Highlights
- Manhwa’s captivating action sequences elevate the medium, with intricately choreographed battles leaving readers breathless.
- Series like The Breaker, The Reaper of the Drifting Moon, and Tower of God showcase unrivaled fight scenes in manhwa.
- From martial arts secrets to supernatural powers, manhwa like Eleceed and Solo Leveling deliver intense combat scenes.
The manhwa medium has made a name for itself by delivering captivating storylines and visually appealing artwork. However, another standout feature of the medium is the presence of beautifully crafted fight and action sequences. These often feature well-choreographed battles between characters, usually leaving readers more breathless than excited.
Not only are they visually appealing, but fight scenes in most related manhwa are a core component of the story’s advancement, making them a necessary breathtaking visual display useful for the story’s overall potential. Therefore, this piece will look at some manhwa whose fight scenes are arguably unrivaled in the medium.
10 The Breaker
Anime-Planet Rating: 4.3 / 5
- Creator(s): Geuk-Jin Jeon, Jin-Hwan Park
- Genre: Action, Comedy, Drama
- No. of Chapters: 72
The Breaker shows an unconventional expression of martial arts as it is enmeshed with modern society while maintaining its secrecy like two realms layered over one another. This makes its storyline even more intriguing, raising the thrilling and exciting feeling of its battles to a new level. The series flows from the central character, Yi Shi-Woon, a regular high school student whose life at the Nine Dragons High School is a constant experience of beatings and bullying.
Salt is added to Shi-Woon’s injury when he is called a coward by a mysterious man called Chun Woo, who turns out to be the school’s new substitute English teacher. Tired of his daily abuse, Shi-Woon is on his way to enroll at a martial arts academy when he stumbles upon Chun Woo dispatching several men using martial arts techniques that Shi-Woon secretly records and uses to blackmail his teacher into teaching him martial arts. Unable to refuse, Chun Woo unexpectedly takes Shi-Woon under his wings, and thus, Shi-Woon is thrust into the world of martial arts, unaware of the consequences ahead.
9 The Reaper of the Drifting Moon
Anime-Planet Rating: 4.3 / 5
- Creator(s): Woogack, Inkyo
- Genre: Action, Adventure, Drama, Fantasy
- No. of Chapters: 92 (Ongoing)
The Reaper of the Drifting Moon takes the art of assassination to a new dimension in the series. Cultivated from the essence of the basics of martial arts, the series boasts impressively detailed battles and fights, mostly with the story’s protagonist at the center. The story focuses on the central character, Pyo Wol, a young orphan, now a wanderer whose life is altered when mysterious men kidnap and capture him. Awakening in an unfamiliar place with other children who are orphans just like him, Pyo Wol, like the other children, for the next several years, is forced to endure hellish training by his captors to become the perfect weapon for assassination.
Forced to survive and kill others like himself, as only a few will be selected, Wol finds himself in a desperate struggle to finally free himself from his captors. In a twist of fate, Wol’s wish is granted, and from then on, he swears upon a life of vengeance against the culprits responsible for turning him into an assassin.
8 Tower of God
Anime-Planet Rating: 4.3 / 5
- Creator(s): SIU
- Genre: Action, Adventure, Drama, Fantasy, Mystery
- No. of Chapters: 628 (Ongoing)
Better known for its intricately detailed world-building and excellent storyline, The Tower of God series does more than well enough regarding its fight scenes and battles. The series revolves around the central character, the young and impressionable Twenty-fifth Baam, who has spent his life trapped beneath the mysterious Tower, where the story takes place. Only those chosen by the Tower can ascend its floors. However, ascending and completing each floor are different matters entirely.
Further, others can ascend the Tower of their own free will without being chosen: the Irregulars. Baam is one such irregular who decides to climb the Tower in search of his friend and another central character, Rachel, with whom he spent his childhood but could not see anymore after she was chosen to climb the Tower. With the hopes of reuniting with her, Baam ascends the Tower. However, he soon finds that the path he has chosen is one far more perilous than he could have imagined, and his goal may, in the end, become nothing more than a wish.
7 Eleceed
Anime-Planet Rating: 4.5 / 5
- Creator(s): Kim Hye-Jin, Son Jae-Ho
- Genre: Action
- No. of Chapters: 304 (Ongoing)
Eleceed makes a delightful meal of the concept of combat and superpowers in a well-worked combination that births some of Manhwa’s most intense fights. The series flows after the main character, Seo Jiwoo, a young teenager living alone whose life flips upside down after he comes across an injured cat and takes it in to care for it.
The cat is unexpectedly another central character, Kayden Break, a very powerful individual in the world of Awakeners, a world of superpowered individuals Jiwoo has no knowledge of. Jiwoo and Kayden’s lives become entangled after discovering by chance that Jiwoo is also an awakener, thrusting him into a life of danger and uncertainty. The duo adopt a master-apprentice relationship and together navigate the endless wave of enemies after their lives.
6 The Boxer
Anime-Planet Rating: 4.4 / 5
- Creator(s): Jeong Ji-Hoon
- Genre: Drama, Sports
- No. of Chapters: 123
The art of combat is extensively expressed in The Boxer series through the sport of boxing, and the series’ inclusion in this piece is no surprise, as its action and battle sequences are beyond thrilling. The series focuses on the central character, Yu, a seventeen-year-old high school student who, due to severe bullying and isolation, developed emotional numbness and a dissociation disorder and has become unable to act like a normal human being.
However, Yu possesses exceptional talent, an ability for irregular movement that allows him to dodge punches easily. Despite this ability, Yu prefers to let his bullies hit him without retaliation. However, things start to look promising when Yu encounters the legendary Coach K, who promises to make Yu a life out of his tremendous talent. With the hopes of finding purpose, Yu accepts K’s offer and thus begins Yu’s gloomy ascendancy to the pinnacle of boxing.
5 Return of the Blossoming Blade
Anime-Planet Rating: 4.4 / 5
- Creator(s): LICO, Biga
- Genre: Adventure, Action, Fantasy
- No. of Chapters: 129 (Ongoing)
The history, class, and tradition of martial arts clash against the desires and ambitions of reality in the Return of the Blossoming Blade series. The series revolves around the protagonist, Cheong Myeong, of the Mount Hua martial sect. Awakening a hundred years in the future, his only remaining memories are of the bloody battle against the leader of the Demonic Cult, a battle that nearly saw the end of the Ten Great Sects of ancient China.
Given a second chance at life, Cheon Myeong’s first action is to find his beloved Mount Hua Sect. What he finds is a shadow of what it once was: a relic of the past. Heartbroken and guilt-stricken, Cheong Myeong embarks on a journey to restore the sect to its former glory, and it remains to be seen if his task will prove too tall to overcome.
4 Solo Leveling
Anime-Planet Rating: 4.7 / 5
- Creator(s): Chugong, Jang Sung-Rak, Disciples
- Genre: Action, Adventure, Fantasy
- No. of Chapters: 201
Manhwa’s most famous, The Solo Leveling series infamy, is credited substantially to its breathtaking action sequences and power displays. Boasting fight scenes so epic, Solo Leveling laid down a precedent and standard for other manhwa regarding fight scenes and sequences. The series revolves around the protagonist, Sung Jin Woo, Earth’s infamous E-rank and weakest Hunter in an era of supernatural abilities and powers.
With no aid or help, Jin Woo works tirelessly to take care of his sister and bedridden mother. However, Jin Woo’s fate is reversed after he is mysteriously the only survivor of a hunting raid expedition that goes horribly wrong. Awakening in a hospital, Jin Woo discovers that he has been chosen by a mysterious program called the System. Through the system, Jin Woo can level up in strength limitlessly and thus begins his journey to becoming the strongest hunter ever to exist.
3 Nano Machine
Anime-Planet Rating: 4.4 / 5
- Creator(s): Hanjung Wolya, Geumgang Bulgoe
- Genre: Action, Adventure, Fantasy
- No. of Chapters: 212 (Ongoing)
In the Nano Machine series, nanotechnology meets the highest level of martial arts, producing history’s most feared martial master. The series presents the tale of the central character, Cheon Yeo Woon, an illegitimate child of the lord of the Demonic Cult who has been held in contempt since childhood. Finally, those who seek to harm him put his life in danger.
Fortunately, in the nick of time and with an unexpected twist, Yeo Woon receives a mysterious visit from his descendant from the future, who inserts in him a nanomachine that drastically changes Yeo Woon’s life upon its activation. Gifted with a weapon far surpassing the understanding of his current climes, Yeo Woon sets out on a quest to conquer the Demonic Cult, ultimately rising to become history’s greatest martial artist.
2 God Of High School
Anime-Planet Rating: 4.0 / 5
- Creator(s): Park Yongje
- Genre: Action, Adventure, Fantasy, Supernatural
- No. of Chapters: 569
The concept of martial arts is taken to an entirely new dimension in the God of High School series, as it explores more or less every fighting style to exist, and more importantly, it does so thrillingly and explosively. The series focuses on the central character, Jin Mori, as he competes at Korea’s most prestigious fighting tournament across the country’s high school. Raised by an anomaly of a fighter and martial master and his grandfather, Jin Taejin, Mori inherits his grandfather’s taekwondo techniques and also his obsessive desire for fighting.
As he progresses through the tournament, Mori meets other central characters, Han Daewi and Yoo Mira, who aim for the title of Korea’s God of High School together. However, what starts as a simple martial competition soon turns out to be a sinister plot of world domination with possibly universal stakes.
1 Legend of the Northern Blade
Anime-Planet Rating: 4.4 / 5
- Creator(s): Woogack, Hae Min
- Genre: Action, Adventure, Fantasy
- No. of Chapters: 192 (Ongoing)
The Legend of the Northern Blade, aside from telling a captivating and exciting story of a revenge quest intricately planned, presents its readers and viewers with a thrilling display of fight and action sequences that make the series as breathtaking as it is intense. The series follows the central character, Jin Mu Won, the last surviving member of the Northern Heavenly Sect, who saw its untimely demise due to a sinister conspiracy. Mu Won is forced to watch his father commit suicide and is left to live a life with no allies or family.
As a result, he swears vengeance on everyone involved in his father’s suicide. However, the fruit of revenge is a rather slow process, as Mu Won is forced to live the first few years of teenage life under strict supervision. However, things fall into place for Mu Won due to a surprise attack that lets him escape his monitors. Hidden away from the world, Mu Won hones and masters the techniques passed down to him, hoping to one day complete his revenge.
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