Eclipse Hunter is a novel series by Yu Wo, the author of ½ Prince and The Legend of Sun Knight. The series follows the same entertaining mix of Serious Business and wacky comedy, all whilst throwing hot guys and intense action into the mix. Translations of the novel can be read here
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The story takes place in the year 2105. Nations have fallen and large trading organizations have risen to take their place. Amongst these organizations, the Solaris Group shines over all, holding more power and influence than any other organization. The group has always been ruled by the Solaris Emperor.
The actual story begins when the new Solaris Emperor, Devon Solaris, is about to take over. He's just turned 24 and has demanded the return of his little brother, Daren, whom Devon's father blames for his wife's death. After seven years of asking, he finally gets his wish, but not as he expected. In the past seven years, Daren has been turned into a living weapon, a cyborg named Dark Sun. Devon, maddened by this atrocity, proceeds to kill almost everyone in the room. But before Devon can finish the job, the last man alive, Theodore Avery, explains that he had taken pity upon Daren and had saved his emotions. With Devon's simple orders, Daren is back, but still with the mind and emotional maturity of a 7-year-old child.
Devon loves his brother with every fiber of his being and quickly uses his power and influence to set up a second life for his little brother so that he can have a chance to live the life of a normal teenager.
Throw in Daren's decision to attend a battle school specially designed for body guards and soldiers, Daren's issues with hiding the fact that he's Dark Sun and some classic Yu Wo comedy, and you have a wonderfully entertaining piece of literature.
These novels provides examples of
- Abusive Parents/Parental Neglect: Devon and Daren's father was flat-out cruel to Daren, isolating him in the attic and using him as a guinea pig in the cyborg bodyguard experiment, and was at the very least distant from Devon.
- Academy of Adventure: YeLan Academy.
- Big Brother Instinct: Devon's devotion toward Daren is Played for Drama, Played for Laughs, and brought up to eleven in the course of the first issue.
- Big Damn Heroes: Dark Sun pulls this off as part of the climax of book one.
- Cool Big Sis: Subverted. Eloise thinks of herself as this, but when she hugs Daren, he's utterly terrified.
- Courting Catwoman/Villainous Crush: The Lunaris Emperor openly admits that he's head-over-heels for Devon, who at least liked/courted/encouraged him when they first met/saw each other on a semi-regular, non-professional basis (although Devon thought he was a girl), and didn't know who the other was. Whether Devon still returns his interest hasn't been clarified.
- Dude Looks Like a Lady: It turns out that Devon did have mutual feelings towards the Lunaris Emperor, but that was because his feminine looks, long hair, and traditional Chinese attire (which is out-and-out explained to be rather dress-like by western standards) made him look like a girl. When Yuer finally confessed, he'd chopped most of his hair off and had decided to wear western clothing, making his status as a guy more clear... which rendered him completely unrecognizable to Devon.
- Expy: The Solaris Emperor bears a striking resemblance to the Sun Knight from The Legend of Sun Knight.
- Family-Unfriendly Death: About a dozen in the first chapter.
- Fiery Redhead: Ezart gets very worked up when irritated or about to fight. Subverted with Elian, who has red hair but is rather calm and composed.
- Forgets to Eat: Papa Avery will happily spend days down in the basement lab until the only way to tell him apart from the corpses on his operating tables is that he's usually still upright. During this time he doesn't eat or sleep. Daren knocks him out and drags him upstairs to sleep, eat, and get his clothes in the laundry when he spends too long down there.
- I Have No Son!: Daren is disowned from birth by his father.
- Informed Attribute: And how. Never has the Solaris Emperor shown his supposedly impeccable planning and negotiating skills that are eulogized again and again in both the prologues of each book and within the narration.
- I Will Find You: Devon searches desperately for his little brother when his father takes him away.
- Mad Scientist: First subverted then played straight with Theodore: he saves Daren's personality and emotions...and is later shown butchering human corpses with a surgical knife.
- Manchild: Daren's a borderline case, being only about fourteen: he's been living in a lab since he was seven and has next to no practical knowledge of the world beyond it, so as a result he generally reacts to most things much like a seven-year-old would, but he's by no means stupid. He typically comes off as excessively, cluelessly optimistic: Ezart asks if he's been living under a rock for most of his life (which is unintentionally pretty close to the truth).
- Paper-Thin Disguise: Given Devon's general failure to recognize most people after they change even a minor part of their appearance, one of these would probably work on him every time. Unintentionally used by Yuer when he cut his hair and wore a different style of clothes and was as a result not recognized when he wanted to be.
- Parental Substitute: "Papa" Avery, partially forced by Devon, becomes a quasi-father figure to Dar.
- Person of Mass Destruction: Any student in the Elite Combat Section, as well as Ezart, Dark Sun, and probably Shain Baylian, although we haven't seen as much of him.
- Promotion to Parent: Devon becomes the parent figure to Daren after killing their father.
- The Family That Slays Together: Devon wields a gun, Daren is a cyborg bodyguard, and Avery is a mad scientist.
- The Masquerade: See Secret Identity below.
- Thicker Than Water: Devon would do anything for Daren, and vice versa.
- Secret Identity: Daren must hide the fact that he's Dark Sun from the student body as part of his older brother's wishes. This becomes more complicated when the principal of YeLan Academy notices his talent and sends his best students to recruit him to the school's Elite Combat Section.
- Split Personality: Not a full-blown example, but the difference between "Daren" and "Dark Sun" falls in line with the spirit of the trope.
- Super-Strength: Ezart, Dark Sun, and Eloise most notably.
- 20 Minutes into the Future
