Is Ares Worth Reading? Review & Where to Read
Quick Answer
It depends heavily on what you want from a war manhwa. Ares has real ambition and a genuinely epic scope, but its execution is uneven enough that it's easy to see why reader opinion on it is so split.
Quick Verdict
“Ambitious and occasionally gripping, but the seams show often enough that this earns a recommendation with real caveats.”
Best for: Readers who want a sprawling, old-school war epic and can forgive rough plotting for genuine scale and ambition.
Not for: Readers who need consistently clear art and tightly reasoned character motivations to stay invested in a long series.
- Type
- Manhwa
- Genres
- Fantasy, Action
- Status
- Completed
- This review
- Minor Spoilers
- Author
- Ryu Kum-chel
- Publisher
- BB Comics
| Quick facts | |
|---|---|
| Format | Manhwa (shōnen), 26 volumes |
| Run | completed |
| Community score | MangaUpdates 8.3 |
Overview
Ares opens simply enough: three young men — Ares, Mikael, and Baroona — enlist together with the Temple Mercenaries, the most respected soldiers-for-hire in the ancient-Rome-flavored world of Chronos. All three have surpassing skill and murky pasts, and Ryu Kum-chel spends the early volumes building their friendship before the plot widens out into a continent-spanning war epic full of shifting alliances, betrayals, and large-scale battles.
It's an old-school shonen-adventure structure wearing war-epic clothes, and it's genuinely ambitious in scope — this isn't a small character study, it's a 26-volume story that wants to cover an entire war from multiple angles.
What it does well
The early chemistry between the three leads is the manhwa's strongest asset. Before the story escalates into full war, there's a real found-family warmth to how Ares, Mikael, and Baroona interact, and that groundwork gives later betrayals and losses actual weight instead of just shock value.
The sheer scale is also worth crediting. Ares commits to being a genuine war epic — large battles, factions with their own internal politics, a cast that spans well beyond the core trio — without resorting to filler arcs to stretch its length. And unlike a lot of long-running action series, it actually reaches a real ending that closes out its major plot threads rather than fizzling out or getting cut short.
Where it falls short
The art is the most common complaint, and it's a fair one. During the war-heavy middle volumes, characters become genuinely hard to tell apart, especially once helmets and armor start covering faces in bulk. Big battle sequences lose a lot of their impact when you can't consistently tell which side, or which specific character, you're looking at.
The plotting also gets shakier as it goes. A central antagonist's shift into full-blown villainy is more asserted by the narrative than actually built up to, and the story doesn't spend the time explaining the internal logic it clearly thinks that turn has. Dialogue outside of combat tends to be functional rather than distinctive, which makes the huge supporting cast blur together even when the art is doing its job.
Verdict
Ares is a genuinely ambitious, occasionally moving war epic that doesn't fully control its own scale. If you go in for the scope and the early trio dynamic and can tolerate rough patches in art and plotting along the way, there's a real, complete story here worth the time. If you need consistent clarity and tight characterization from a long series, this one will test your patience.
Strengths & Weaknesses
Strengths
- The scale is genuinely ambitious for its era — large battle sequences, shifting alliances, and a cast that spans a full continent's worth of factions.
- The core trio of Ares, Mikael, and Baroona have a real found-family dynamic in the early volumes that gives the later war stakes some emotional weight.
- The series commits fully to its war-epic tone without padding itself with filler arcs just to extend the page count.
- The ending actually provides closure to its major threads instead of trailing off, which a lot of long-running action manhwa fail to do.
Weaknesses
- The art struggles to differentiate characters during large battle scenes, which makes it genuinely hard to track who's fighting whom in the war-heavy middle stretch.
- A key antagonist's turn toward extreme villainy is asserted more than it's earned, with motivations that don't get the explanation the plot seems to think they have.
- Dialogue in the quieter scenes is often flat, leaning on stock lines rather than giving the cast distinct voices outside of battle.
Similar Titles
Another sprawling, dark fantasy-war manhwa from the same era with a similarly divisive reception.
Vinland Saga
A far more polished war epic if you want the scale here with tighter character work.
A different flavor of Korean action manhwa if you want tighter fight choreography and clearer art.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is Ares finished?
Yes, it's complete at 26 volumes and reaches a full ending rather than being cancelled or left open.
Is Ares licensed in English?
Not currently. There's no active official English release, so it's not something you'll find through mainstream retailers right now.
Is Ares more about war strategy or personal drama?
It leans toward personal drama and character relationships set against a war backdrop rather than detailed military strategy — the fighting is frequent, but the story's focus stays on its central trio.
