she encounters a strange being by chance, but she doesn’t think much about it, leaves the woods and goes back to the village. On the way, she finds something shocking. That is…

 

 

She finds her village exploding in front of her. Her mind goes blank, and then she heads to her village at a tremendous speed. Arriving at the village, she looks around and finds nothing left. There are no buildings, and no life exists. She realizes that all of your family, friends, and villagers are dead. And she discovers a white and red creature. Her instinct learns intuitively it’s the enemy that made the village destroyed. She realizes that it’s the enemy that killed her family and friends!

 

 

When the heroine is upset and about to jump into this creature, an unknown wizard suddenly appears and saves her life. If the heroine fought against this dude, her head would have gone in one second. It explains the difference of the power between the heroine and this creature is beyond imagination in the beginning. They can’t help it since they are two different species. Now, the heroine goes on a journey to finding out the truth of the village with the wizard who saved her life. This is the basic storyline of Episode 1. Up to this part, no one knew where the story would lead readers to. It’s simply amazing this webtoon has this vast size of the storyline and this story originally comes out from this artist’s ideas. Now let’s move on to the worldview and setting.

 

 

In this work, humans, Gods, and Sura exist. Being as humans, wizards borrow the power of Gods and Sura and use some special ability. Well, it is the original intention, but humans lose a lot because of Sura’s power, and they give a pledge that they’ll stand on the side of Gods, cutting off the connection with Sura. Eventually, the wizard becomes a human who uses the power of Gods. 

 

So what are Gods and Sura? Gods are similar to the concept of God that we usually know. Depending on whether he has existed before the universe or he’s the creation after the birth of the universe, Gods are divided into ‘Root God’ and ‘Astika’. And Astika is divided into ‘Nature God’ and ‘Creation God’ who lend the divine power that humans use. There are a total of eleven Gods who allow humans to burrow and use divine power. There are nine Gods of Five Meditations (one Root God, seven Nature Gods, and one Creation God) and two Gods of Four Meditations (two Creation Gods). The major difference from other major species such as Sura or humans is that they can resurrect after they die. Some may think why God has to die, but Gods are categorized to an existence with an infinite life so that they may end up dying. As Gods own each jurisdiction such as ‘God of Fire’ or ‘God of Water’, they may die and continuously resurrect multiple times before their jurisdiction disappears. The thing is that the passage of time is different in this world and the eternal world; if Gods die, they may resurrect as soon as they arrive in the next world. But during that time, several decades or hundreds of years will already pass by in this world. That’s why they don’t want to die as same as other species. (For reference, most of the Gods are named after Indian mythology.)

 

<’Agnee’ is the God of Five Meditation that governs fire, and the protagonist> 

 

 

God, more precisely Astika is the existence against Nature God or Creations Gods. It’s the first creation of the universe, consisting of Nastika that is the highest class of Sura and their descendants. The etymology is Asura. The Sura tribe is divided into eight tribes, depending on the form: Gandarba, Garuda, Ananta, Asura, Yaksha, Brittra, Kinra, and Taraka. There is also a king for each tribe, and the tribe is named after the first king, the strongest in each tribe. The rest of seven other tribes, except for the Taraka tribe, have seven natures except for the nature of the Root God and the ‘death’ nature of the Creation God as the nature of the tribe. Taraka tribe has the ‘chaos’ nature of Kali, the Root God as the nature of the tribe.

 

There is a longer explanation than this in the webtoon, and this review is the tiny bitty tip of the iceberg of the setting of Kubera since the work of Kubera has a vast and detailed setting. This work will intrigue you with its worldview and storyline, so if you haven’t check Kubera out yet, I hope you read it once, I mean twice, three times, and four times!