The Ravages of Time

All I can say is this is a masterpiece in my perspective, even though I have never read the actual "Romance of the Three Kingdoms" I am a fan of Dynasty Warriors, and when I found out about this graphic novel, it just put a big smile on my face.
Many of the distinctions of the storyline in correlations with the actual history is pretty accurate, but it is still made under the image/view of the author. One thing I don't like is how Zhao Yun is portrayed as an assassin =(

Since the author added many fictional aspects of the storyline as well as characters it makes this rather unique, but interesting. This manhua is spectacular in its historical reference. it mainly focus on how the Han Dynasty is crumbling and a new era of war has begun and many warlords fighting to either retain the former Han or make an entirely new empire.

In my opinion I think the most incredible part of the manhua is how it portrays war from all angles and the use of all sorts of resource. From military, politics, will of the people, assassinations, supplies, funding, trade, transportation, alliances, deception and several other things.

I find it somewhat amusing that from beginning to well beyond chapter 250 it focuses a lot on Zhao Yun and Lu Bu. Also it recognizes the slow rise of Cao Cao, Liu Bei, and the Sun Clan. In addition the introduction of the "Eight Geniuses or Eight Enigmas" is intriguing, because they are the best amongst military advisors.

Many of the characters which I know from dynasty warriors who so far appeared didn't look like them, but their are similarities in personalities from the game to the manhua, which is good for me.

For those "Romance of the Three Kingdoms" and "Dynasty Warriors" fans I recommend you all read this manhua.

As a Romance of the three kingdoms fanatic, I was at first reluctant to read something so different and novel.
At first it seemed a little too un-historical and bizzare, judging from the multiple fictional characters and all, but when it picks up its pace, it turns out to be a true masterpiece.

The purpose of this manhua is to go against the stereotypes of character personalities and codes of honour, and observe everything from a different perspective, which makes things actually look much more realistic than in the old novel.There are no good and evil characters, no -good- loyalists and -bad- traitors, no heroes and tyrants.Every character has his own personality and way of thinking, making them far more brilliant and open to further development.
In adition, more aspects of every character are displayed in this manhua, making even the most brash and stupid warriors of the novel develop more tactfull and logical peronalities.

In my opinion, this is what actually shows Chen Mou's true genius.
The way he passes some ideals of society and politics through the historical figures, showing how government officials have always used history and fame to control the actions and minds of the people.

The battle scenes are outstanding, displaying each character's abilities in a very impressive way, though without straying too much from realism.

The only bad aspect of this manhua is the fact that it can become rather confusing for people who do not have knowledge of chinese history and geography, as it does not provide a map, showing the main locations in which the events occur.
I personally had no problems with this, as I know most places and events by heart, but many people to whom i recomended it rejected it for such reasons.

In general, it is an excelent work of art which everyone should try to read, being a fan of ROTK or not.

As a manhua based on the Three-Kingdoms era, it's really amazing and overwhelmingly impressive.

In the beginning, I didn't understand much about the characters, story, and events. After I finished the first 40/50 chapters I understood the story and events. The depth of the characters and dialogues is really overwhelmingly impressive, every character is special in its own way. the art well gets better by every chapter. Every chapter is packed with something either it is dialogues, monologues, fights, schemes, etc...

Strong points :

Theme exploration and notion is great, thus having top tier dialogues and monologues. also, the monologues and dialogues are variable; it doesn't focus on a single topic but stretches in themes and concept. Character's clashes give a new taste to the story not only warfare clashes but also ideas. Having many characters with different ideas gives us as readers many discussions to discuss between us "who is right? who is wrong?", "What is loyalty? what is filial?".

The author really does know how to deliver the warfare freight. doesn't only focus on the military side in warfare but also politics and psychological aspects thus having greater warfare arcs with many sides to explore. schemes are used really well with Chen Mou. at first glance, the schemes seem to be vague but the end after understanding it, it's really deep.

the scenery and events. Using scenery to give as readers some information of the events is really good. The author really likes to put some teases in the scenery and foreshadows also.


I really enjoy the manhua it's really a masterpiece. I don't have any negative comments on the manhua. There is a lot of great characters my favorite one is, of course, Lu Bu the mighty warrior feared by all.

TL;DR version - This is a very well-rounded story, exploring the themes of pretense (with both lying to others and lying to oneself), politics (through deception and schemes), war (through nihilism and manipulation), literature (through the importance of sharing and the fabrication of history) and so on. Story does not center around anyone, instead it is fleshing out every side, who represent different types of opposing ideologies. Characters are exploding with charisma, by showing off their immense strength and knowledge of Art of War (thus being the most complex work in fiction at scheming). It is both very tragic and poetic, with various obscure references and detailed artstyle. Everything above, in addition of rich social-commentaries, has a really high chance of becoming your one of the favourite stories in fiction, so don’t miss the chance.

Ravages of Time offers many hardships to its newcomers and they will notice them as soon as they will start reading the story, so here let’s just focus on the rewarding part of it, as it is arguable that Ravages is the highest reward one may achieve, by reading comics. Besides, community is willing to make newcomer's experience much easier and smoother.

The first things first - RoT does not have a classic narrative, in a sense, that it is not only will not focus solely on the main squad, but also it will not care if you won't side with protagonists who do not care about heroism and/or do bad things.

Now we can start talking about the many reasons of why you may love to read it.

The most obvious one are the action scenes. They tend to be highly energetic, with various stunts involved, both down-to-earth and over-the-top, with different number of participants. There is hardly any instance (if at all) of mere slashes that are supposed to create hype in an artificial way. They also are neither meaningless nor repetitive(if it is supposed to be a parallel, for example). What makes these scenes even more charming? Characters often are equal and they tend to praise each other as well as to have a very interesting dialogue (yeah, character interactions are hardly ever shallow, even when they are preparing to punch each other out). Only problem one may have is the skipping of some battle scenes.

Said scenes are empowered by very flamboyant artstyle. Starting from various stylish and fashionable character designs (not only for main characters, but also over 500 unnamed background, a subtle addition to its realistic depth of world-building) and their poses, to high-scale set-pieces, to detailed decorations and very memorable and poetic pages. Style is fine from the get-go, but visibility of areas not so much. Eventually, that also gets much better, while style gets more and more mature, as author is coming out of his heavy metal phase. I would say, driving less emotions in the later parts of the story is one of the two weaknesses it has. The second being the lack of sense of space.

Another prominent trait are the schemes, which are probably the most complex/convoluted that you have ever seen, as they cover many different things, from morale boosting duels to social rumors, and mixes them together. Then makes them even harder, when such tricks are being used by more than one side, while they are busy covering every possible outcome of their moves and finding common ground. They may change tides, or even schemers themselves may change sides. Even the deceptive moves taken off-screen are more complex than “smart” gimmicks of most of the other stories. (to add something provocative, as extra flavor - LOGH is child's play compared to RoT)

From hereon we have to dig deeper, as everything may be a part of in-depth thematic exploration.

You will meet various references to Art of War and similar works, which are obscure enough for us to constantly feel fresh. Another great thing about this is that - they are not mere references. They are implemented into the setting to serve as an explanation and social-commentary as well - the world is in a never ending cycle of corruption and it gets more and more cynical as it goes on, while sharing all-new experiences to others leads to even more battles. Some are getting so deceptive, that they use that “sharing all-new experiences” itself for their own deceptions.

But it is up to a person how will s/he use the knowledge. Thus, the central theme of this work is “Self-Interest vs. Righteousness”, with a very interesting take - no one is entirely on one side of the spectrum. Yeah, there are people who want to rule the world out of their greedy nature, but they will surely justify themselves by the greater good (for example, corruption of sage, horrors of war’s longevity and etc) and will try to maintain their image. Yeah, some people fight for the sake of righteousness, but their actions will also be really questionable by the standards of morality, they will also face the negative consequences and they also fight to live in a safe house for themselves.

Talking about consequences - they will be many, as arcs are made out of their chain reactions (but you can still differentiate them) and they are also many and sometimes too severe. That connects to both the horrors of war and the meaninglessness of people’s struggles (no matter how great they think they are) when they are confronted with the inevitability of history. Author believes that if a man goes to a war, he can’t be a good man. So, this ideology will make sure that such closures (with great poetic flavor to them) won’t ever feel undeserved or/and unsatisfying or/and not dramatic enough (except, of course, if death scene’s point is to not feel dramatic)

And if a writer believes in such a thing, that means he has some kind of disdain towards any of the characters which play somewhat important role in story, so you can expect pretty solid balance between conflicted sides. Even better - there are more than two sides and all of them have their own agendas. EVEN BETTER - on one side you will meet several people that have their own agendas and they affect each other (by manipulating their brothers, for example), just like it would have been in real life. Having this is really valuable and that is because it won’t feel like a piece of propaganda at all and you will be able to cheer or dislike any side you prefer (I like them all personally), without having just one moral compass.

Well, it does have a good amount of action scenes with unbelievable feats (which serve their own purpose and let’s talk about it later on) and some over-the-top sense of humor in the first arc, but aside of that, it remains one of the most mature works in fiction. For comparison we can take Berserk (which is a seinen, but has high amount of senseless violence just because and even rape may seem as a joke. Being close to the old tales of brother Grimms with its edge) and Kingdom (which is a shounen, but still has more naked breasts in its first arcs, than RoT as a whole (zero)). It does not even have much romance (only one is proper one and amazing at it), despite telling you that lust is in man’s nature (because everyone knows that lust can be used for schemes) and it never romanticizes love.

There is also a risk of becoming dry, when story has so much maturity, but RoT is handling that greatly as well, by having one of the most emotional scenes in fiction. Characters never forget that they should have emotions and act like human beings and they even have eccentric poses to them. In the latest arcs, it does get quite dry, but then again, it is still fully self-aware, as it touches about the themes of getting used to tragedy and thinking about the big picture, by trying to not let oneself to lose control because of personal stuff.

Now, as promised, we can talk about the feats. Sure, they are unbelievable, but its self-aware, judging by the people who say the same. I think, it is also a deconstruction of Dynasty Warriors (and other similar stories), because, yeah, characters are really powerful, but they are always a tiny part of grander decisions and anything is hardly ever solved by them. The strongest warrior even attracted many enemies out of his inhumanity and at the end, he still managed to become human. It has several more purposes, but I will leave them out for you to think about them by yourself. Who does not like heroic tales, after all?

Full focus is on warfare and politics, so it basically never feels like you are reading some boring slice of life where nothing ever happens, so ride is ever-eventful. I would consider this as a very important aspect, because crafting such a rich world requires big amount of focus and that usually will really slow down the story, but RoT manages to have importance in its every arc. Realistic march of time also helps with that - after 500 chapters, it covered around 20 years of its period and it that period of time, for example, characters already have children and not only some of them fight alongside their fathers (Unlike other stories where they milk with next generation, after every major conflict was resolved), but it also explores problematic part of inheritance.

History itself is also being explored in a historical manga (which is usually forgotten by other historical stories) and in an unconventional way - by changing details, while being fully self-aware and stating that it is more plausible this way, than actual history (aka fabrication of history), but not changing much of the general picture and major events of actual historical sources. For example, there is a completely fictional character named Yuan Fang and there is also Lu Bu, who was also made smart, to question history - is it really possible for people who are defined by physical prowess alone to have so much influence on a country? Why would people follow them? And so on. It may be also discussed that it is criticizing the original novels.

In conclusion, that’s a bit of what may be talked about The Ravages of Time, but hopefully, I wrote enough novelties of it to peak interest in people of this subreddit and to finish my recommendation, I will ask every interested one to visit r/ravagesoftime to get close to our community. Here is an invitation to the Discord server and other useful links are easy to find on subreddit: http://ravagesoftime.info/discord

Before you read this manga you need to know the background of the Three Kingdoms Era. If you played Dynasty Warriors games or you have read a novel from that era you will be ready to read it. However, if you like me read it blind-fully you won't understand everything. You will take a lot of time to memories the characters names and their titles.

I read more than 50 chapters and still there are a lot of things that doesn't make sense and I don't know what is going on, because the mangaka thinks some info is a basic info no need to explain it.

In the end you need to know these things before reading this manga:
1- Names of the famous heroes in that era.
2- Names of the main cities.
3- Names titles (ex.Gongzi = Young Master).
4- How the three kingdoms are distributed in the map (China's map in that era).

If you know these information you will LOVE this manga, because it has awesome plans and strategies almost in every chapter, not to forget the epic battles.

As a manga based on the Three-Kingdoms era, I thought this was another one of those unoriginal Chinese attempts on making money off the hugely popular historical epic Romance of the Three Kingdoms...

Boy was I ever more wrong... because not only are the details of this manga original, it is an absolute masterpiece. For once I have to bow down to the author and declare that I'm not even worthy of being a critic of his work.

Basically, we're talking about a manga that perfectly combines the genres of martial action, epic battlefield combat, political/factional scheming, military strategy, detailed character development, and a very complex but highly intriguing plot; compiling all the finest elements of Three-Kingdoms literature under one cover:
-----Generals that dominate the battlefield, unmatched in sheer awesomeness that exemplifies the Chinese saying [i]"Taking the head of the enemy commander from amongst the million, is as easy as taking items from a bag"[/i].
-----Tacticians with multi-layered chain strategies so complex it would make Lelouch (or any other military tactician from anime) look like a preschooler.
-----Politicians and warlords embedded in a free-for-all fight for dominance as the Han dynasty, an era so powerful it contributed to the Fall of the Roman Empire from across the globe, comes to a collapse.
-----Heroes stuck between all of it trying to decide just what defines morality when everything is lost in shades of gray and flames of anarchy.


The story is spread into numerous perspectives in order to cover all the major sides of the conflict, to the point it's hard to grasp whom the main character is/will-be. Although it does seem like Sima Yi, a prodigious merchant who'd eventually become the Chief Military Strategist of Wei; and Lianyuan Huo, a fictional name who'd eventually 'earn' his true name as one of the most famous generals of the Three-Kingdoms era.


While the author sticks to most of the major plot points defined by the original novel, he changed MOST of the underlying details - the character histories, the events that led up to each checkpoint, the character personalities, all of that. What's even more awesome is that he gave perfect reasons on WHY the character is known differently thru folklore, so even those who hold the original novel to heart like I do can enjoy this different version.


I only have a few things somewhat negative to say about the manga:
-----It's written in a tradition Chinese grammar, meaning the language is so beautiful it's like poetry in every line. However, not only is this completely lost in the translation process, it also makes it far harder TO translate. All the proverbs, idioms, famous strategems that any [i]real[/i] Chinese would understand can be especially confusing to English readers, despite the notes the translations put out.
-----The plot of Three Kingdoms is epic and renowned throughout Asia, but is also extremely complex and CAN be somewhat confusing, especially for those who know nothing of the era (yes Dynasty Warriors can help a lot, as much as I dislike that game). There's also a HUGE cast, thankfully, a lot of the generals/warlords/tacticians die off fast =9
-----The drawing style is more western than anime-esque. I don't care about this, but some of you might...



P.S. For those Dynasty Warrior fans of Lu Bu, he is ten times more awesome in this series...

I tend to enjoy heavily historical anime and manga, despite often having no prior knowledge in that area. This manga thrusts one in media res into the conflicts of a period of Chinese War.

The story arches over several different campaigns of war. If you tend to like something like Hikaru no Go or Death Note (at least before it got ridiculous around seven volumes along) wherein strategy is extensively expounded, then you will probably like this because in each of them explanations of strategy reign supreme. At the same time, however, it has quite a bit more action than typical since it is rooted continually in battles.

Although I think it may treat it a little superficially, I like that it continually acknowledges the reality of how pointless and endlessly destructive the jostling for power by all the clans is, although of course it also addresses those who love war and flourish in it and in true destruction.

It does treat many parts of the plot a little too superficially, and this ties in with character development. Most of the characters are unique enough, but parts of their personalities could be fixated upon more or explained much more thoroughly without being cumbersome because this probably skimps too much. I often found myself trying to remember 'who is Zhang Liao?' and had to see him two or three more times before being able to figure out certainly who he was again. It does not help that the names are mixed up, probably because of issues of formality versus informality as well as nicknames. That being said, some characters are just stellar, such as Zhang Fei: "For example, Zhang Fei, traditionally pictured as a bearded chubby man, is displayed in the story as an artist who painted his face in a fashion similar to that of a Chinese opera mask." While excitement does come with parts such as that, they are often just slightly lacking. Maybe I am too used to mangas such as One Piece, and I certainly wish some like One Piece would tone it down sometimes, but this one probably goes to the opposite extreme and takes itself too seriously.

The art in this is not awful and not great. It is not anything nearly so bad as Bleach with its impossible amount of ACTION LINES!!!, for example, but its lines are drawn too thick and bold often, which is probably the biggest hindrance to my enjoyment of it.

I hope my tone in this was not too negative, but this is in fact a fairly serious manga laden with tons of history and characters who are not the most epic people ever, though they are sometimes striking. Overall it is a great take on a period of Chinese history and the nature of its war, and it has many quite poignant statements related to such, which I will not spoil since it is more fun to come across them (often used as the close of a chapter, for instance, and you get to guess whether the character just left off from is saying it or if it is a general statement!)

Okay I will readily admit that this story has it's flaws, but its peak it is the best manga I have ever read. Chen Mou has to find his story, the beginning is god awful I won't lie to you, but that changes, there is a whole damn genre change. I was suggested this 2 years ago, i didn't get past the 5th chapter, i was suggested it again and i dropped around the same place, but the third time I got to the razing of Loyang and holy shit it's incredible.

It's a hard read, you have to remember so many characters and there relations. It's worth it though, there is so much philosophy and differing moralities both subtle and obvious incorporated within. Plus he builds hype so well, Lu Bu burning Yuan Tai alive, Zhou Yu's spirit taunting Jia Xu, Ma Chao watching his family kill himself, based purely on their faith in him, even Chen Mou calling Sima Yi and Shan Wuling a dog and his bitch(probably my favourite page just because of how unexpected it was) is freaking poetic. Oh the art is really good and only gets better as time goes on

If you can stick with the story you will discover a masterpiece, I promise you.

^^^ the beginning is painful and its honestly shocking my favourite manga evolved from it XD