Karate Shoukoushi Kohinata Minoru (caught up)
I'll just be frank, I think this is awesome. Those who like other popular sports manga like Ippo should be be into this fairly quickly (say ~v3 for first acceptance and ~v6 for confidently liking, and from there it gets a TON better). And it has tournaments. Lots and lots of tournaments.
But yeah it starts off pretty mediocre. I'm not sure if I said it but when I read the first 3 volumes I was saying how both Ippo and Holyland are way better. At this point I think Hawk/Sendo-era Ippo is way better, but that's as far as those two go. Where it's now, current-Ippo and Holyland aren't really up to it.
It's sort of similar to both Ippo and Holyland. Ippo in the general coherency of the manga (and some of the humor), and Holyland in the short-and-decisive style of fights (though that's pretty much what karate is) with quick splashes of brilliant tactics. Also some of the character archetypes are similar, but not too much.
When I say "short-and-decisive with splashes of brilliance" that's about he best description I can give it. Some of the fights are real rides to read because they're so damn complex due to being so short. Almost consistently, the final move in a fight gets me to smile. Good stuff.
Differences to those two include the MC graduating from being a bitch ass really fast. Unlike Ippo this guy fights out of anger more than any other reason (and unlike Ippo he doesn't charge up his fist for 2 minutes when he does).
In general I consider sports MCs to be sorta.. not that good (rather, every other character is way more likable than them). But I like this guy.
tl;dr (the new and commercialized
bullet point version! specifically spoiler-proof!)
- Solid competitive martial arts manga
- Gets
way better in the second half of what's translated
- Has similarities to
Ippo and
Holyland (the kinds that you... well, I, love Ippo and Holyland for)
- Fights are short, but specialize in awesome finishers
On another note now I realize why my caught up posts are so dang positive sometimes. I just don't write the negatives (which I do have eff wy ay!)!
But hell with it I'm not writing any. I guess I wanted an excuse for whoever's wary of my hyperbolism.
I was really surprised, by the way, that it'd have such solid tournaments because it's.. not that popular at all. But I'm betting that's because most of the really good volumes were translated in 2011.
Edit: Also, the genre says Seinen, but dunno it looked pretty shonen to me. It has some pixelated dicks, so I guess that's why.