Tarzan

Lore & Background

When G2 Esports was still carving out its identity in the European scene, Tarzan arrived as a jungler who played the map like a hunting ground. Where many European junglers favoured patient, macro-driven pathing, Tarzan treated the first twenty minutes as a war of attrition he intended to win through sheer pressure. His ganks were early, his objective steals were bold, and his willingness to dive the enemy backline with the team still assembling made every G2 game an event.

Fans in the EU LCS arenas learned to read the Tarzan tell: a slightly different jungle route, a flash in the river, a sudden collapse onto the enemy mid or ADC. The crowd would lean forward, the commentators would raise their voices, and the match would either erupt into a G2 snowball or unravel into a chaotic teamfight where G2 could lose everything in seconds. That duality—triumph and disaster arriving hand in hand—became the emotional signature of the team during those years.

His most defining stage moment came at the 2015 World Championship, where G2 punched above their weight to reach the semifinals before falling to the dominant SKT T1. Tarzan's aggressive plays in that tournament, particularly in the quarterfinal clash, became part of the early G2 mythology: a small European team making the world sit up and take notice, with a South Korean jungler at the engine of their offence. Even after his departure from the roster, the 'Tarzan era' remained a reference point for what G2 could be when the jungle was on fire.

In Their Own Story

The arena in Berlin was half-full, the kind of mid-season LCS night where the crowd is more a hum than a roar. Tarzan's screen glows blue-white in the dim booth, his fingers already moving on the mouse before the countdown even hits zero. He's on a jungler who doesn't exist in the meta—something he pulled from a scrims-only build three days ago. His support peeks at his screen, eyebrows up. Tarzan doesn't look over. He's already planning the second gank of the game, the one that will either put G2 up 3-0 by minute twelve or hand the enemy mid a 20-minute lead. He clicks 'Accept' on the draft. The crowd doesn't know yet that the next forty minutes will be the loudest they've heard all season. He takes a breath, sets his headset, and the jungle goes dark.

Reader's Guide

Tarzan (Sung Jin-hyeok) is a South Korean jungler in League of Legends, best known for his stint at G2 Esports during the formative EU LCS years of the mid-2010s. He joined a G2 roster that was still establishing itself as a competitive European force and immediately became the team's most visible and volatile offensive engine.

His tenure is most closely associated with the 2015 World Championship run, where G2 reached the semifinals and were ultimately eliminated by SKT T1. Tarzan's aggressive jungle pressure in those matches—early ganks, contested objectives, and high-risk dives—gave the team a distinctive identity on the world stage and made G2 a team other rosters had to plan around rather than dismiss.

His playing style was the antithesis of the safe, macro-first jungle meta that was emerging. Tarzan played for tempo, for the first blood, for the moment the enemy lost track of where he was. That meant G2 games under his watch were often decided in the first twenty minutes, swinging wildly between a five-man collapse and a catastrophic overextension. European fans came to love the chaos; opposing teams came to dread it.

His legacy at G2 is that of a player who made the team exciting in a way that purely disciplined rosters sometimes couldn't. He is remembered as the jungler who made G2's early era feel like a live event rather than a spreadsheet, and his name remains a touchstone when fans discuss what the club's competitive identity looked like before it evolved into the later, more structured G2 of the late 2010s and beyond.

Did You Know?

• Tarzan was a key member of the G2 roster that reached the 2015 League of Legends World Championship semifinals, where they were eliminated by SKT T1.
• His jungle style was notably more aggressive and high-risk than the prevailing European meta of the mid-2010s, making G2 matches under his watch unusually volatile.
• As a South Korean player in the European scene during a period when EU rosters were largely composed of European and North American players, Tarzan brought a distinct competitive philosophy that stood out in the region.
• He is frequently cited by EU LCS fans and commentators as one of the most entertaining junglers of the league's early competitive era.