While looking for a manga to binge on, I came across this fairly new manga series called Shuumatsu no Valkyrie: Record of Ragnarok. By the time I am writing this, there are just 20 chapters published for this series.
Back when I was in high school, I became fond of the topic focusing on mythology. I first delved into Greek Mythology and then switch to Nordic or Norse Mythology; this interest doesn’t happen in just an overnight. My cousin and I played this game called ‘Age of Mythology’, focusing on campaigns for Greek, Norse and Egytptian mythos, then in the expansion came the Atlanteans followed by the Chinese, but I only got to follow the game until the Atlantean expansion.
I got curious about the gods, mythical monsters, and heroes, I remember searching it on Encarta encyclopedia, and then Wikipedia. And when I came across Mythology, a book written by Edith Hamilton, I didn’t give a second thought and immediately bought the book, and then spent couple of days reading through everything and then soon after a lot of mythology-related fictions popped up.
Fast forward, and after reading the first chapter of this series you will know that I am immediately HOOKED! Gods vs Humans in an epic fight for humanity’s survival? Count me in!
The series starts with the council of the Gods, Zeus sitting as the chairman called for a meeting. Apparently every 1000 years, the gods decide if humanity will be forgiven or be due for destruction, 7,000,000 years of human history and the gods decided to finally destroy humanity with a unanimous decision, the humans are doomed if not for the Valkyrie, Brunhild.
Brunhild, proposed for ‘Ragnarok’, a one on one battle between gods and humans. She provoked them into participating by taunting their ego as gods.
Ragnarok is a one versus one battle consisting of 13 gods, and 13 humans fighting to decide whether humanity lives or dies.
By the end of the first chapter, we were introduced to the first round of combatants of both teams; For the side of gods, Thor the God of Thunder, and for the side of humanity, known as China’s strongest hero, Ryofu Housen (Lu Bu)!
The character designs are great, the premise kind of reminds me of the God of High School a bit. We saw some characters that are given introductions in the panels, so I am guessing that they will play a role in the whole series.
!We first saw Zeus, an elderly-looking god that apparently rules the council of Valhalla. He may look frail, but when he was triggered, he showed us that he hasn’t skip any biceps workout, arms or arm in this matter gave him enough power to break a dragon’s face!
Then we saw Siva (Shiva), a god determined to give humanity their doomsday and would like to evolve a different animal next time. So basically, suggesting that we have evolved from ape/monkey. His design looks cool and he has these 4 arms, justifiable since he is Shiva the destroyer which is commonly depicted as a god with many arms, or at least 4.
Then perhaps the most fan service character that we can get from this series, Aphrodite the Goddess of Beauty. And I will outright say it, she has huge milk jugs. Huge jugs big enough for a “boob-bearer” to be hired (One lucky bastard!). Back to the main topic, she sees humanity as most dangerous living cancer on earth.
And then, an epic looking god showed up with a white and black raven perched on his shoulders. I believe that their names are Muninn and Huginn (means,”Thought” and “Memory”), and the god they’re perched on is none other than Odin the Allfather of the Norse Pantheon. The ravens are the ones speaking on his behalf, though we do not know yet if they are actual talking ravens or it is just Odin himself speaking through the ravens.
And lastly the first fighter of the gods, Thor the Berserker of Thunder! We, pretty much almost everyone thinks of him as this blonde hair, funny guy and an avenger; that is a different Thor. Thor from Norse mythology is a red-haired god and far from the jolly Thor we knew from MCU. The Thor in this manga carries Mjolnir, a big hammer far from the small one we saw in the MCU. He has this intimidating aura that everyone seems to be afraid of him.
I am pretty sure that I will be creating a dedicated article for the gods and humanity’s lore discussing their in-series history or what we’ve known so far, and then tackling on what we knew about them outside the series like in myths, fictionalized history and actual history.
This is my first chapter review of Shuumatsu no Valkyrie: Record of Ragnarok!