Other Stuff Monthly #15

So, back in the Tokyopop-led English-translated manga boom of the early 2000s, one of the titles that really caught my eye and my imagination was actually a Korean comic, Ragnarok, by Lee Myung-Jin. It's a fantasy comic with amazing art, and it's probably less well-known than its spin-offs: the MMORPG Ragnarok Online, and the TV anime Ragnarok The Animation (which was based on the MMORPG, rather than the comic, but I'll return to that subject later).

Re-reading it as an adult, it definitely feels like a case of style over substance. Luckily, the style is good enough for that not to really matter. The art is consistently excellent, and though most of the comic is made of characters either firing big magic attacks at each other, or dramatically delivering exposition to ach other, it all looks so good that you barely even notice. Me and my friends definitely didn't back then, at least. The look of the world is a very videogamey mix of European and Asian fantasy aesthetics, with a slight bit of sci-fi flavour on the weapons and armour, which all appear to be made of some kind of very smooth, curved, futuristic materials.

Teenage me was very disappointed, of course, when after the tenth volume, Ragnarok just seemed to stop coming out. I even e-mailed Tokyopop! They actually did reply, and even more interestingly, they told me the real reason as to why volume eleven wasn't out yet: the creator was making so much money from Ragnarok Online that he was focussing on that instead of his comic. How disappointing! There was even an interview with him in the back of the fourth volume, in which he describes his plans for Ragnarok: a 40-50 volume saga with seven story arcs! Tokyopop were clearly behind the series, too: I remember it being heavily promoted by them at the time, and they also added an unusual extra to the volumes themselves: psuedo-Dungeons and Dragons stats for all the main characters! (Well, they said the stats wee just "inspired by the manga" and not part of any real RPG system. But they look closest to DnD, at least.)

More disappointment came when the anime came out, and it was based on the MMORPG rather than the comic itself. Even now, I'm not interested in online games, but back then, I didn't even have a computer or internet connection at home! Not only that, but it really did feel like the last nail in the coffin of the original Ragnarok story and its characters. Well over a decade later, and I'm pretty sure Ragnorok Online is long dead by now, too, and I haven't heard anything about the comic coming back, either. RIP Ragnarok!