A review of Ember knight By Hwandaeng

In my late teens I used to watch a lot of anime and read a lot of manga. Then I stopped. There wasn't really any reason for it it but the manga got replaced with fanfiction and anime with other videos.

But one was recommended on Drawfee a youtube channel I follow. The person recommending it was the same that recommended Gideon the Ninth so I'm inclined to trust it. Also you can read it for free on webtoons so why not.

Plot

Nagyunn is weak. Well he's a normal person surrounded by people with anime powers. The kind where someone gets thrown into a stone wall the wall will take most of the damage. His identical twin brother Najin is a prodigy and training to be a knight. Until one day Najin is killed by a group of masked people.

Nagyunn seeking revenge decides to take his brothers place in knight training hoping that once the masked people hears that Najin is still alive they will show themselves. Except he's still weaker than everyone else and can't actually win against them. He solves this by outsmarting them. Predict their movement and creating strategies to win. All while keeping his secrets, and finding out more about this group their tragic backstory and why they targeted Najin (so far all I know is they have a history but it's unclear). 

There's also a war brewing with the eastern continent, mages doing... something and a variety of groups who wants to destroy the knights as an organization. All of various intelligence and with different levels of intricate plans.

My thoughts

This was everything I expected. It has fights, auras of murderous intent, weird weapons (spears, swords, oversize swords, an umbrella and more). There are people wearing bandages for no apparent reason and named fighting moves. It's every manga cliche ever and I can't stop reading. I wan't to to figure out the evermore complex wed of secrets, lies and people trying to outsmart each other. 

As downsides it has a very large cast of characters and several of them are introduced at once. This makes it hard to keep track of who is who and to get any feel for them. Most of the apprentices are a bit of a blur for me. Which is a shame because they clearly aren't meant to be. They all have unique looks, abilities and slowly revealed backstories same as everyone else. I just have a difficult time connecting faces to names.

The bigger problem is that I've now reached the end of the uploaded episodes and will have top wait a whole week for the next.