8 Best Slowburn Manhwa

There are hundreds and hundreds of different manhwa out there to read. While this subcategory might seem like it’s a bit more ‘niche’ compared to the manga industry, it really isn’t.

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There are a lot of options to choose from when picking a manhwa to read, and not all of them start off all that incredible. Here are some of the best examples of manhwa that start out a bit slow, but gradually become absolutely incredible reads.

8 Solo Leveling

Starts Out Awesome But Steadily Gets Better and Better

This first inclusion is likely going to surprise quite a few people, considering how popular of a series Solo Leveling is. All that said, this series does start rather slow by design. Sung Jinwoo starts off incredibly weak, and while his growth as a hunter after his double awakening is unprecedented, it does still feel like it takes a while in the grand scheme of the story.

Even the point in the story where the first season of the anime adaptation ends isn’t even where Solo Leveling ‘really’ takes off.

7 Tower Of God

Designed So That You’re Discovering All the Mysteries Alongside Bam

Tower of God is another one that’s designed to be a slow-burn series. At the start, the readers/viewers know just as much as Bam does, though he obviously knows a bit more about who Rachel is as a person.

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As he climbs the tower and meets more interesting characters and is introduced to more of the core concepts of the Tower, such as Shinsu, the story starts to really take off. Saying any more would be a big spoiler, but take our word for it that this series absolutely picks up the pace after a certain point.

6 Legend Of The Northern Blade

Jin-Mu Won Is Truly on an Odyssey of Revenge

The Legend of the Northern Blade is the first ‘Murim’ or ‘Wuxia’ type manhwa on here, and it’s one that gradually and gradually builds to bigger and most ‘bombastic’ fights. Jin Mu-Won is an incredibly interesting protagonist, and his initial naivety and kindness being wrung out of him by the cruelness of the Murim is part of what makes this series such a slow burn. That, and the fact that Jin Mu-Won’s fights only get better and better over time.

5 SSS-Class Revival Hunter

Starts Pretty Typical, Eventually Becomes Anything But

SSS-Class Revival Hunter is one of our personal favorite stories of all time, as Kim Gonja is a truly one-of-a-kind protagonist. He’s absolutely out of his mind in quite a few ways, but there’s no other protagonist who aims to understand the person he’s talking to more than him.

And, while initially, this starts as a very stereotypical ‘regression’ or ‘time travel’ story, as Gonja gets further up the Tower the more this becomes something truly unique and almost spiritual. The manhwa hasn’t quite reached this point yet, but at the time of writing this, it isn’t very far off.

4 Teenage Mercenary

The Plot Is Always Pretty Predictable, But It Doesn’t Matter

This next Manhwa, a story called Teenage Mercenary, is one that is slow at the start, and then after a certain point maintains a pretty consistent level of action and quality throughout. In Teenage Mercenary, the protagonist Yu Ijin was in a plane crash as a kid that left him stranded in a foreign country and forced to be a child soldier to survive.

After finally making it back home years later, Ijin tries to reintegrate back into society, but things constantly keep popping up that requires his vast combat experience and time as a mercenary to solve. And once Ijin starts participating in activities like this, he doesn’t really stop, which is where a lot of the slow-burn enjoyment comes from.

3 The Beginning After The End

It Just Keeps Getting Darker & Darker

The Beginning After the End is a story that’s similar to SSS-Revival Hunter in one specific way, both isekai stories seem like they’re going to be one thing when they start, but then they become something entirely different.

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At the start, The Beginning After the End seems like it’ll be a story similar to something like Jobless Reincarnation where the main character is reborn into a new world with all the advantages of having an adult mind as a child. However, this story becomes pretty dark and heavy after a certain point, and never really turns back around after that.

2 Doom Breaker

Zephyr’s War Against The Demon God Worshippers Is Not A Short One

Doom Breaker is another darker story that very much seems like it’ll be the standard ‘power fantasy’ time-regression story, and it still kind of does fit that mold. However, very early on Zephyr proves that he’s not the typical sort of regression hero, he’s much less of a self-insert and much more of his own character.

Additionally, he’s far from fighting this battle on his own like most of these MCs tend to do. Rather, Zephyr and his band of allies are basically fighting a secret war against the Demon God Worshippers at all times.

1 Return Of The Mad Demon

Lee Zaha Remains Unpredictable Throughout

And for the last entry, Return of the Mad Demon is a true slow burn in terms of how likable the MC is. At the start, Lee Zaha is not exactly unlikable, but he’s far from the standard likable MC. But, as Lee Jaha starts making more and more unpredictable decisions and having more and more incomprehensible conversations with other martial masters, he really starts to grow on the reader.

Once a reader is caught up on this manhwa, they’ll be looking forward to every single new chapter just so they can see what truly ‘mad’ conversation or decision Lee Jaha will be a part of this time.

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