'NOBLESSE' Wakes Up in 21st Century Seoul
"Kneel, this is where your eyes meet mine."
Even people who haven't read this webtoon would have heard about the famous line. It is the line spoken by the protagonist of the webtoon 'Noblesse' as he simply overpowers the bad guy. After speaking the line, he gets the nickname of 'eye level teacher' from the Internet.
Noblesse has been published on LINE since December 30, 2007. At the end of this year, it is becoming a long series that will celebrate its 11th anniversary. Meanwhile, Noblesse was produced into a mix of various media, including comic books, novels, spin-off comics, and games. It has also been translated into Chinese and Japanese, attracting great popularity in overseas.
However, since the webtoon has piled up a tremendous amount of 532 episodes (as of 15/ 10/ 2018) over the period of 10 years of publication, there would be many people who didn't follow the story from the beginning, or those who got dropped out as the story went for too long. Shall we take time to briefly review the story?
The story begins with a vampire coming out of it's coffin in downtown Seoul. (You'll find out soon enough as you read the webtoon that the vampire is very different to other common vampires that we already know of) He has black hair and red eyes, the appearance that perfectly matches the title of 'Noblesse'.Those are the features of 'Cadis Etrama Di Raizel' the protagonist of the webtoon. Although he is usually called 'Rai' in the webtoon.
Rai, who has been asleep for 820 years for some reason, visits his faithful servant who has been waiting for him such long years. Frankenstein is the name of the servant, who has been disguising his identity by playing the role of the principal of a high school in Seoul. Rai also becomes a student at the high school to hide his status.
As Rai was busy you asleep for centuries, he absolutely knows nothing about modern civilization, and more so for the Korean Culture. He is at a situation where he misunderstands chopsticks as vampire hunting stakes. Still, Rai makes new friends like Shin-woo, who fights well, and Ik-han, a computer genius, and Yu-na who is kind. These are ordinary children who have no idea about who Rai actually is. The strange thoughts and actions of Rai that come out as he hangs out with the children take care of humor in the early stages. The aspect of Rai that likes Ramen which is one of the representative ordinary foods in Korea, despite looking so elegant act as a 'gap moe'.
But after having a good time for a while, the organization called 'Union' starts to operate and casts a shadow of danger. Union threatens people by releasing the 'Infected' and abducts Shin-woo and his party to draw out Rai. In the end, Rai and Frankenstein move out to easily wipe out the Union members and erase the children's memory. The Union members are strong enough to surpass humans easily, but both Rai and Frankenstein show abilities that are far beyond them. Meanwhile, M-21, Union's experiment subject and also it's organizational member, gets influenced by this process and turns to Rai's side, ending the season 1.
The webtoon starts lightly from the daily lives of the characters, and then, introduces unknown enemies who threaten Shin-woo and his friends. As Rai and Frankenstein eventually show up with overwhelming strength to blow the enemies, some decent characters on their side survive and move to the allies. After experiencing such danger, the memories of Shinwoo and his party are erased and they remain as Rai's ordinary friends. This pattern repeats every season, revealing secrets about Rai and Frankenstein, Noblesse and Union little by little.
As many people pointed out, Noblesse also has some of the shortcomings common in long-term series. The drawbacks are it's story pattern that repeats itself too often, obvious and slow story development, and occasional plot holes.
However, the readers are still looking forward to witnessing how Noblesse's saga, which has been running for more than 10 years, will be completed. They are indeed curious about where the characters like Rai and Frankenstein would end up in. This is the title that will always be attractive to those who want to feel the thrill of watching the overpowered hero eliminating all the enemies.