The Gamer - Manga

I was recently made aware of a Korean webtoon that, once I looked into, effectively consumed my life for three days as I endeavoured to completely read it. Thanks to minimal productivity and a slight reduction in my other viewing activities, I was able to finish the first season of the webtoon and am in need of some series catch up with all my dramas and anime that have somehow managed to become more backlogged than normal.

The webtoon, The Gamer, was a very interesting read. It had elements of Sword Art Online and Log Horizon, along with a mix from various other anime in terms of characters and certain magical aspects. To be honest there were some parts of the webtoon I feel were ‘borrowed’ from well-known manga in order to move the general story along.

The story follows a game addict who discovers one day that he has been given the strange ability known as ‘The Gamer’ that basically enables his life to follow the rules of a game. Because of this ability he is thrown into a world of magic and supernatural beings that he never thought existed before. In this world, known as the ‘Abyss’ he learns there are other people with abilities.

Our protagonist quickly discovers that those people with abilities are either born with them naturally, as he is, or they have acquired them through harsh training, like his best friend has done.

I have to say this webtoon caught me very much by surprise, at first for its story line but then for its in-depth explanation of the gaming world. And wow, does this story go deep into explaining the workings of games along with the various terminologies. After every few chapters or so I had to take a break as my mind became overloaded with all the information and other stuff… This story clearly made me realise how much I didn’t know about the gaming world.

Needless to say, it was still supposed to be a manga/manwha, so I expected more story driven points, a lot of which falls short in some places as the gaming aspect of the protagonist is focused on primarily and the rest of the world just sort of falls into place. So it’s a good story, but there are some plot holes as the story races to ignore some things while adapting to the protagonist’s world view.

So, overall it’s not a bad story to read plus it’s in full colour which is amazing and that helps to consume this webtoon in all its okayness, but I have to be honest and say I won’t hold my breath for an anime of this any time soon. I reckon it stays were the real gamers can find it, because they might actually enjoy it, or not I don’t know for sure.