A graphic Novel by Jeon Geuk-jin and Kamaro

NOTE: I received a free preliminary, and likely unedited copy of this book from Netgalley for the purposes of providing an honest, unbiased review of the material. Thank you to all involved.

I wasn’t really familiar with The Breaker going into this, I understand it’s fairly popular outside of the US, and has been a hit in Europe. I’ve read a bit of Manhwa (Korean comics), but I will confess that I haven’t read nearly enough. At first glance, I was really afraid that this was a Korean knock-off of Great Teacher Onizuka (GTO) by Tohru Fujisawa, coincidentally one of my favorite Japanese comics. We have a sloppy teacher joining a school as a total fish out of water, he has a shady past, and knows martial arts. He has a lecherous personality and buts heads with a strict Vice Principal that seems to think he shouldn’t be there. Sound familiar?

The only issue, is that Mr. Han is VERY unlikable at first (unlike Onizuka), it worried me that getting through this book would be a chore, as it seemed he lacked any sort of human compassion in any way. We later get hints as to why this is, and he finally shows a brief glimpse of being an actual protagonist when it really matters. Thankfully, this GTO similarity ends pretty quick as The Breaker becomes it’s own at around 1/3 of the way into the book.

“The story of The Breaker follows Shiwoon “Shioon” Yi, a timid high school student who becomes the disciple to Chunwoo Han, a martial artist who is an enemy to the secret martial arts society known as the Murim. However, Shioon is naive and unaware of his master’s shady past and the unseen underbelly of the society. How will Chun Woo manage to teach Shioon and help him survive in the world of Murim?”

Being a martial arts manhwa seeped in seedy underground mafia-styled intrigue, this is definitely not what I was initially expecting out of this; and once that starts to fall into place the book became pretty awesome. It almost seems like the writer was going for more of a comedy book at first, and switched gears for the better. Volume one ends on a pretty big cliffhanger, so I will definitely want to read more as I feel the story was just getting good when it ended. I’m very interested to see where the characters end up, and am hoping the main character, Shioon, finally destroys the school bully that plagues him for about half of the book.

Solid first volume (although I assume this is a merged version of 2 or 3 tankobans), would buy again if I saw this for sale – definitely recommended.