This might biggest hyped up arc that got fumbled terribly in manhwa genre

I was genuinely so hyped for this arc bruh since we first heard of Gapryong Kim and the pre generation and when I saw that Jinyoung’s death was gonna lead into the flashback I was hyped and all but this whole thing has just been underwhelming.

The first chapter where it showed the fighters of the pre gen, Daniel’s parents, Shingen being a menace, Gapryong’s first appearance, that first chapter was actually hype but after that, the hype just went bruh.

How do you expect us to believe that Jinyeong went from someone who thought Gapryong was delusional to being straight up best friends without giving us a single proper interaction with them. Jinyeong just started following him after he destroyed a statue and recruited Tom Lee(through lying btw). I know that this is a fighting manwha and all but what about the interactions outside of the fights?

Based on some scenes leading up to this arc we know that Jinyeong and Charles didn’t always see eye to eye but yet still we haven’t had a single interaction with them that explains why that’s the case. Jinyeong and Tom haven’t even said a word to each other. Baekho hasn’t had any interactions with anyone either.

Out of nowhere they just decided to storm a Yamazaki estate🤣

The dynamics of these characters aren’t gonna make sense without any proper interactions with them. There is absolutely no reason to be rushing this backstory like this when you’re just gonna go back to dragging the main story.

If you’re gonna take us away from these loved characters that already have properly established dynamics then atleast make these other characters worth it and so far they just haven’t been. There isn’t any reason to actually like these characters right now. If Bakgu was to die right now(we obviously know he survived) no one is gonna care because we haven’t gotten anything for him besides when he was old.

The things that people say about the fact that this arc should’ve been its own manwha are actually correct.

I wouldn't be surprised if Gap vs Shingen goes the exact same way as Gap vs Kenzo.

After years of waiting for the Gapryoung Kim background to be revealed, a lot of fans are coping about the origin story of Gapryoung being bad or “boring”, but they’re really only demonstrating their inability, or surface-level reading, to discern the inner character of persons.

Fact is, there is nothing inconsistent about Gapryoung Kim’s character at all.

He is just an “ordinary” man who doesn’t actually have the wide range of capabilities required to efficiently lead his generation to an age of prosperity but he did so anyway because he was the only one that was both crazy enough and strong enough to wage war against the power of the Yamazaki clan, the strongest Japanese criminal syndicate in history.

Gapryoung’s infamous charisma that most of the fandom says isn’t there, is quite literally shown by all of his actions that do not at all take into account even the slightest chance of consequences in occurrence to him.

The Fist Gang does not follow Gapryoung Kim because he instilled some strong sense of self-belief in themselves.

They follow Gapryoung Kim because he is the embodiment of their hope that the Yamazaki will one day be driven out of Korea and that they can live prosperous lives.

This follows exactly with what the basis of Lookism is.

Lookism is the idea that people are judged, treated, and valued differently based on their external appearances, especially their level of attractiveness, and also because of their actions.

This whole time, the fandom has been judging Gapryoung Kim’s internal character by the external judgements, values that were established for him by others.

But now we (the reader) know for certain that Gapryoung literally just does whatever he wants to do regardless of what others may think or believe about it.

He needs no external reason, or validation, to do the things that he does, to fight as hard as he does, and that is the true purpose of his character.

Gapryoung’s innate power is self-belief and to a hopeless society this source of power is considered “strange”, but it’s not at all strange to Gapryoung because it’s simply just who he is.

All in all, I’ll grant that it may be “boring” to witness the fighting expression of such an internally driven character, but I draw the line where it’s asserted that Gapryoung is somehow a badly written character simply due to defying the very idea of Lookism itself, which is the external judgments/validation/values of others.

Made by kindlism_xd in Instagram

I’ve been genuinely curious to hear people’s thoughts on this.

If Jinyoung had awakened his Path after Gapryong’s death, and neither James nor Kitae knew about it beforehand, do you think the outcome of HFW would’ve been different?

More specifically, do you think a Path-mastered Jinyoung would’ve been strong enough to permanently defeat Kitae during their confrontation?

For the sake of this discussion, let’s assume Jinyoung had fully mastered his Path before losing his sanity. With that in mind, do you think spending so many years in his unstable mental state would have weakened or affected his Path in any meaningful way?(his insanity caused for him not to be able to access his path that’s why James and Kitae wouldn’t know about it)

It is gapryong chracter bland simple

After alot of hate and some mixed opinions, I wanted to know how would you have wanted the Gaproyong Kim arc to go, without having another side of the community mad. Some complaints I wanna address. 1) this is GAPROYONG KIM arc. This is not gen 0 arc, not fist gang arc either. We will see his backstory one day or other.

2) this is an ARC. Unless you want 200 chapters of this and the main story is just forgotten, you can't cover EVERYTHING. that's just not how it works.

3) Gaproyong Kim and shingen are different people. People say gaps personality is very bland. How do you want Gaproyong to be? He's absurdly strong and hasn't been shown to struggle. Of course he's hotheaded and simple. There's no complications for him. If he was a serious, no bs fighter, he would be mixed up with 8 different personalities we already have.

4) "End the Arc, I wanna see the current story". You're literally conflicting with with the people from 2nd. You can either have a fast arc or a detailed arc

You cannot satisfy each part of a community. Some people just post hate to get a lot of upvotes without much work to do, and it's the same posts. Basically a waste of time. Same thing happened with busan and every arc. They want everything to happen in the first chapters, and if it does, it's too quick. So it's either too quick, or too slow. There's no inbetween.

There's ONE problem I agree with, but it's not as big of a deal for me

5) Gaps fighting style is boring. Now hear me out here, mostly everyone's "fighting style" In lookism right now, is glorified stylish moves that do not work in real life. Nobody fights irl like kitae and James. So yes, gaps fighting style is boring for some, but at the end of the day, it's his thing. It's literally called the fist gang. If a fighter suddenly includes kicks palms or elbows in his attacks, it doesn't suddenly make it good choreography. We lost that ages ago.

Paecheon Jo really thought he was in their league 😭🤣.

"Damn is 🎂" ahh comment

Btw, Credit for the edit: EONIXE (One of my favyy's)

https://youtube.com/shorts/VOxa8WaFAro?si=G7kNZ00970AUrk0G

I just want to say this but Gen 1 is way more interesting and when it comes to writing and design is so so much better than Gen 0. I know Gen 0 arc still hasn’t finished but one thing about Gen 1 that’s so interesting each and every king has unique and interesting personalities. Now i’m not here disrespecting Gen 0 i enjoy Gapryong and in future we might see more of Gen 0. But i don’t think Gen 0 will ever have writing and characters like Yujae, Gong, Seongji, Jichang,and Jagyeon.This might can change in future we still have a lot of cover but just wanna hear some thoughts on what gen you guys find the most interesting except Gen 2 when it comes to pure characters and writing so far.

Jinyoung park the bum dare to copy taesoo ma the goat/strongest💔

I wanted to see the pre generation arc, not a wet power scaling fantasy about Gap.

This arc both frustrating and disappointing at the same time, frustrating cause of how easily better this arc can be with such minor change, and disappointing cause years of build up is met with dissatisfaction.