Currency in Chaos: The Intriguing Tale of "I Am Carrying Gold from the Post-Apocalyptic World"

The main character in I Am Carrying Gold from the Post-Apocalyptic World is Wang Bin, a resourceful young man with an insatiable thirst for power and money. Events in the manga are set in two different time periods: the current modern world of today and the post-apocalyptic wasteland of the far future. Wang Bin has an extraordinary ability to travel between those two worlds on a whim, allowing him to take advantage of post-apocalyptic ruins to build and accumulate wealth in the present-day timeline.

In the narrative’s alternate post-apocalyptic period, it is said that society no longer cares about material things of any sort. The few remaining humans in existence following an apocalypse find no practical use for most objects that could have been otherwise considered valuable in the normal modern world. Although the manga does not explicitly mention how Wang Bin first acquired the ability to time-travel back and forth to the future and back, it is clear that he desires to monetize the glitch as best he can. It does not even mention how the apocalypse happened in the first place.

In theory, the mission is simple: recover as much gold and other “useless” valuables as possible from the post-apocalyptic landscape, and then bring them back to the current period to amass a huge fortune. In practice, it is not going to be an easy garbage-collection mission because the future is home to hordes of zombies and the even more threatening cannibalistic human survivors.

High Risk, High Reward

Wang Bin finds himself in a unique opportunity where he possesses the power to take a leap into the desolate world of the future, where the surviving population couldn’t care less about money, and carry everything he collects back home in the present-day timeline. At first, he is inclined to embark on the endeavor on his own but only until he comes to realize the risks are just too great to handle by himself. Like in many other end-of-the-world stories, the post-apocalyptic landscape is no place for the faint-hearted. In his gold-scavenging effort, not only does he have to break his way through voracious zombies, but also swarms of desperate survivors with an insatiable appetite for human flesh. The latter often pose a much greater threat than the undead.

A Blend of Adventure, Action, and Comedy

“I Am Carrying Gold from the Post-Apocalyptic World” is a bit of mashup genre with a healthy dose of both action and comedic elements as Wang Bin gives readers a detailed walkthrough of the two worlds. The skin-deep differences in landscape lay the perfect groundwork for the manga to highlight the discrepancies in the construct of society between today’s materialistic world and the future’s struggle for survival.

It is an adventure to showcase humans’ tendencies to find themselves in various moral conflict situations when life is at stake. The boundaries of right and wrong are not clearly defined in the harsh post-apocalyptic environment, forcing the characters to embark on many ethically questionable decisions for the sake of survival. Wang Bin is constantly walking on the thin line that separates him from being a ruthless murderer for personal gain and a savior of humanity. No one forces him to travel to the future, let alone collect resources from the post-apocalyptic world to fulfill his own materialistic goals in the present-day period. And yet that is exactly what he does.

Despite the thought-provoking theme and in between sporadic action sequences, the manga keeps the delivery lighthearted thanks to its knack for comedic elements while maintaining a cohesive storyline. Quite a lot of the adrenaline-rushing adventures lead to predictable clichés, but it does not mean the manga suffers from the lack of unexpected twists either. With plenty of laughs along the way and acceptably censored erotic bits from time to time, “I Am Carrying Gold from the Post-Apocalyptic World” offers a refreshing balance to the dark violence of the post-apocalyptic setting.

The manga is not exactly intended for adult readers and accordingly it refrains from sophisticated narrative or any potentially complex plot twists. As such, you will – unfortunately – encounter more than enough clichés and cringe moments as the story goes. Wang Bin’s exploits are essentially a power trip where he finds and obtains what he needs without having to give it any second thought. It is a pretty straightforward take on the typically complex post-apocalyptic subgenre, suitable for most readers but can be too simple for an adult audience.

We think “I Am Carrying Gold from the Post-Apocalyptic World” is at its best during the first dozen chapters or so when Wang Bin is depicted as a smart underdog in an unforgiving world. Some of the early plots, such as the free city mission and the new zombie king, are quite promising but they are somewhat lost in translation in favor of harem-related tropes. As for the actual English translation itself, the story becomes more difficult to understand in the later chapters although not entirely incompreh—

Other things you might want to know:

What are the differences between Manga, Manhwa, and Manhua?

Manga is almost always drawn in black and white, whereas manhwa and manhua are typically delivered in full color.

Manhwa is read from left to right, just like American comics. Western readers should be familiar with the layout immediately, but it is something to consider when picking up a manga due to the right-to-left reading format.

If Manhwa is traditionally South Korean’s version of comics, Manhua is a product from China, Taiwan, or Hong Kong. It is also read from right to left.