i want shun knives but i cant decide if i should get a set or pick out separate ken onion knives. should i just get a whole other set instead
For one, regardless of the manufacturer, do not buy a set. It will have more than one knife that you will never use, or is a duplicate of the other one in the same set. E.g .paring and peelingor fruit knives in the set.
Or most of the people use Santokus and shorter chef's knives exactly the same way, utility knives that are utterly useless except for cutting sandwiches in half etc...
As for the Sun brand, well it's a good one, but for that price there are better Japanese knives - Aritsugu, Masamoto, Tadatsuna, Hattori KF , Mizuno Tanrenjo , also if you do not mind carbon, you can get Takeda, Watanabe.
Blade profile of the Shun knives, especially the chef's knife is closer to German chef's knives i.e. lots fo belly, which isn't that popular with knife crowd and certainly not typical for Japanese chef's knives - Gyutos.
THe steel used in Shun classic line is VG-10 which is the same steel used by many other Japanese makers and based on my experience with those and Shuns, I prefer fwe others listed above.
Plus, there are better steels now.
