HUO FENG LIAO YUAN

DESCRIPTION

CAST

CHAPTERS

MANGA ActionSangokushi
ONA ActionHuo Feng Liao Yuan

REVIEWS

• 

  MitakaFami

  100/100
  Life is spectacular yet gloomy, and rife with inconstancy.

  TL;DR version - This is a very well-rounded story, exploring the themes of pretense (with both lying to others and lying to oneself), politics (through deception and schemes), war (through nihilism and manipulation), literature (through the importance of sharing and the fabrication of history) and so on. Story does not center around anyone, instead it is fleshing out every side, who represent different types of opposing ideologies. Characters are exploding with charisma, by showing off their immense strength and knowledge of Art of War (thus being the most complex work in fiction at scheming). It is both very tragic and poetic, with various obscure references and detailed artstyle. Everything above, in addition of rich social-commentaries, has a really high chance of becoming your one of the favourite stories in fiction, so don’t miss the chance.

  Ravages of Time offers many hardships to its newcomers and they will notice them as soon as they will start reading the story, so here let’s just focus on the rewarding part of it, as it is arguable that Ravages is the highest reward one may achieve, by reading comics. Besides, community is willing to make newcomer's experience much easier and smoother.

  The first things first - RoT does not have a classic narrative, in a sense, that it is not only will not focus solely on the main squad, but also it will not care if you won't side with protagonists who do not care about heroism and/or do bad things.

  Now we can start talking about the many reasons of why you may love to read it.

  The most obvious one are the action scenes. They tend to be highly energetic, with various stunts involved, both down-to-earth and over-the-top, with different number of participants. There is hardly any instance (if at all) of mere slashes that are supposed to create hype in an artificial way. They also are neither meaningless nor repetitive(if it is supposed to be a parallel, for example). What makes these scenes even more charming? Characters often are equal and they tend to praise each other as well as to have a very interesting dialogue (yeah, character interactions are hardly ever shallow, even when they are preparing to punch each other out). Only problem one may have is the skipping of some battle scenes.

  Said scenes are empowered by very flamboyant artstyle. Starting from various stylish and fashionable character designs (not only for main characters, but also over 500 unnamed background, a subtle addition to its realistic depth of world-building) and their poses, to high-scale set-pieces, to detailed decorations and very memorable and poetic pages. Style is fine from the get-go, but visibility of areas not so much. Eventually, that also gets much better, while style gets more and more mature, as author is coming out of his heavy metal phase. I would say, driving less emotions in the later parts of the story is one of the two weaknesses it has. The second being the lack of sense of space.

  Another prominent trait are the schemes, which are probably the most complex/convoluted that you have ever seen, as they cover many different things, from morale boosting duels to social rumors, and mixes them together. Then makes them even harder, when such tricks are being used by more than one side, while they are busy covering every possible outcome of their moves and finding common ground. They may change tides, or even schemers themselves may change sides. Even the deceptive moves taken off-screen are more complex than “smart” gimmicks of most of the other stories. (to add something provocative, as extra flavor - LOGH is child's play compared to RoT)

  From hereon we have to dig deeper, as everything may be a part of in-depth thematic exploration.

  You will meet various references to Art of War and similar works, which are obscure enough for us to constantly feel fresh. Another great thing about this is that - they are not mere references. They are implemented into the setting to serve as an explanation and social-commentary as well - the world is in a never ending cycle of corruption and it gets more and more cynical as it goes on, while sharing all-new experiences to others leads to even more battles. Some are getting so deceptive, that they use that “sharing all-new experiences” itself for their own deceptions.

  But it is up to a person how will s/he use the knowledge. Thus, the central theme of this work is “Self-Interest vs. Righteousness”, with a very interesting take - no one is entirely on one side of the spectrum. Yeah, there are people who want to rule the world out of their greedy nature, but they will surely justify themselves by the greater good (for example, corruption of sage, horrors of war’s longevity and etc) and will try to maintain their image. Yeah, some people fight for the sake of righteousness, but their actions will also be really questionable by the standards of morality, they will also face the negative consequences and they also fight to live in a safe house for themselves.

  Talking about consequences - they will be many, as arcs are made out of their chain reactions (but you can still differentiate them) and they are also many and sometimes too severe. That connects to both the horrors of war and the meaninglessness of people’s struggles (no matter how great they think they are) when they are confronted with the inevitability of history. Author believes that if a man goes to a war, he can’t be a good man. So, this ideology will make sure that such closures (with great poetic flavor to them) won’t ever feel undeserved or/and unsatisfying or/and not dramatic enough (except, of course, if death scene’s point is to not feel dramatic)

  And if a writer believes in such a thing, that means he has some kind of disdain towards any of the characters which play somewhat important role in story, so you can expect pretty solid balance between conflicted sides. Even better - there are more than two sides and all of them have their own agendas. EVEN BETTER - on one side you will meet several people that have their own agendas and they affect each other (by manipulating their brothers, for example), just like it would have been in real life. Having this is really valuable and that is because it won’t feel like a piece of propaganda at all and you will be able to cheer or dislike any side you prefer (I like them all personally), without having just one moral compass.

  Well, it does have a good amount of action scenes with unbelievable feats (which serve their own purpose and let’s talk about it later on) and some over-the-top sense of humor in the first arc, but aside of that, it remains one of the most mature works in fiction. For comparison we can take Berserk (which is a seinen, but has high amount of senseless violence just because and even rape may seem as a joke. Being close to the old tales of brother Grimms with its edge) and Kingdom (which is a shounen, but still has more naked breasts in its first arcs, than RoT as a whole (zero)). It does not even have much romance (only one is proper one and amazing at it), despite telling you that lust is in man’s nature (because everyone knows that lust can be used for schemes) and it never romanticizes love.

  There is also a risk of becoming dry, when story has so much maturity, but RoT is handling that greatly as well, by having one of the most emotional scenes in fiction. Characters never forget that they should have emotions and act like human beings and they even have eccentric poses to them. In the latest arcs, it does get quite dry, but then again, it is still fully self-aware, as it touches about the themes of getting used to tragedy and thinking about the big picture, by trying to not let oneself to lose control because of personal stuff.

  Now, as promised, we can talk about the feats. Sure, they are unbelievable, but its self-aware, judging by the people who say the same. I think, it is also a deconstruction of Dynasty Warriors (and other similar stories), because, yeah, characters are really powerful, but they are always a tiny part of grander decisions and anything is hardly ever solved by them. The strongest warrior even attracted many enemies out of his inhumanity and at the end, he still managed to become human. It has several more purposes, but I will leave them out for you to think about them by yourself. Who does not like heroic tales, after all?

  Full focus is on warfare and politics, so it basically never feels like you are reading some boring slice of life where nothing ever happens, so ride is ever-eventful. I would consider this as a very important aspect, because crafting such a rich world requires big amount of focus and that usually will really slow down the story, but RoT manages to have importance in its every arc. Realistic march of time also helps with that - after 500 chapters, it covered around 20 years of its period and it that period of time, for example, characters already have children and not only some of them fight alongside their fathers (Unlike other stories where they milk with next generation, after every major conflict was resolved), but it also explores problematic part of inheritance.

  History itself is also being explored in a historical manga (which is usually forgotten by other historical stories) and in an unconventional way - by changing details, while being fully self-aware and stating that it is more plausible this way, than actual history (aka fabrication of history), but not changing much of the general picture and major events of actual historical sources. For example, there is a completely fictional character named Yuan Fang and there is also Lu Bu, who was also made smart, to question history - is it really possible for people who are defined by physical prowess alone to have so much influence on a country? Why would people follow them? And so on. It may be also discussed that it is criticizing the original novels.

  In conclusion, that’s a bit of what may be talked about The Ravages of Time, but hopefully, I wrote enough novelties of it to peak interest in people.

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