The Spring 2025 K-Comics Guide

FFF-Class Trashero

What's It About? 

After ten years of grinding , Hansoo Kang has slayed the demon king and earned his ticket back home. Or at least he would have had he not biffed his performance as the "Chosen Hero." Seeing the underhanded tactics Hansoo used to make it this far, the powers that be send him back to the first day of his transmigration. Can Kangsoo learn that being a hero means more than just saving the day?

FFF-Class Trashero has a story by Parnar and art by Kkangmu. It is based on a work by Parnar. English translation and lettering by Tapas Entertainment. Published by Tapas Entertainment (March 31, 2025). Rated T+.

Is It Worth Reading?

MrAJCosplay
Rating:

I have no idea what this story is trying to do. Isekai stories are a diamond dozen at this point, so trying to figure out whether a story is good can boil down to how well it stands out above the crowd. I've seen a lot of stories try to subvert the overall setup of the isekai premise and go in a more comedically self-aware direction. That seemed to be the direction that Trashhero was going, but with every chapter, it felt like the story couldn't decide on where it was heading with that set up.

The idea that our protagonist is a little bit of a dick is fine and the overall setup of him being sent back to the beginning of his journey because he was a dick is also fine. The problem is that the story is now at war with itself for the sake of narrative progression. We can't have a protagonist learn his lesson too early because he has to hate his current circumstances to create narrative conflict. But we also can't make him edgy or dark because then it would be a completely different story. Speaking of lessons, the book also can't decide on what lesson our protagonist is supposed to learn. The circumstances by which he gets sent back in time to the beginning of his journey were incredibly extreme and kind of dark, but the story doesn't treat it like that. We never really lose that self-aware tone despite the actions of our protagonist.

It seems like we are taking an edgy antihero and trying to turn them into a genuine hero. But then our explanation for the story's premise is that our hero didn't suffer enough hardships or appreciate his journey more so we need to make him go through that story again, so he can appreciate it more? What is the point of this story? You can't tie a character to a journey that you also admit doesn't really matter, or have some vague governing force dictate the life of our protagonist if you're not going to fully commit to him rebelling against it.

I could forgive all of that if the story was more of a comedy and the art style is on the more cartoony side, which leads to some great expressions. But I didn't really find myself laughing at any of the actual jokes. The humor itself is a mix of self-aware jabs at the genre and cynical character interactions. If you're into that stuff then maybe there is some appeal in this but personally, there needed to be a consistent point to it all to grip me and based on these first couple of chapters, I didn't really find it. If anything, I just found the story very irritating and hard to read, so I can't really in good conscience recommend it.