Kill the Hero by D-Dart is a very generic “came back for revenge” Korean series. I read up to chapter 50 or so, forgot all about it and then came back and read up to the latest chapter. And now I’m going to forget all about it again until whenever. It’s that kind of series: fun, but forgettable.
Summary:
One day, the world transformed into a game. ‘Dungeons’ and ‘monsters’ emerged in the middle of cities, and ‘players’ who had received the gods’ authority appeared. Se-jun Lee, the guildmaster of the Messiah Guild that would bring salvation to the world became my comrade. Then he killed me. …or so I thought.
The announcement I heard next to my ear the moment I died. [Starting the game.] I returned to the past, back when I still hadn’t awakened as a player. And this time, It’s my turn…… To ‘hunt’ him.
It’s one of the oldest tropes in the book to have the main character and his best friend fall out. Best friend betrays him, maybe joins the bad guys, maybe kills some other good guys. Now the main character has to track him down and take him out. Cue bad-ass 80s action movie music.
The sole twist in Kill the Hero (though it’s been done before especially in Chinese web novels) is that the main character (Kim Woo-Jin) went back into the past before he met the “hero” and now he’s going around gathering all the cool stuff that will help him and beating all the troublesome guys that could help the hero, all gearing up to a grand and final confrontation that hasn’t happened in 66 chapters yet. Right now the hero has no clue that Kim Woo-Jin exists or that he’s being revenged on, but he’ll totally understand one day. Then he’ll be like… “Who?”
What’s not so special about Kill the Hero is… it’s so bland! Enter dungeon, assassinate guys, enter dungeon, assassinate guys, get cool artifact. We don’t have sight of Kim Woo-Jin’s overall goal or trajectory, so it’s hard to follow along in his ambitions. A chapter suddenly starts, he suddenly remembers some dungeon, we suddenly go in, 10 chapters pass, new artifact, on to the next arc. He doesn’t even have any friends or family to help us get under his skin or understand his motivation besides “Revenge! Rawwrrr!”
It’s doubly frustrating because the battles are actually interesting. Kim Woo-Jin usually has some intricate plan to take down his enemy together with his allies. It’s just that outside the battles, we’re never sure what he’s trying to do or why. He still has an intricate plan but we’re not privy to it so we’re just going along for the ride and the cool, frequent battles.
And actually I only think he has a plan, because in the most recent chapters he’s just been going with the flow and getting lucky breaks and items he didn’t know about in this past life. TBH I have no idea what he’s up to in the long run. It’s probably once of those series where the hero gets unnaturally lucky for hundreds of chapters in a row, the end.
This has the plus side, as I said, of making it a fun but forgettable series. Because there’s no grand overarching plot, you won’t miss anything by popping out for a few months then binging, then popping in again. And that’s why I plan to do now, so enough from me for one day.
