I haven’t had much experience with graphic novels; I read through Captain Underpants when I was younger and binged Fullmetal Alchemist back in 2021, but apart from those two, I’ve mainly stuck to normal books. I figured I’d give “A Man’s Man” a try after seeing it recommended in a video, because the premise seemed really compelling. It centers on Yuhyeon Han, a South Korean worker who’s just been promoted to CEO of Samsung, sorry, “Hansung” at the start of the series. Pretty much everyone hates him though, since he got to the top through ruthless backstabbing; his wife divorces him on the day of his promotion, and a former co-worker informs him that a cohort of his (I believe the term refers to people hired at the same time as you in Korean work culture) named Sejung Gwon committed suicide after being laid off and not being able to find other work.
Yuhyeon is understandably upset about this, and after attending the funeral, he sees Sejung in a crosswalk while driving home, though he only finds a mysterious bar after getting out of his car to investigate. There, the bartender asks him if he’d do things differently if he could go back in time; giving him a drink that seemingly transports him back to 2007, shortly before he was hired at Hansung. While the setup seems pretty typical of the “Regression” genre this story is a part of; this is my first exposure to the genre, so even aspects that may be tropes are still new / exciting to me, excitement which is helped by the stellar execution so far.
To start, Yuhyeon is a great main character. Despite being the (former, I guess) CEO of one of the world’s largest companies, he feels very down-to-earth and relatable. He also adapts to his new situation pretty quickly; I feel like a lot of stories would get overly bogged down in having him try to figure out why he got sent back in time; but Yuhyeon just kinda accepts it and starts trying to change things for the better. He still has all his knowledge from the future, and it’s incredibly satisfying seeing him use it to avoid mistakes he made in the past like letting scammers sucker him or not spending enough time with his parents. Aside from him, the other characters are pretty solid as well, though they haven’t been fleshed out much since I’m still at the beginning of the story. Seungwu is probably my favorite so far, he seems like a great mentor to Yuhyeon, and I hope he isn’t pushed aside like he apparently was in the original timeline. In general, it’s been a fantastic read; the art is amazing and overflowing with detail, the plot is incredibly intriguing, and the characters are nuanced and 3-dimensional. I feel like the next 20 chapters are going to start dropping hints as to how and why Yuhyeon got teleported back, my current theory is that the drink essentially dropped him in an alternate timeline, with the young Yuhyeon of that universe being swapped with old CEO Yuhyeon; but we’ll have to see how things progress.