Art of Shin Angyo Onshi is excellent to be short. At the beginning of the manhwa I wasn't too impressed, it seemed to me that the author was somewhat looking for his style, but after like a dozen of chapters I was completely sold. Shin Angyo Onshis art definitely has everything that I enjoy in a series: well designed characters, battles and especially the sceneries. In the span of the series we'll get to see almost every kind of sceneries which include snowy mountais, forests and even caves and they all look absolutely astoundishing. Characters all look good, easily memorable and have pretty much great art designs.
Characters of the series are also worth praising. Munsu, the main character of the series is a bit complex and at the same time very interesting character. People often describe him as an antagonistic hero and I have to say that they aren't wrong. I loved the way how he was designed not to beat the enemies with sheer power but by being very cunning, deceiving and like that surprising both the "bad guys" and the readers as well! What I also found very pleasing was that throughout the series there really wasn't any clear definition of who's bad and who's good so the characters had to really flow with the story and change accordingly: this absolutely brought more depth to the story and especially to the characters. In the whole series I basically loved every character except one, but he fortunately didn't get too much screen time and in the end didn't really bother me too much.
Story at first when I started reading seemed very shallow to me. The first chapter is indeed designed very well and gives some sort of hint what's about to come in terms of deceiving the opponents and the readers, but it can also be deceiving in a sense of looking a bit too shallow to the reader. I really though that Munsu would of course be using his Mahai to basically destroy everyone, but thankfully the author really had a good sense of quality in terms of designing the fights to come. I wasn't too pleased at first, but when I read several more chapters the story every time managed to surprise me with it's depth and incredibly good story designs which didn't leave me cold.
As the series progresses it's easy to see that it has very much depth and it offers immensely huge value to the readers in terms of story flow and story telling. What really did please me was that the author really took his time explaining all the things and didn't really leave any or much to the interpretation for the reader. In some cases this could be considered as a flaw, but the story of Shin Angyo Onshi was complex enough that in my opinion it didn't really need such thing: the twists that it presented to me were certainly enough to keep me amused.
Conclusion: Shin Angyo Onshi is nothing short of a masterpiece. I was pretty much stunned how I had missed it until this point and how people aren't really talking about it, because it was a lot better than some of the series which get somewhat weirdly much attention. I'd have to say that I really does very well in every possible way, but even though I recognize a masterpiece when I see one, I didn't really get that overwheling feeling as I finished the series. This may have nothing to do with the series itself, but the timing in which I read it, so I'm going to hold on and reread this some other time and then maybe upgrade it to the five star rating - if some series deserves it it would be this one. Meanwhile I'm going to leave it at 4.5, I'd give 4 and a 3/4 stars if I could though.
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