Noblesse Vol. 1 was a quick read with an interesting storyline. The book starts off with the reader meeting one of the main characters without any type of background or text about the character. It’s intriguing and makes readers stick around to see what’s going on. The main character, who ends up going by Rai, has the least amount of talking which is very interesting. The book doesn’t get into the backstories of any of the characters in this volume, but I’m sure it will be covered in future volumes.

The layout was smooth and the reader can easily go from one frame to another without much confusion. However, there are some frames that you can’t always tell who is saying what, but it doesn’t take away from the story at all. Since this is a vampire story with some violence I was pleased to see that the images weren’t overly graphic, which makes this an good book to put on shelves for students at the middle and high school levels.

“I experienced death today. They took me to a dark place. It was called an internet cafe.”

This volume of Noblesse contains season one, part one of this global Webtoon series. I hadn’t heard of it before but requested it on a whim because it looked interesting.

It certainly has an interesting premise. Rai, an immortal noble being, has been sleeping for 820 years and wakes to find the modern world around him. So what does he do? He starts high school. Obviously.

I think this is an alright start to the series but sadly the story never managed to capture me fully. I think it was mainly because Rai was such a passive MC. I feel like he barely said anything throughout the story, and the star of the show was definitely his school friend, Shinwu. I also liked Frankenstein, Rai’s former servant who in his absence has become the founder of a high school. I wish all the characters had a bit more depth, but as this is only the first part of the story, I’m sure that comes later. The illustrations were beautiful and I loved that they were all full-colour.

Thanks Netgalley and Wattpad Webtoon Book Group for the chance to read this in exchange for an honest review. Noblesse comes out on October 31st, 2023.

I was pretty disappointed in this, I had a hard time getting through it, though its apparent popularity on WEBTOON makes me think this just isn't my thing. The plot was slow and confusing to start, and I found the main character to be hard to like, in fact he hardly says anything at all in the beginning. The idea of a centuries old vampire-adjacent being in a high school setting is definitely not new, and the story doesn't do much to set it apart from other similar books. There's obviously a wealth of worldbuilding that has gone into this story, but it's not something we see a lot of, with the author opting instead to keep things vague and shadowy in terms of plot. Besides the main character, the rest are introduced sort of rapid fire and with not a lot of explanation, the MC is just dropped into things, which makes sense for the story, but makes reading it hard to grasp at times.

Thank you NetGalley and WEBTOON Unscrolled for the opportunity to read this arc copy of Noblesse.

I found Noblesse as a movie years ago on Crunchyroll. It was gorgeous and fun. When I found out that they were making a new anime series I was excited. Now the webtoon is coming out in English and I am ecstatic!

These full color panels are asymmetrical, which threw me off. The dialogue bubbles sometimes got confused. It wasn’t bad but it took a minute to get used to it. The coloring and art are clean and beautiful rendered.

This is about a Noblesse that had been lost and sleeping for 820 years before waking. Luckily he has found one of his subordinates that can help him move through this strange world. He finds kids as friends, but soon has to protect them from creatures out for their lives.

Since I’ve watched a few episodes of the anime series, I can say the series follow the manhwa accurately at least when it comes to this volume. This book makes me want to rewatch the original movie and finish the tv series!

I can’t wait for the next volume because I’ve always liked the man against world and the time traveler in the future tropes.

Thank you again NetGalley and WEBTOON Unscrolled.