Hand Jumper
www.webtoons.com
Sayeon Lee despises Aberrants. They wreak havoc on society with their strange, unthinkable powers. It's just too bad she happens to be an Aberrant herself! Forced to fend for her life in the deadly Aberrant Corps, she's determined to make it to the top, and her unusual ability should help her -- if she can figure out how to use it in time.

Title: Hand Jumper

Type: Webcomic

Year: 2022-?

Country: United States(?)*

Genre: Action/Thriller

Status: Ongoing

Platform: Webtoon (read here)

Appropriate for 30+?: Yes

My rating: 4.25/5 stars

(Rating scale: 5/5 = masterpiece, 4/5 = quite good, 3/5 = mostly good, 2/5 = bleh, 1/5 = I regret ever being exposed to this series, 0/5 = affront to humanity))

*The series is written in English, takes place in South Korea, and the author is reportedly Korean-American

Hand Jumper may be yet another entry into the over-saturated “super-power dystopia” genre, but so far it’s proving itself a superior series to most of its peers. It features plenty of exhausted tropes (the protagonist has an OP-yet-difficult-to-master superpower, the setting is “super-power boot camp,” only the cream of the crop will succeed, the “good guys” aren’t actually good, etc), but despite all this Hand Jumper still manages to feel fresh. The overall quality of the series has a big role in this: the pacing is great, the characters are (mostly) interesting, the art is unique and striking, the plot is engaging, and most importantly, the series is showing signs of actual depth (at least, for its genre).

One of my biggest gripes with a lot of South Korean action series is that they don’t seem to actually have anything to say: the violence serves no purpose other than to be entertaining, the villains only exist to advance the plot, injustice is present only as an obstacle for characters to overcome, and the setting has little depth beyond “imagine a world where [premise], wouldn’t that be cool/shitty/terrifying?” This is especially true for dystopias, for any dystopia story lacking any kind of underlying message is just torture porn. Hand Jumper is only ~50 chapters in and is still developing its world, but the seeds are planted for some interesting thematic exploration in future chapters. It reminds me a bit of the X-Men series: humans without powers fear those with powers, so discrimination, human rights violations, and terrorism inevitably follow. I also suspect the author is crafting a subtle critique of modern South Korean society—where students are expected to throw themselves into an academic battle royale with other youth to compete for corporate jobs, just for those corporations to treat their employees like disposable resources—however perhaps that’s just my interpretation. I highly suspect that Hand Jumper’s status as a hybrid series (the author is Korean-American, so while the series is set in South Korea and fits squarely into the Korean action genre, it bares a distinctive western flare) gives it an edge in this regard. Also rare in SK works: the protagonist recognizes from the start that the world she lives in is fucked up and wants to fix it, at first by being part of the system, and then after recognizing how broken it is, by blowing it up from the inside. I can’t help but assume the discourse over the last few years in the United States about our broken police and judicial systems is a clear influence. I fully expect a “seeking power to change a corrupt system is itself corrupting” theme to emerge at some point. The series also succeeds where most fail at having a cast of strong female characters (the gender balance is actually somewhat female-skewed, very rare for a non-exploitative action series), and body proportions for both sexes are refreshingly restrained (no beach-ball-boobs or cheese-grater-abs here!)

Most characters are in the 18-to-20-something range, however they generally act with maturity, and the series is devoid of grating “teenage hi-jinks,” so I think it’s still enjoyable for the 30-and-up crowd. The series has little sexual content to speak of, but does include some brutal violence. However the violence feels proportional to and appropriate for the setting and plot, and isn’t flippant or gratuitous. I would give the series a 16+ rating. I struggled between giving the series 4.5 stars (for being great at what it does) and 4 stars (because despite having some fresh takes and twists, it still suffers from being part of a tired, well-trodden sub-genre), so I gave it a rare 4.25 stars as a placeholder until season two shakes out and the series has a chance to really show us what it’s got.