Power Fantasy, Perfected

[00:02] if you're a long-time viewer, you know I don't do dedicated sponsor content like find really interesting and more importantly, I think you will. And in the case of Stellar Sword Master, I [music] really think you're going to

[00:16] like it. Not to say I didn't have my doubts at first. It starts off really strong, efficiently establishing a greedily textured dark fantasy world without resorting to cheap exploitative anime clichés. For its strong dog hero,

[00:30] Vlad, sex and violence are simply matters of everyday survival that come with the territory of selling timer candles at his adopted mother's brothel and enforcing the will of his gang boss surrogate dad. He's quite good at the

[00:44] violence part, too. Far too good for someone his age and inexplicably even better after this mysterious black lightning hit him and he started hearing a voice whenever he picks up anything sword-shaped. And it's around learning

[00:59] about that that my doubts started creeping in. I much prefer to see heroes earn the power in their power fantasies. Get beat down a few times on their way up, you know? I've been through the whole song and dance of some supposed

[01:13] underdog getting this magic cheat code that instantly turns him into an invincible aura agriculturalist before in other Webtoon titles even. And it didn't exactly help my suspicions when I learned that Stellar Sword Master's core

[01:27] power system, which allows knights to channel the energy of their inner world into their blades [music] for devastating strikes, is literally called aura. Meaning that during some of Vlad's big hype hero moments, you get

[01:43] bystanders literally pointing and saying, "Oh my god, he's got aura!" But the really crazy part is, by the time I got there, I was so locked in I didn't even laugh. It just felt right. Because Vlad had indeed earned it. As

[02:00] protagonists go, he's a bright spot in the darkness both within the comic and the broader broodier world of anime power fantasies. [music] His cheeky cock-sure personality and irrepressible sense of justice immediately mark him as

[02:15] sense of justice immediately mark him as more than a simple audience insert. Not absolute justice, mind you. He is not above committing the occasional crime for him and his, but he still refuses to step on others to lift himself up and

[02:29] does what he can to raise up those around him even though he's constantly yearning for more. From the moment we meet him, his gaze is drifting ever upward from the squalor of the slums to the bright warmth of the city. Yet his

[02:43] the bright warmth of the city. Yet his head's not in the clouds. He focuses on the points of light within his grasp. The warmth of his found family, his friends, the girl he loves, and a certain sword. The final masterpiece of

[02:58] a retired smith living in the slums near him that he dreams he might one day take up and wield as he sets out to prove his real worth to the world. The first step on his journey to greatness of many, as it turns out. Even as Vlad finally

[03:14] starts crawling his way out of the slums, he immediately sets his sights on the moon. And looking at the title, it's not much of a reach to picture him shooting even further once he reaches that goal. Though there's quite a ways

[03:29] to go before he does. To be clear, I'm not talking about the literal moon. He's not building a rocket or anything. This is a pure swords and sorcery style story, so I probably don't have to tell you that. But with anime type things,

[03:42] you can never be too sure. I mean, if Trigger got the rights to the anime adaptation instead of Warner Brothers Animation, who knows? It might have gone there. Vlad's goal is Goden, a knight whose aura shines with the cold

[03:56] brilliance of moonlight, which he used to brutally murder Vlad's adopted dad, Jorge, a former knight of the same noble family that Goden serves and current boss of the least bad slum gang. Which, of course, means that his death brings

[04:12] all those more bad gangs in to tear his family apart, forcing him to run off and join a mercenary band while his orphan ingenue, Jimena, hides away in a convent. All of which paints a pretty clear arc for our hero to follow from

[04:27] rags to riches to revenge. But that's a lot easier said than done with all that power curve standing between him and his target. Or maybe I should say skill curve, cuz when I called this pure swords and sorcery, I meant it. There's

[04:42] no RPG system here to help him climb that hill. Just some decently realistic sword play and four meaningfully distinct flavors of magic. And the only way to get good at any of them is to practice a lot. Though not quite as much

[04:58] as everyone else has to. That's where the voice in Vlad's head comes in, giving him real-time pointers on his form and technique. Plus the occasional strategic insight to help him close the gap with tougher and more experienced

[05:12] opponents and scarier monsters. This also conveniently gives the writer a vector to exposit about some of the finer points of the fight choreography and sword play or how specific techniques work to make the battles a

[05:26] little more easily readable. Not that the art needs that much help with it. The storyboarding's really clever in how it uses the vertical scrolling format to create a sense of the flow of battle. I digress, though. The point is, the voice

[05:40] isn't a cheat power. It still takes daily training, a physically present mentor to actually show him how to do the stuff, and a bit of Vlad's own natural talent to implement the voice's strategies in real time. But it gives

[05:55] him enough of an edge to justify some thrilling seat-of-his-pants victories against nearly impossible odds and organically fast-track his power progression without speed-running it. Fast enough to keep the story moving at

[06:10] a satisfying clip, but slow enough that the allies he fights with and the threats that they face can keep pace and even sometimes overtake him. He doesn't get his ass kicked that often, but it happens enough, mostly against more

[06:25] advanced knights who aren't going to outright kill him when they beat him, to keep our hero humble and the stakes high. And even when they're so high that high. And even when they're so high that failure does mean death, he can still

[06:38] fall short. The voice is able to step in and take over in such pinches, but doing so takes a heavy toll on Vlad's body. And while the victories he attains that way do still help his reputation, they hurt his pride. He wants to achieve

[06:53] those things with his own hands. And in that sense, the voice is as much his rival as it is his guide. That specific dynamic is one of the best things about late-stage [music] Yu-Gi-Oh! and Hikaru No Go. And I really enjoy how Stellar

[07:07] Sword Master manages to incorporate it this early in the story. The reputation gains aren't meaningless, though. Social status and the political power that come with it play just as key a role in Vlad's progression as his sword skills.

[07:23] And they make for an equally dangerous battlefield in their own right with corrupt officials, stuffy aristocrats, and true nobility all jockeying for power and position, looking to use him as a tool or stepping stone toward their

[07:38] own goals. And naturally, those machinations tend to push our hero into cool sword fights more often than not. This ain't Game of Thrones, but it's a lot closer than you might think. The story takes pains to emphasize how

[07:52] pretext and justifications are everything in these games of aristocratic power. And Vlad does have to learn all sorts of counterintuitive social conventions and obscure rules of etiquette to navigate that battlefield

[08:07] effectively without embarrassing himself or, worse, his friends and patrons. Which brings me to, in my opinion, the most satisfying marker of Vlad's progression through this world, his capacity to do right by the people

[08:23] who've done right by him. Which is actually quite a few people. Stellar Swordsman isn't your typical solo power fantasy. It's operating on a much higher fantasy. It's operating on a much higher level. Vlad is certainly a very cool guy

[08:36] with a cool sword, cool armor, a really cool horse, and the potential to be the coolest guy ever, even. But he's far from the only cool guy. His fellow warriors and senior knights have their

[08:49] own impressive talents that they also get to use to push the plot forward without just relying on the guy. And there are ways to be cool in this world without killing dudes real good. Yosif, the young noble who takes Vlad under his

[09:05] wing, is an incredibly shrewd statesman of long foresight and grand ambitions. Harvin, his best friend from the slums, is quick-witted and deeply knowledgeable. Marcella, his adopted mother, has an iron will, sharp business

[09:20] sense, and carries herself with a dignified elegance you might not expect to see from the madam of a slum brothel. The supporting characters who impressed me most, though, are Vlad's two love interests, who each, without spoiling

[09:35] too much, have strong, independent personalities and quite a bit of agency as characters that extends beyond just, you know, being love interests. The romance elements are relatively light. Anything more would threaten to

[09:49] overwhelm the rest of the plot, but they're well-written with a good balance of comedy and drama. And And really extends to most of this Manhwa's dialogue. Though if I do have just one complaint about the reading experience,

[10:01] it's how the swears are censored. Not only is the choice of what to censor pretty excessive, like the word damn, but they censor the entire words except for the first letter, which can be a little confusing when we're talking

[10:15] about certain cusses that just happen to be the exact same length as certain slurs. Webtoon editors, if you're watching this, when Vlad says for the sake of his knightly honor, please just keep the R in. Still, for as

[10:29] much warmth and kindness as the supporting cast injects into this dark world, keeping it firmly on the right side of grim dark, the villains and monsters still end up being some of the most compelling things about it. Early

[10:41] on, we're given hints of a sinister conspiracy fueled by blood sacrifice and dark magic that seems to be laying the groundwork for some grander multi-season mystery, which appears to be tied in to stirrings among the worms, scattered

[10:57] living remnants of this once mighty dragon slain by the kingdom's founder that seem to be regaining some of their lost power for some reason. But even at a smaller scale, Stellar Sword Master makes its antagonists pretty intriguing.

[11:12] One-armed Jack, Jorge's chief rival as a slum lord, is framed very effectively as a foil for Vlad, what he might have become had his drive to escape the slums exceeded his compassion and sense of justice, which makes for a powerful

[11:28] payoff when Vlad is finally able to pay the bastard back for everything he did to his family. But of course, that's just a milestone, albeit a very cathartic one, on the road to his real revenge. And fittingly, that forms the

[11:43] basis for one of Vlad's most interesting relationships. See, Stellar Sword Master very cleverly gives him and Goden a bit of time to get to know each other before really goes down. Not a lot, but enough for Goden to begin to recognize

[12:00] the budding young bladesman for the potential inside him and decide that that's worth cultivating over just killing him off. And for Vlad to see how close the strong, principled, and unerringly confident knight is to his

[12:15] own ideal self. And what's really interesting is that even after Goden destroys his family, that doesn't change for him. He's chasing this villain in two different senses. He wants to kill him, yes, but he also wants to become

[12:31] him. And as the story goes on, no matter who he's training under or working for, you see that coloring Vlad's demeanor. When he's got to threaten a dude, assert his dominance, his approach never evokes any of the other tough guys he knew from

[12:46] the slums or even his current mentor. Instead, he's constantly drawing on this one moment where Goden basically told him, "Fuck around with me and I'll kill you on the spot, kid." And in that way, the villain remains a constant presence

[13:01] in the story without being an overbearing one, only actually showing up once every few dozen chapters when we get brief glimpses into his master's ongoing schemes to destabilize and conquer the empire, which in a lesser

[13:17] fantasy narrative might have been the whole plot, but here it's just one of many factional machinations pushing this world toward war and chaos, all of which end up intersecting and interfering with Vlad's personal journey in very

[13:32] organic-feeling ways. And to me, that makes this Manhwa's world feel far more alive than fantasy works that pour 10 times as much effort into fleshing out their lore and world-building. Not that I wouldn't like to have both, mind you.

[13:48] I am a huge fan of The Legend of Heroes, and it does kind of bother me how even plot-vital aspects of this world can be left frustratingly underexplained, like how we're in this totally foreign fantasy land with magic and spirits and

[14:04] dragons and multiple gods worshipped by different races, but also the Catholic Church is just there with crucifixes everywhere and an inquisition and crusaders and bishops and a Vatican and everything, basically. People even use

[14:19] Jesus Christ as a swear. Not to say you can't do that in a fantasy world, I just can't do that in a fantasy world, I just want an explanation, please. But as fun and satisfying as diving deep into the world-building can be, it's the

[14:32] characters who inhabit a world and the story you tell in it that really matter. And that's where Stellar Sword Master shines the brightest, setting many different plot and character arcs in motion and tying them together

[14:46] beautifully by the time the first season wraps, while still leaving plenty more to tell as it goes on. When the upcoming adaptation hits, assuming that it doesn't, you know, get all bonked up, it's going to be in conversation with

[14:59] Frieren, Dungeon Meshi, Clover Test, and Witch Hat Atelier as a standard-bearer for this new golden age of fantasy anime. But you don't have to wait for that. You can read the whole series right now for free on the Webtoon

[15:13] platform at the link in the doobly-doo. Though if you want to read season two, Bleach two, that is exclusive to the Webtoon app. That's pretty much my only sponsor talking point out of the way. But I just want to say, on a personal

[15:27] note, this is tied with exactly one other thing that I was already a huge fan of the franchise for for my favorite sponsorship I've ever done. Beyond enjoying all the hype and literal aura, I actually teared up multiple times

[15:42] reading it and lost time working on this script cuz I just wanted to keep going and find out what would happen next. It's one of those moments where I'm just like, I can't believe I get to do this. Amazing feeling. I'm Jeff Thieu,

[15:56] professional aura agriculturalist, signing out from My Inner World.