, and for another I genuinely feel like the intent is that Hayami is a terrifying genius, given how the rest of his appearances so far have leaned into presenting him as singularly frightening, even among the association. This is also just a classic scene for that kind of villain.
Strangely I never really got the impression of hayami as a genius, apart from perhaps in exploitation. He does get presented as a serious threat, but I recall the writing also putting him off as boorish as opposed to... What's his name weird grandpa who owns the fang (oh right metsudo), who is actually presented as a genius despite also being like hayami but just with another layer of chronic backstabbing.
The art really is stepping up now, isn't it? That's a fucking impact right there. It's also the first time his doofy haircut has really made sense, the way it spins like a sawblade does help sell the rotation.
But then there is everything else about him. Few things in this world are as personally offensive to me as the "men who play ballet are gay" stereotype and Keizaburo is so much only that stereotype, especially going forward after this fight ends.
One minor detail that I think's worth noting, here; the driver of that racing car is a professional. More than a professional, he's a highly skilled former superstar of the racetrack, a celebrity in his own right, as worthy of accolades in his own field as most of these fighters are in theirs.
Hayato has clearly sought this man out, specifically, and paid him a handsome fee for his talents. He's so set on this driver's participation that he pre-emptively has assassins take his family hostage, and is presumably willing to cover the cost of concealing the details behind his fiery death from the public.
He does all this, goes to all this trouble... to gain control of someone whose one and only task, in this scenario, is to put their foot down and drive a car in a straight line. This is insanely pointless. It's a role that could have been fulfilled by any random employee, any day-hire off the street, or even a brick taped to the gas pedal.
Or is it? Perhaps not, in the world of Kengan Asura. When you start thinking about why Hayato would bother doing this - beyond sheer overmoneyed egomania, which is far from impossible - you have to start thinking about why Sandro thinks he'd be doing this. And the answer, obviously, is that Julius is amazing. He's at the top of his field. And so, for his pre-fight hype display to be effective, he has to display dominance over someone else with similar qualifications. Julius wrecking a car driven by some random guy wouldn't be the same as Julius wrecking a car driven by a racing champion, because it's not a contest between Julius and the car - it's a contest between Julius and the driver. If Hayami's test had been to watch Julius break a chainsaw on his abs, he would have snagged a world-famous lumberjack for the task.
It's another flash of that weird parallel universe Kengan Asura lives in, where the nature of someone's accomplishment and skill is in some ways not treated as entirely relevant. Accountants, arms dealers, martial artists, hockey players, bodybuilders, assassins, drivers, doctors - they're all formidable. They're all Great People, locking horns astride the world.
One minor detail that I think's worth noting, here; the driver of that racing car is a professional. More than a professional, he's a highly skilled former superstar of the racetrack, a celebrity in his own right, as worthy of accolades in his own field as most of these fighters are in theirs.
Hayato has clearly sought this man out, specifically, and paid him a handsome fee for his talents. He's so set on this driver's participation that he pre-emptively has assassins take his family hostage, and is presumably willing to cover the cost of concealing the details behind his fiery death from the public.
He does all this, goes to all this trouble... to gain control of someone whose one and only task, in this scenario, is to put their foot down and drive a car in a straight line. This is insanely pointless. It's a role that could have been fulfilled by any random employee, any day-hire off the street, or even a brick taped to the gas pedal.
Or is it? Perhaps not, in the world of Kengan Asura. When you start thinking about why Hayato would bother doing this - beyond sheer overmoneyed egomania, which is far from impossible - you have to start thinking about why Sandro thinks he'd be doing this. And the answer, obviously, is that Julius is amazing. He's at the top of his field. And so, for his pre-fight hype display to be effective, he has to display dominance over someone else with similar qualifications. Julius wrecking a car driven by some random guy wouldn't be the same as Julius wrecking a car driven by a racing champion, because it's not a contest between Julius and the car - it's a contest between Julius and the driver. If Hayami's test had been to watch Julius break a chainsaw on his abs, he would have snagged a world-famous lumberjack for the task.
It's another flash of that weird parallel universe Kengan Asura lives in, where the nature of someone's accomplishment and skill is in some ways not treated as entirely relevant. Accountants, arms dealers, martial artists, hockey players, bodybuilders, assassins, drivers, doctors - they're all formidable. They're all Great People, locking horns astride the world.
I fully believe that in the world of Kengan Asura a former superstar driver has 'Racing Ki' which makes their effort in putting a pedal down to drive in a straight line inherently stronger and more effective through no mechanism known to science.
Behold the veiny glory of my enormous son Julius who is older than me.
God, Sandro being so damn good at fight choreography and so damn bad at machinations makes his attempts at grand-scale international intrigue in Omega that much more baffling.
Omega is just baffling in general, recently a guy won a fight by not breathing during the entirety of it. It's like it's written by a completely different person.
It's been a decently interesting setup so far. I like the much more ground-level setting they're going for, with it being a significantly smaller organization and all.
Sad part about this is that all this scheming behind the scenes probably wasn't even necessary.
Like look at Sawada compared to Julius. I feel like the former would put up good fight (like look at those kicks, probably would have ended damn near anyone else), probably longer than Murobuchi against Wakatsuki. But at the end of the day, I think Julius would just eventually run over Sawada like a train.
The sheer power and size difference is insane here.
It's been a decently interesting setup so far. I like the much more ground-level setting they're going for, with it being a significantly smaller organization and all.
Strike It Rich is the purest embodiment of Sandrovitch's strange attitude of 'seems to have a keen insight into particular social issues but not sure if he understands the things he describe are a problem' because its premise is, like...
The first chapter opens with a brutal takedown of why, despite her no-loss record and great technical skill, our protagonist is being fired: she's a grappler whose fights take 40 minutes to resolve, end on a tap-out, and are extremely boring to watch and she is (allegedly) not particularly hot; her boss and audience both see women's fighting as primarily a form of entertainment rather than competition, so they want quick fights between sexy women who are resolved in a satisfying KO, and she can't deliver that, so they fire her despite perfectly competent for what the job is allegedly supposed to be (win matches within the rules of underground fighting).
This is a pretty salient takedown of the sexism inherent in society's treatment of women's sports! It's a raw, real-feeling situation for our protagonist to be in!
Then she meets up with her two friends who are also losers (a corrupt female cop and a failed yakuza heiress) to build her own illegal women's fighting division...
...and within two chapters she's decided that what they need for their underground organization to take off and make them all extremely rich is to find sexy women who are primarily strikers and can deliver quick matches resolving in a satisfying KO. And also put them in sexy outfits while they're at it.
The first chapter opens with a brutal takedown of why, despite her no-loss record and great technical skill, our protagonist is being fired: she's a grappler whose fights take 40 minutes to resolve, end on a tap-out, and are extremely boring to watch
Yeah the main fighter girl is like if Ohma was a tiny schoolgirl cryptid from a cult that made her a supersoldier. It's very weird. Also I'm pretty sure she's a minor but they're keeping that on the down-low in the story.
She's a former member of that one cult that Hanafusa destroyed in his Ashura Gaiden chapter. A surprising callback, and she's apparently the reason the cult's leader decided to overthrow the government in the first place. So she's less of a "doesn't understand human society" cryptid like Ohma and more actively malicious, considering that she'll (probably) kill the main cast if they don't bring her strong enough challengers.
Strike It Rich is the purest embodiment of Sandrovitch's strange attitude of 'seems to have a keen insight into particular social issues but not sure if he understands the things he describe are a problem' because its premise is, like...
The first chapter opens with a brutal takedown of why, despite her no-loss record and great technical skill, our protagonist is being fired: she's a grappler whose fights take 40 minutes to resolve, end on a tap-out, and are extremely boring to watch and she is (allegedly) not particularly hot...
A mockey balloon bobs merrily in the air, moored by nothing more than a protruding branch. A child looks up at it from below. Very small, no older than six. He's distressed, but not screaming as a lot of children would be, instead quietly reaching up as a nearby adult tries to console him. But they needn't bother. A black lash deftly flicks upward, winding itself around the balloon's cord.
This child, with his glasses and mildly doofy haircut, has a very special friend.
Holy shit, look how cute he was!
So yeah, hello and welcome to the first Extra Chapter in my Let's Read. I recently swapped to a different definitely legitimate source when going over the manga for this thread, and this one includes the Extra Chapters. I still don't plan to necessarily do all of them, there's a Street Fighter crossover at some point that I'm definitely not touching, but this one I wanted to go over for a couple of reasons. Not least because it delights me to read something genuinely cute, and just…look at these children. If this were an anime it'd all be in pastel colours, with a pleasant and homely flute track over it. What a change of pace.
The bespectacled child, the larval form of Urita Sukizo, thanks Inaba for rescuing his balloon and invites him to his house to play. Inaba's responses are small, sub-vocal hums, but it's clear from his body language that he's delighted. He's not totally nonverbal at this age, he speaks in later pages when he has something in particular to say or ask. Maybe I'm projecting, but the coding seems kinda autistic? And not in the extravagant hollywood way either. Idk, probably not intentional, but it's still nice.
Anyway, another familiar face immediately turns up after the two trot off balloon in hand, Nishihonji Akira. A classmate of the young Urita, and apparently a frequent playmate. They talk for a while about what to play, bored of the usual standbys of tag and hide-and-seek, and this is where we get the first words out of Inaba's mouth. He wants to play catch, and the other boys are happy to oblige.
Throwing is harder than it looks, biomechanically, this is crazy.
We get a timeskip of some years, to when the boys are in Grade 12. Which is…around 17-18 years old, apparently. So Sixth-form sort of age for other brits, and final years of high school for Americans, and I'm not familiar with other school systems, so yeah. We cut to Urita looking at Inaba with a perplexed expression, immediately in the aftermath of the scrunkly lad asking to talk with him alone later. Inaba seems happy, (and is also going around on all fours, even in high school, and noone else finds it weird) but Urita feels a little off balance. Inaba's never approached him like this before, and something drops out of the bottom of his stomach. Inaba going out of his way to initiate a social interaction is so out of character that it comes off as an omen to Urita, who wonders if something has happened.
Another point in the Autism column, I reckon. I feel like my friends in highschool would have been equally concerned if I'd suddenly come over all sociable.
Cut again, to a little while later, on the old riverbank where they used to play. Urita, probably concerned and anxious, immediately presses Inaba for what he wanted to talk about, but the other boy is procrastinating. Perched on the floor like a frog, he asks Urita what's the rush, and presents a baseball and catcher's mitt. Just like old times, he wants to play some catch. Urita obliges, but as they're playing he just up and says it. You didn't call me here just to play catch, did you?
Inaba keeps throwing, but his face falls. He reminds Urita that Nishihonji's father recently died. Urita knew of course. Nishihonji had left for a different high school some time ago, but they still seem on good terms. Two weeks before this scene, his father died in a traffic accident, and Urita is empathetic. Do you think he's okay? He asks Inaba.
Inaba waffles a little. He knows he has to say it…but he doesn't want to.
Those eyes. He might as well have been stabbed.
Inaba, and I can just hear the flat tone of someone refusing to feel it in my head, talks about what happened after. His father lectured him a lot about being head of the Inaba clan and so on, but he wasn't listening. He doesn't say why. But I feel like that why is obvious from the thing he does immediately after burying his father. He goes to Nishihonji Akira and apologises.
These fucking faces, god. He looks so defeated.
Nishihonji is…very philosophical about it, for all he looks like he's simultaneously barely slept and struggled to get out of bed for weeks. He figures someone would have killed his dad eventually, with the dirty business he got up to. So no, he doesn't hate Inaba. But he does want to ask him a favour. To tell Sukizo this, all this, was between their fathers. Don't let it come between us. We musn't carry this pathetic grudge into our generation.
Fucking oof.
This, this right here, is why I wanted to talk about this chapter for real as part of the Let's Read. Because it is, bar none, the most intense moment of grim trauma in the manga (there's technically a worse and more traumatic backstory, but…we'll get to it). The moment that best sells the Kengan Association as a viper's pit of barely constrained, nihilistic violence that damages the soul of everyone in it and connected to it.
Kengan Asura talks a big game about how dark and nasty the Kengan Association is, but it's also very invested in how cool it thinks the members and the matches are, so a lot of the time it largely fails to properly sell the Association's supposed hostility. The conflicts of interest are frequently kind of small, the moments of corruption are a little contrived, the only person who's even really trying to cheat in the Annihilation Tournament is Hayami. Arguably also Nogi, but him stacking the odd is fucking nothing compared to Hayami's shenanigans. Something like this, three people in the Association's next generation bound by friendship, seeing those bonds tested by bloody subterfuge is the shit that needs to happen to properly sell the supposed brutality of the Association. And unfortunately it's secluded here in a bit of side content there's every chance a lot of readers never bothered with.
It's not perfect, the moment where Akira talks about how his dad was always going to end up like this detracts from the otherwise immaculately bleak tone of the moment. And, spoiler warning, the fact this all ends perfectly amicably without even any real distance forming between Nishihonji and the other two, similarly blunts the impact. But it's still much stronger than any other element of the Manga as a pitch for what a toxic environment the Association is. Especially with the added element of the assassin, Inaba's father, also dying in the process. And fuck, the art is on point.
Anyway, continuing on, Urita is experiencing something of a revelation. Inaba's been with him since childhood, but it never even clicked for him what Inaba was. He's an assassin, born to kill, part of a long bloodline of killers who've served his family for generations. He realises that at some point Inaba stopped voicing his own opinions to him, and damns himself for a fool. How did it take him this long to notice, he thinks as Inaba kneels before him and promises to murder anyone he desires, that Inaba was trying to change from a friend to a servant.
"STOP TREATING ME LIKE AN IDIOT, YOU DAMN SEAWEED HEAD!"
Urita howls his frustration and pain at a stunned Inaba, who can do nothing but remain motionlessly knelt, turning the word seaweed over in his head. He snaps back into awareness as Urita grabs his shoulders and yells that he never once thought of Inaba as his underling. He's always…he's never been anything less than Urita's best. Friend.
Inaba quietly reaches up to pat Urita's head, and tells him he's sorry. Five years later Urita is appointed CEO of Penasonic.
I feel like I've just read either the emotional climax or inciting incident of a whole other manga, ripped out and transplanted into a random one-off chapter of this one. Accounting for the flaws, where the chapter doesn't go hard enough, this is a really solid emotional core for an entire battle manga about existing in a horrible capitalist hellscape and trying to cling onto what few real human relationships you have. And with them, your own humanity.
I think this is good material, that gives some depth and humanity to what's otherwise sort of just a one-off antagonist. But I dunno, I still feel like there's wasted potential here.
We come back to the present. Inaba rises blearily into the waking world, asking where he is. Urita's there, to tell him it's the medical ward of the Kengan Dome. Ah, I lost, Inaba notes, but Urita tells him not to worry about it. There's always tomorrow. Inaba apologises anyway, another point in the autism column, and asks if he caused any losses, but Urita continues to be in good humour. Losses happen all the time, he shouldn't worry about it. Inaba stares at him. Is something wrong, Urita asks? Inaba in turn asks what's going on.
You look pretty happy.
And when the camera turns to Urita, he really is. His eyes are soft, and a wide, contented grin crosses his face. He's been reminiscing on the past, he says, and Inaba laughs at the coincidence. That's exactly what he'd been dreaming of too.
D'awww.
And that's the Extra chapter, Friends. It's…the sort of thing where I wish it was a main chapter, since it provides a lot of extra depth and nuance for several characters, but I also kinda see why it wasn't. It's a waste, but ultimately for Urita's role in the manga what we got was enough, and he's not going to have a significant role going forwards. Narrative Economy is just as important in visual media as in prose, if more limited by the artist's raw ability to pump out panels than by wordcount, and this would absolutely be kind of a wasted chapter during the actual run. I'm guessing it was content produced for the tankoubon?
But yeah, there's absolutely a story in here for any aspiring Fanfiction writers or Questmasters who want a starting point to expand out from. I wouldn't use the Urita family and Inaba clan, but this whole setup has potential for some juicy knife-twisting for a writer who knows how to use it.
Now, before I sign off, there's also a few 4-panel gags in here. They obviously don't work with my usual format, but I'm going to drop a couple in just 'cos I like them or they're relevant to my commentary.
First of all, they knew exactly what they were doing when Inaba was whipping Ohma.
And god damn, I do love content about normal Kure Clan schlubs just going about their day. Still wondering how noone picks up on the eyes.
If there's one thread from this whole thing that carries on, I believe it's Nishihonji himself. He's still mostly just a cool older brother to Cosmo, but there'll be moments later where you can very clearly see the guy is in fact more ruthless than he seems. I like him a lot, out of all the CEOs going around.
That said, this definitely should have been part of Inaba's fight as his backstory. Woulda gotten me a lot more invested in him, even if he was clearly just there to job to Ohma.
There was once a man they called the God of Karate. His name was Futoyama Baitatsu.
I'm fairly sure this cube of a man is an original creation of the manga, but his feats are all the classics. Ascetic practices like meditating under waterfalls, winning duels with the strongest fighters of his day, killing a bull with his fists alone. Too many legends to mention, the manga says. But only one is relevant for today. A relatively small little story, a single question. His finest student at the time wanted to know which style, of all the opponent's he's fought, gave him the hardest time. He closed his eyes, immersed in memories of the past. Then, after a moment's silence, he said with stern solemnity…
Never fight a ballet dancer.
Unfortunately for him, Meguro Masaki has never had a head for any advice, and doesn't have access to the script, so he leaps in heedlessly. It's a linear assault, from a man confident in his advantage, outmassing his opponent by a significant margin. Then Sawada blocks the punch with the sole of his foot, stomping its force downwards, throwing Meguro off balance and hopping off it into the air.
Futoyama's answer continues in this page, as Meguro's offense gets stuffed. Ballet dancers, you see, possess complete control and awareness of their body. It's how they can dance like they do, such perfect balance and grace with nary a full foot's worth of traction. And of sports, they have shocking resilience, and flexibility. If a Ballet Dancer learned how to kick…
Nikaido understands why Meguro can't seem to touch Sawada, and hosts today's episode of Facts With Kengan Asura. Sawada's kicks possess enough force to completely overwhelm the weight difference between him and Meguro, and the secret is rotation. The force of a kick is in large part determined by the torque generated by the martial artist, between their arms, torso and hips even before it reaches their legs. Increasing the range of joint motion by just a few centimetres can drastically boost the power of a kick, placing flexibility at a premium. And Sawada's starting from a position of tremendous flexibility, given his history in Ballet, to say nothing of the fact the man spins like a goddamn beyblade before unleashing his bone-shaking kicks. Sawada has already taken down a lot of opponents bigger than him just like this, some several times his size. His kicks have a perfect combination of reach, flexibility and incredible power.
To prove this he's the one to rush Meguro this time, and the man is helpless. Sawada kicks the leg out from under him as he tries to rise, then snaps his head back and follows with a flurry of kicks faster than most fighters can punch, from a dozen different angles, before blasting him back the length of the corridor. It's a fierce, brutal rushdown, the equal or better of anything we've seen from any of the heavier fighters so far, and the art sells the sheer pain of every hit.
And yet, Meguro just won't stay down.
ThisIsFine.jpg
Something in Meguro, already not exactly the most stable joker in the house of cards, seems to have snapped. He babbles about killing Sawada and, surprisingly, Nikaido's reaction is not disinterest but concern for the plan. Well, also a healthy dose of disgust. He actually contemplates killing Meguro himself for a moment, to stop his rampage from sending the plan to hell, but he's forestalled by Julius telling him to restrain the madman. The giant strides past Nikaido, noting that Sawada was supposed to be his opponent to begin with. The most logical option is for him to take care of this. He needs no assistance.
The two fighters square up, as it always should have been. Julius is silent, focused, and Sawada sees his opportunity. A one on one fight, he can win this now.
Of the two, Julius is actually the first to speak. Aren't you going to come at me? What's the matter? Sawada scoffs at his impatience, and tells him to come on then. He said before that he'll give Julius a…science lesson? It's been a little while since I read the last few chapters of this scene, but I don't recall that. Whatever, it's all smacktalk, and Julius decides to humour him. All his unparalleled beef hurtles toward Sawada at obscene speeds for his mass. Contrary to his appearance, all that muscle isn't just for show.
Sawada's confident though.
Let it rip!
Julius isn't stupid, he knows what's up. Sawada's building up force for a counterattack, leveraging the phenomenal torque of his fighting style along with Julius' own weight to break him. He predicts that the attack will be a mid-range kick, aiming to obliterate his ribs, and without hesitation adjusts the angle of his charge to compensate. Tensing his shoulder muscles, which will receive the blow, he accelerates for the final push.
He was wrong. It's a feint. The kick pivots upwards.
Right into Julius' neck.
Look at this kick, just look at it. The rotational force passing far beyond Sawada's body, an unbound typhoon spilling into the world around him. A twister above his head, dust storms about his foot. The trailing tails of his hair winding themselves tightly around his body by no design of their own, and his leg passing into near invisibility, to the naked eye nothing less than a reaper's sickle, a killing curve of lethal intent.
Every element of the art and narrative leans into this. The phenomenal force of the kick, right at the base of Julius' neck, his head an incoherent blur to surely match what's left of his consciousness. Julius' selling point is his sheer mass, Sawada's is a unique and flashy martial art. Everything that Kengan Asura is screams in triumph for Sawada's victory.
And yet.
Sawada immediately realises what happened. Julius, with an explosive tensing of his trapezoidal muscle, blocked the blow. The Monster grips Sawada's leg. This is your technique? He asks. A kick to the cervical vertebrae?
How absurd.
The corridor fills with a gruesome, organic crackling as Julius' fist squeezes shut, and Sawada's leg near liquifies under the pressure. You fools, he says, are always talking about techniques and secret arts. But that is no more than the ravings of the weak.Those who are truly strong…
Okay, there's a couple of things going on here. First of all, let's not just leave it unsaid, Julius is a massive hypocrite. It's much more obvious in the sequel manga, but there's a fantastic example of it in this chapter too.
Do you have any idea what an incredible feat of skill and reaction speed the way he blocked Sawada's kick is? Like yeah, it's not possible without having trained the sort of body that could tense a muscle that hard, but that's like half of practising a martial art to begin with. Do you think masters of Muay Thai perform hard extremity conditioning for shits and giggles? No, of course not, and all the same having that bulk to begin with isn't a saving grace on its own. Force can and will project through untensed muscle like the clappers, the reason Sawada's kick didn't send Julius to la la land isn't just his massive muscles, it's the fact he knows exactly how to use them and had the reaction speed to adjust to Sawada's feint. And hey, isn't there a word for extremely precise and deliberate applications of human anatomy for the purposes of defending your body? Oh yeah, fucking technique. An extremely simple and direct sort of technique, but no less a technique for it. Is Wakatsuki Takeshi's karate any less of a martial art for its directness? No, not at all. Hell, this is foundationally identical to Ohma's Adamantine Kata.
You won because of a technique, bro. I know you're understandably proud of the miracle of endocrinology that is your body, but it's not a mark of shame that you know how to use it.
And the other thing? Take a good look at Julius. Take a real good look. Can you in good conscience tell me that this man wouldn't be a low tier mook in the vast majority of other martial arts manga? I know for a fact a lot of you have picked up on it already, I've seen it discussed after previous updates, but Julius is probably the clearest example of Kengan Asura's fairly unusual treatment of sheer mass as a trait in combat.
Most manga of this sort will pay lip service to the idea of being bigger making for a significant advantage in a fight. It's a good way of making an early antagonist threatening to your presently relatively unskilled, undeveloped protagonist without making them insurmountable. The big guy will be slow, ponderous and generally unthreatening once the protagonist has developed any combat sense, and from that point onwards characters who fight with sheer mass will be second string at best. Their size sets them apart from normal people, but the real threats are the people of more measured scale, but the most skill.
Kengan Asura…doesn't really make that distinction. And it respects sheer mass as a strength of its own.
Which isn't to say it strictly leans into size overcoming skill consistently, of the matches so far the smaller/lighter fighter has won 3 out of 5 times, Ohma beat Sekibayashi way back when, and Meguro was absolutely helpless to do anything to Sawada. This is still very much a martial arts manga, and the better martial artist will generally win out in the end. However, Kengan Asura very much asserts that sheer mass has its own very potent suite of advantages, and not so much having the usual exaggerated downsides. Julius obviously can't hold a candle to Sawada in acceleration, but he's equally clearly not ponderous. Adam Dudley could very easily have turned his fight around, Kono Haruo would probably destroy most other fighters in his bracket with his combination of superhuman power and ludicrous agility. It's an interesting attitude I feel, in large part because of how balanced and nuanced it is, while still ultimately leaning into the direction that's most interesting.
Let's be honest, a manga where the biggest guy consistently won because of his bigness would be very fucking dull.
And last but not least, Sawada Keizaburo. What an odd duck. I'm honestly not sure what to think, after this chapter? He's clearly being worfed right here, this is a very sudden stretch of hype to be dropping on his head, and yet…it feels like more effort went into this than the usual token bit of positivity? Like, just for a start, he absolutely wiped the floor with Meguro, the man couldn't touch him. Meguro has his own shit going on that explains why he wouldn't go down, but Sawada absolutely has the ability to decisively put him in the ground. And not to beat around the bush, but holy shit the art goes in hard selling Sawada as a legitimate threat. And yet…he's still patently being sacrificed on the altar of Julius' next fight. But he's also being given serious respect as a fighter before Julius steps in. Much more than I'd ever have expected for the comedy homosexual, especially given we also have Yoshitake, a much less kindly treated example, to compare against. But then, there were also several moments in this scene where the ol' "It's very important that you know I like men, and I'm going to be rather silly about it" gag got rolled out, so I dunno.
His hair is still dumb, either way.
Anyway, we were reading a, uh…oh right there we were.
Sawada crumples to the floor, passing out from the combined pain of his shin being reduced to decorative gravel and being swung into the wall like a cloth having the dust beaten out of it. Togawa is distraught and terrified, and Julius is contemplative. Just to be safe, he decides to break the other leg too.
And then…a thing of pure beauty.
Ooooooooh something magical is about to happen, I can feel it.
But you'll have to wait, I'm afraid. I know, I'm cruel. End Chapter.
See you all next time, for some of the best Yamashita content so far.
It's weird that Julius has no backstory. His extremely weird philosophy and arbitrary definition of what does and does not count as a technique sort of makes you think there'd be something there, right? Some trauma that gave him a psychotic obsession with strength and mass, or something like that. But no, he's just a genius who deliberately chooses to not get better at martial arts, because he thinks clowning on martial artists with nothing but gains is really funny.
Edit: Like seriously, the dude would rather inject enough steroids to kill 99% of people to increase his muscle mass by 10-20% than just learn some footwork and practice some combinations. I can't help but respect the hustle.
IIRC that 'techniques are needed by those who lack strength' line was previously used in the context of Berserker in Fate/Stay Night. Is it a cliche in Japanese media, a deliberate reference, or just a coincidence?
e:
The attacks he sends out are just smashing swings with no technique to them.
But that's enough.
If there is overwhelming power and speed, there is no room for technique.
Techniques are something humans invented to compensate for their weaknesses.
Weaknesses are things that giant doesn't have.
IIRC that 'techniques are needed by those who lack strength' line was previously used in the context of Berserker in Fate/Stay Night. Is it a cliche in Japanese media, a deliberate reference, or just a coincidence?
It's sort of a subversion of the idiom "techniques exist to allow the weak to defeat the strong". The logic being that if technique exists for the weak, then using technique makes you weak.
