Garouden

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Garouden is penned by Keisuke Itagaki, of Grappler Baki fame. Like Baki, it is a series about jaw-dropping, brutal fights between unique, realistic characters one wants to learn more about, all told with many helpings of humor and self-deprecation.

Unlike Baki, the manga is largely based on the best-selling action books, from a different author, and follow a very different story arc and approach towards combat. The fighting is vastly more realistic. In fact, of every manga and anime I've seen, it's the closest to legitimate mixed martial arts.

The grapplers are shown as mostly dominating the pure strikers, and the submission ... specialists eat the karatekas for breakfast, but both karatekas and wrestlers alike have to adapt new techniques to improve and defeat their many rivals.

It's neat watching a master karateka learn armbars and a sprawl, or a big, beefy wrestler employing the high kick.

Beyond simply the action, the manga is remarkable for its style. The main hero, Tanba Bunshichi, is, without a doubt, one of the coolest characters I have ever come across in any medium.

From his clothes, to his facial design, to his body posture, his charisma leaps off of the very page one is holding. His always calm demeanor is contrasted against his psychotic obsession for fighting, and a complete lack of regard for social convention.

Throughout the series, he will, upon finding a powerful fighter, either pursue them, or fight them on the spot. Most of the other characters, from the arrogant, cruel Great Tatsumi, (modeled on the great Antonio Inoki) a legendary wrestler who has become a powerful tycoon, to the ruthless, mysterious Fujimaki Jyouzo, who attacks capable fighters on the streets with no warning, and cripples them, are also captivating and interesting.

The series has a number of plot arcs, many highly unconventional for a simple action series, from Crybaby Sakura's quest to finally cry (he has no eyes), to Fujimaki's desire for redemption and his lost lady love, to the rivalry between the FAW pro wrestlers and Shozan Matsuo's Hokushin-style karate dojos, to Tanba's desire to smash every fighter standing in his way.

If you enjoy fighting, action, unconventional characters, or gripping storylines, you have to check out this classic.

Seeing as I'm an Martial Arts manga fan, MMA fan, Martial Arts fan, Karate fan, Wrestling fan, Pro Wrestling fan, Realistic Fighting fan, AND Combat Sports fan, I can honestly say that Garouden is my favorite manga series of all time. I'm starting to feel that EVERYTHING in this series is catered just for my tastes, and with that, I gave a 10 on everything (except art, which I gave a 9) because I'm definitely the target fanbase of this series and pretty much everything I wanted in a martial arts manga is seen here, and it's done a lot more realistically (despite manga exaggeration) ... compared to other martial arts mangas.

In a way, the settings of the whole series felt like it was the 90s Japan in MMA, as it remained being dominated by traditional martial artists like karatekas and pro wrestlers who do both works and shoots. There's also a ton of real life martial arts and MMA references in the series, and hardcore fans of either one will be able to see what are those.

Anyway, one of the main reasons I love the series is how it illustrates martial arts a lot more realistically than most other series, and that there are no true heroes, just martial artists each with their own ambition and desire to fight and win.

Another is the story, especially how it addresses the various philosophical aspects of martial arts, on tradition and on change, on how sport and competition situations differs from the street. A bit of history in this too regarding the early days of MMA in Japan, with the "style VS style" aspect and how pro wrestlers do shoots in their shows. The story's credit goes to the original author of "Garouden" which originally started as a novel by Baku Yumemaru (as the manga is illustrated by Keisuke Itagaki, the author of the Baki the Grappler series)

But in general, if you're a fan of any of the things I want (as mentioned on the first paragraph), give this series a read, as there's a good chance you'll love it, especially now that nearly all the volumes are scanlated in this ongoing series.

Be sure to give it a chance, as early on, the art is quite primitive and unrefined, but that only goes on up to the 3rd volume or so, as the art improves significantly by the Crybaby Sakura/GREAT Tatsumi arc. The action and the story is top-notch, especially considering it's a martial arts manga based from a novel.

And as a side note, be sure to check out the Japanese PS2 game of Garouden (called Garouden Breakblow) and its sequel (called Garouden Breakblow : Fist or Twist, which are now my favorite fighting games of all time.

Garouden is the manga adaptation of the famous Martial Arts franchise of the same name, if you are a Baki the Grappler enjoyer you probably has heard of this series due to them having the same Artist and Martial Arts enthusiast, Keisuke Itagaki, and well, you wouldn't be wrong if you guessed that both of these manga are extremely similar to each other, to the point that nowadays, Garouden has been retconned to be part of the same universe as Baki, the series also suffers from the same issues and problems i have with Baki so it's similarities aren't that great of a thing.


The Art: ...
Itagaki's art style is very "peculiar" and odd looking, for some it can look ugly, gross, unappealling, etc, but i really like he's artstyle, i'd even say it's one of my favorite art styles in the manga industry, the over-the-top expressions and the easy to follow action scenes are extremely satisfying and easy to get through, the art has an certain fluidity to it, you can also see a lot of the artists evolution through out the years, since the series started in the mid 90s and only "concluded" in the early 2010s.

9/10


Characters:
Tanba Bunshichi is the main character, and he is alright, not great just alright, he is a cocky dojo crasher who only lives for fighting, he also doesn't really care about honor or any traditions since he isn't above using dirty tricks to win street brawls, but much like in Baki the side-characters are the ones that steal the show, but in Garouden this is taken to a even further extent because there are entire story arcs that Tanba is barely even a side-character or isn't even present, like in Tatsumi's arc or the "Fist and Twist Tournament arc" where the Wrestler Hiroshi Nagata is pretty much the main character, the main "Villain" if you even could call him that is Shozan Matsuo and he is build up to be one of the Strongest Men in the world but a fight with him never happens so he doesn't really do much aside from Organizing the Tournament.

5.5/10

Story:
Well not much to be said here since what moves the story are the fights which don't have much writing except for the Martial Arts stuff and characters reading their opponents, the best story arc by far though is Tatsumi's arc, where we actually get some clever writing and some emotional stakes it is short but it serves as a pretty good backstory for the character, the following arc is the Tournament, where Grapplers and Strikers test their skills to prove who's the strongest of them all, it is very similar to the Maximum Tournament in Baki the problem here is that the battles are extremely short, lasting for only 1 chapter, 2 if you are lucky, which is very small in comparison to the Maximum Tournament which had fights last for at least 3 chapters, most fights are extremely one-sided and predictable too, the moment the 2 fighters get revealed you can already tell who'll win, and this becomes very frustrating after nearly 100 chapters of just that, the final arc is nothing to write home about, since it never actually got a conclusion, the manga "ends" before it could do that.


6/10


The "Ending"
It seems the Garouden manga was always on and off about chapter releases since Itagaki was working on his own manga he probably couldn't keep up with it, so volume releases were basically more than a year apart from each other, so the manga kinda was in a hiatus until it was confirmed it ended and wouldn't be receiving anymore chapters, the manga basically ends on a big cliffhanger.


Overall Enjoyment
This a pretty fun Fighting Manga if you turn your brain off, it has it's problems but they aren't that big of a deal, if you like Baki or Tough you'll probably have a blast with Garouden, it also has a pretty cheap but decent 3D fighter for the Ps2 so you can enjoy some even more Garouden content.

7/10