Side Note: Goodridge is wearing a dobok (not a gi) because he officially entered the tournament as a representative of Kuk Sul Won by beating the KSW guy who was supposed to enter in a dojo challenge match and "Would you like to rep our style in the UFC here's a uniform and a black belt" because the early days of UFC/MMA in general were the wild, WILD West.
Early UFC is the closest comparison I can make to Kengan in real life. UFC1 in particular had basically no rules, no weight classes, and some radically different styles going at each other in it. Just absolutely wild shit as people threw things at the wall and saw what stuck. And it's pretty demonstrative to the need to know what you're doing if you end up against a good grappler. The hardest fight Gracie had in it was against Ken Shamrock who was able to give him a good fight on the ground. The others would often try something but just not be able to deal with the speed they were up against on the ground.
Last time we ended on a moment of dramatic irony. Let's see how that actually played out!
You see, as Wakatsuki and company were waxing lyrical on how fucked Okubo is, he wasn't idle. He was charging Agito with a low-profile bullrush, arms set to grab his entire body. Agito answered in kind, ready to push the tackle down from his position of superior height. Then Okubo refused to play along. His fist snaps up in a sudden haymaker, right to Agito's head, and the Fang's vision swims. In this moment of passivity, Okubo follows up again, piledriving Agito into the arena floor and mounting him. Agito doesn't just let him pound away this time, Okubo only gets a few hits in before he gets thrown off, but as Agito tries to rush him down afterwards he is greeted by Okubo's knee.
He's not cooperating.
As Okubo slashes at Agito's temple with an elbow, the manga takes a step back to elaborate. This, you see, is Okubo's specialty. Mixed Martial Arts is, by nature, a combat form which incorporates a wide variety of fields of unarmed combat. It's not a specialist style, and in the MMA ring practitioners are frequently expected to deal with every field, sometimes in sequence. The manga then proceeds to note for posterity that, yes, Agito was correct in his assessment last chapter. None of Okubo's specs compare, with a nice little set of graphs to drive the point home. Okubo is, in every individual field of combat, inferior to Kano Agito. Does this mean Okubo is helpless?
Not at all.
If Agito wanted a slugging match, Okubo would respond by grappling. If Agito tried to take things to the ground, Okubo would keep him on his feet. Every time Agito tried to take the match a certain direction, Okubo would drag it in a different one, forcing a lurch in Agito's rhythm. And then we see it in action.
From a blow Okubo proceeds to judo throw Agito. On landing he puts him in a chokehold. When Agito breaks free with a blow, Okubo shoots back with a tackling grab. From there he proceeds smoothly into another piledriver, this time pivoting back to his feet to wind his leg back to shoot for the back of the net.
Sayaka is quick to leap on the drama of such a tremendous hit, as Agito skids over the arena floor face-down. Right in the face, that was, is he dead? Has the Fang of Metsudo finally lost? Up in the observation box, Okubo has managed to wipe the smile off Metsudo's face. The old man muses on how strong he is, on the fluid seamlessness between his techniques even as he shifts between entire different kinds of offense. No flashy techniques, overwhelming prowess in the fundamentals is Okubo Naoya's forte. It's possibly the first show of genuine respect we've seen from Metsudo this entire manga, and honestly it's well earned. The last ten pages were an absolute smorgasbord of action, but in the way that makes it kind of hard to take a screencap of. No one panel, save for that kick, was particularly spectacular, but the way they all flow into each other perfectly sells how smoothly Okubo was executing on his unique gameplan.
Beside Metsudo, Okubo's employer is musing on a past conversation they had. The one where Okubo agreed to fight for him in the Kengan Matches actually, over a meal of sumptuously cooked steak. The subject of the conversation was apparently stunt matches, as we fade into the flashback on Okubo scoffing at the idea of fighting a bear or lion. He doesn't do that, that's, well, stunt performer shit. He's a martial artist, he doesn't give a shit if he can beat up a bear, he's here to fight humans. And as we come back to the present, the monocled CEO notes that he knew he saw something special in Okubo.
And yeah. Down in the arena, Himuro is screaming at Okubo not to just let Agito recover. The match isn't over yet, don't drop your guard, give him hell. But obviously Okubo knows better than that. His guard isn't down in the least. That kick? He never used it after his earliest days in MMA, after he nearly killed his first opponent with it. But just now, he went for Agito with every ounce of his strength…
Teeny tiny bit redundant, since we've already seen him do a big psycho smile once already…but no, actually. This isn't the same kind of smile at all, is it? That last smile was smug, validated, lording his strength over an opponent he knew was weaker than him. This is a zoned out grin of feral delight. The fightmonkey realising he doesn't outclass this opponent that hard after all. Now he's really being unleashed.
Chapter 115 begins on Agito's great, big, gurning mug as it gives everyone looking chills. Wakatsuki is tense, Sakura is…something…and Akiyama has fucking shadows around her eyes and is trembling like she's having some sort of flashback. It's honestly a little unsettling, right up until the point Okubo points out like an annoying roommate that he can actually see Agito's face because of the monitors.
You know, they've got some impressive camera crews working live in there if they knew to zoom in on Agito's face like that.
Anyway, that's not all that's impressive. As his mouth asks Agito if he wants another round, Okubo's brain is considering what just happened. If the man can stand, that kick must not have landed properly. He must have gone limp at the moment of impact to disperse the shock, and the fact he knew to do that means he's adapting to Okubo's tactics. On the fly. Something Okubo's never experienced before.
Gotta love the enthusiasm. The man knows exactly what he's about and isn't intimidated by an unexpected shift.
Which isn't to say that when we hit the next page and Agito is already in smooching range quicker than a blink he isn't a bit taken aback. Agito's fast as fuck, but not necessarily faster than Okubo's reflexes. The King of Combat doesn't hesitate at all, immediately bringing his arms in to grab Agito. But the Fang is one step ahead. As Okubo's arms come in, Agito grabs one of them, and as Okubo is processing this he lashes out with a vicious uppercut. Okubo blocks it, just, but it leaves his palm swollen and smoking, and it's only the start of Agito's offensive. The man is a blur, punches come down like rain, and Okubo skids backwards under the overwhelming pressure.
And then he sees his moment. A blow wound up just an inch too far.
It's just a shame that Kanoh Agito, the Fang of Metsudo, isn't done adapting.
Okubo's eyes go vacant. The arena tilts in his vision. This is where Okubo's memory of the match ends.
Agito catches him and wheels the man around in the air, the heat of battle carrying him forward on a wave of blood and violence into a front suplex. Once Okubo is on the floor he's already mounted, and…nothing. Agito doesn't do a thing. His fist remains raised for several long seconds as both announcers vocally wonder what's going on, why he froze.
The humanity returns to Agito's eyes, and his smile fades into a complicated frown, bangs hanging over his face. It's a shockingly nuanced expression compared to the wacky nightmare grin he's had this entire match, a subdued mixture of frustration and disappointment. His hand drops, and he thanks Okubo right to his vacant face. He's become stronger once again, because of how Okubo pushed him.
Then he rises to his feet and addresses the referee by name, admonishing him for not stopping the match. It seems he's the only one who noticed Okubo was knocked out. It happened just that suddenly.
Before we go on, I'd just like to note how much I appreciate how messy Agito looks here. Recall how clean he's looked in all his previous appearances. Hair slicked back, flat expression, pointy jawline, he didn't look particularly remarkable? But even without the psycho grin, with his hair hanging around his bloodied face I feel like it finally hits. He looks the part.
Up in the observation box, Metsudo has a little chuckle and calls this a close one, but it seems much more sincere than usual. Or at least, that's the read I get from his art. And then he follows up with a really nice lead in to talk about this match and how well it sells Agito as the ultimate physical wall of the tournament. The final boss for Ohma. In Metsudo's own words…
"Agito's true merit is in 'evolution.' And it looks like he's gained another level in this match."
Just like with match 15, this is another Favourite To Win match. But this time the burden is even more significant. The Fang has been hyped up for almost a hundred chapters before the match even started, a simple one-sided contest with a point of engagement worked in wouldn't be enough, the Fang needed to stand not just above in ability but be a completely different kind of opponent. And so, this match makes two major decisions in its presentation that set it apart.
First, the choice of opponent. Okubo is very much another heavyweight of the tournament, every bit in the same class as fighters like Wakatsuki and Gaolang. And this match goes hard in proving that. More than any other match in the entire tournament so far this one had long stretches of completely wordless panels where we were invited to simply drink in the technical proficiency and precision of the exchanges on display. No gimmicks or special weirdness, just two fighters at the top of their game grinding against each other like honed blades, lovingly rendered without distraction. And of course the bait and switch, which feeds smoothly into the nature of Okubo as an opponent. Everyone present declaring that Okubo doesn't match up to the Fang in any way, and being objectively correct, and then Okubo managing to claw it back anyway. Okubo's is a fighting style that actively defies the notion of specific superiority, seemingly custom designed to defeat fighters that outclass him by raking them over, refusing to allow them to actually apply that strength. It's a genius idea for a fighter, and utilises his history as the king of MMA perfectly, Okubo is the living embodiment of the Mixed part of Mixed Martial Arts. The manga manages to set up the underdog win brilliantly, and for a moment it's possible to wonder.
And of course, Agito wins anyway. And the why is very important.
Wakatsuki's showcase was of a lot of things, his serious focus and pragmatically direct style, but especially it raised the element of his superhuman power. Agito is not as physically strong as Wakatsuki, even if he is a superb physical specimen, one of the tallest and heaviest people in the roster. Kuroki's match focused on the perfection of his technique, and though Agito's mastery in all fields of combat is clear, it's not the focus here. Indeed, that mastery was used to build heat for Okubo's own fighting style, which defied simple notions of opponents being better than you at things.
The thing with Agito is that he's a motherfucking shonen protagonist. That's the thing at play here, the specific privilege of strength he has. In battle manga, the protagonist is frequently undertrained but has tremendous wits and ability to learn on the fly, what little traditional training they can squeeze in crystallising in a tight spot to show them the way forward. So many important fights will turn when the protagonist makes a midfight breakthrough, finding an important evolution in their style that allows the plot to progress. They adapt and evolve obscenely quickly in the heat of battle. It's a terrifying quality, we just don't usually fully appreciate that because it's being applied to the protagonist as a source of tension, as they enter fights unready to defeat the foe at hand. So imagine that skill applied to an antagonist who is already replete with experience and training, and a fully grown man.
Oh wait you don't have to, he's right fucking there. He even kind of looks like the adult version of a normal shonen protagonist.
And this isn't just a question of how he stands out against the other Top Tiers of the tournament, in a way this sort of Adaptation is the Ultimate strength in this sort of context. The kind that can, given the opportunity, produce a variety of other strengths depending on what they're confronted with, what they need. Not necessarily invincible, but given Agito lacks the normal weaknesses such a character has then it's a threat of uncommonly convincing potency. There's no real counter to it. Theoretically, whatever you do he can adapt to, your only choice is to adapt right back or overcome him quickly. Now, we've already seen in several matches that having a theoretical counter isn't the be-all-end-all, but it's still a source of security to have something like that. And Agito's evolutionary speed strips that away. And consider what the tournament format means for a character like this. At minimum he's fighting motherfucking Gaolang Wongsawat next! And before the finals chances are good he'll fight the apex of technique as well. Agito's matchups are stacked, and even leaving aside the sheer heat those wins will build, each one is likely to genuinely make him stronger. And it all starts here, against a man he was supposed to outclass in every way, who still punched him in the fucking face. And that's what gives you the edge in fear, as an antagonist. A decisive, hard won victory over a bona fide, with no end of respect paid to the loser. It takes real writing chops to make a fight like this, make one man look dominant while maintaining the other's top tier heat, but god damn if the Kengan Asura team didn't pull it off.
Well, that's the post match wrapup done a little early, where were we? Right, yeah, we were in the observation box, where a sad CEO notes to Metsudo that ultimately he doesn't regret hiring Okubo. He believes the man can make it one day. And it really is kind of a shame too, Okubo really would have fucking wiped the floor with most of the roster, and it wouldn't even be close. His Kengan match record looks deceptively bad. Off behind the two business moguls though, the masked Bodyguard muses on something that admittedly clashes a little with everything we've seen so far. That Okubo is lucky, and if it had been more of an even match he'd be dead. Which…I guess it kind of makes sense in a purely mechanical sense, if Okubo had been quick enough to deflect that last punch but not the followup he might have gotten his head caved in, but it really doesn't mesh with the tone or how everyone else is treating the fight. Even Metsudo, literally the most arrogant man alive.
I'm going to put it down to him placing Agito on a pedestal and move on.
Down in the entry corridor, Agito has run into Wakatsuki and the two are posturing at each other. Not in an extravagant or actively hostile way, neither of them are like that. More just matter of fact observations that imply how ready each is to invert the other's face. Agito notes wakatsuki's fight with Murobuchi, and how much Wakatsuki has improved. Wakatsuki insists that's nothing and he hasn't even used his secrets yet, Agito responds by noting there's two fighters in the left block which outclass Wakatsuki (which is…who exactly? I know from previous reads that one of the guys he means is Julius, but I'm genuinely unsure who else could possibly measure up), Wakatsuki warns him he doesn't have the luxury to worry about others…it's all perfectly polite and yet the air is thick with tension. Enough that Akiyama is shocked by how blatantly Wakatsuki is baring his teeth, compared to how he is usually.
And then this shitlord decides to crash the party.
Ohma, I recommend you recapture your chill real quick or one of these two men is going to fucking strangle you with it. You might be the protagonist, but anyone can tell you have fucking work to do before you start antagonising pro players while you're still knocking about in the Diamond ranks. End chapter.
And…yeah, that's that done. I already did the full match analysis, so we're finished here. That's all 16 matches of the first round complete, over the course of 69 (nice) chapters, around 49 updates and the better part of a year of updating. We aren't completely done with the actual events of Round 1 yet, but the matches at least are done.
See you next time for the cleanup. And presumably the death of Tokita Ohma, if he doesn't shut his mouth.
Off behind the two business moguls though, the masked Bodyguard muses on something that admittedly clashes a little with everything we've seen so far. That Okubo is lucky, and if it had been more of an even match he'd be dead. Which…I guess it kind of makes sense in a purely mechanical sense, if Okubo had been quick enough to deflect that last punch but not the followup he might have gotten his head caved in, but it really doesn't mesh with the tone or how everyone else is treating the fight
I think the implication here is if Agito had been pushed a bit harder he would've not gotten his control back before smashing a defeated opponent, rather than Agito not trying his hardest prior to that.
One thing I find fascinating as a narrative choice is how Agito is treated precisely like a shonen protagonist: He is never, in this entire manga, going to have an easy fight. The final boss of this manga is never shown as someone so overpoweringly strong that we can't see how he could be beat; on the contrary, every fight he's in Agito struggles. It's a delightful thing to see and makes Agito so much more engaging as a character, that we see him have so much difficulty and still overcome and overpower his opponents to prove his title as the strongest.
And on that subject... Ah, Okubo. It is a crime that this man has one of the worst win-loss ratios of this manga because he is clearly one of the best fighters in it. I love his style; in a manga of old masters and honed techniques, Okubo is simply so good at fighting, so purely skilled at being on the ground dealing with another guy while they both try to beat each other up, that he stands to the giants of the setting and punches them in the face regardless of what they want. Okubo is a delight to see and the level of respect he's given is downright refreshing.
What an absolutely fantastic fucking fight, and the perfect introduction to the absolute unit that is Agito. Okubo made a damn good showing but he was always meant to go the way of Murobuchi, appropriately enough for old friends.
This is also one of the best fights in the anime, for just how clean and straightforward it is. @Omicronmentioned back after the Wakatsuki vs Murobuchi match that the anime's greatest strength of its 3D style is "Mechanical motion":
Pivoting on one's feet, extending a punch, two men grappling one another - anything that is just 'how these two bodies move in space and interact with each other,'
The individual referees get their own little character notes in some of the later chapters, including their tendencies towards calling matches.
Hattori here specifically "tends to call his matches slower because he places more stress on the flow of the match", and if you look at the others they're all basically as accurate:
Koishi (first one, big and bald) tends to be slower to call his matches, which can have drastic consequences (as it did for Mokichi).
Mosashi (Second, glasses) is known for being harsh (...debatable. He's introduced being VERY paranoid about Kaburagi way back in chapter 9 but lets Kiozan get away with some shit in his match).
Anna (Third, female) calls matches a little early (which tracks; fighters after her matches tend to get up quicker, maybe even in the match if she DIDN'T call them as quickly).
It's neat bit of subtle characterization even on some of the most minor characters, and opens a minor plot hole in the anime that only has Koishi, making him looking very inconsistent in his calls.
That my friend is what we call a feedback loop. After twelve hours of going at it, Agito will have as much CE as Yuta and Mahoraga will have learned every martial art on earth(and a few from other planets).
That Okubo is lucky, and if it had been more of an even match he'd be dead. Which…I guess it kind of makes sense in a purely mechanical sense, if Okubo had been quick enough to deflect that last punch but not the followup he might have gotten his head caved in
I think it's mentioned later on that Agito has only killed like, ten people I think? Which is, uh, not great, but in a league like the Kengan Association, with super strength like his, it's a sign that he actually shows a lot of restraint.
This is also an interesting bit of foreshadowing for how Agito's fighting style actually works, which only becomes clear in his fight with Gaolang.
Agito's fighting style is called "Formless." He doesn't use a single martial art, he just learns every technique he can from just about every martial art you can think of, and then his brain tries to automatically assign what the best technique for a given situation is. However, this gives him one major problem: because Agito knows so many moves, his brain has to select out of a massive pool. It's like the fighting equivalent of what happens when you hit the endgame of an RPG and your mage has learned every single spell in the game, and you're now scrolling through a huge list of magic spoiled for choice every time you make an attack. Because of this, Agito's reaction time is just a little bit slower than you'd expect for a fighter of his caliber.
By contrast, Okubo only really knows two styles, but he knows them extremely well and he's spent a lot of time learning how to use them in tandem. While Agito knows a hundred different ways to throw a straight jab, Okubo really only knows one, but that one way happens to be very good, and he knows by pure reflex what to do right after his jab connects, while Agito has to mentally sort through a thousand different ways to follow up on a straight jab. And this is how Okubo is able to surpass Agito, if only briefly.
Okubo is in a unique position among fighters in that he isn't in a unique position, really, and I think it's really interesting to observe and break down.
One of Kengan Ashura's running themes is that having one fancy trick, even when that trick borders on literal magic, isn't enough to carry you at the peak of combat. You need fundamentals. You need extreme physical fitness. Wakatsuki is a freak of nature, but he's also a good fighter on a technical level. Kaneda's Foresight is a genuinely incredible skill, but he simply doesn't have the physical frame to endure the punishment it takes to activate it in time, or the physical ability to act on his predictions once he does.
But by the same token... People with total commitment, years of practice and experience, and physical fitness are many. You need some kind of edge. Kure Raian (yes, we all rag on him, but the manga means for him to be a contender) has all the Kure training but he also has 100% Removal, which is just fucking magic. Kuroki Gensai is the ultimate Old Master archetype, but he also has the Devil Lance, which is quite literally an 'edge'; the human body doesn't work that way. Wakatsuki has good technique, but he is first and foremost a superhuman freak of nature. Gaolang doesn't have a 'magic trick,' but there is a lot of emphasis put on how fighting without gloves is essentially taking the power limiters off his striking power to allow him, specifically, incredibly fast, incredibly powerful punches as his trademark technique (but more on Gaolong in a moment).
Okubo doesn't really have that. He is one of the best fighters in the world, but he doesn't have the physical edge against Agito, that much is clear from the first cleaver-shaped kick hitting his thigh. And he doesn't have an Advance or a Devil Lance or anything like that. All he has is pure technique, move to move to move, just the dirty business of actually blocking and actually dodging and actually hitting the other guy in the face and actually getting him in a grapple and doing that until the other breaks... And the Fang also has better technique. He doesn't have the advantage anywhere, really.
But the thing everyone finds out after Agito declares that he's downloaded Okubo's moveset and Okubo won't touch him again, Metsudo goes "he's finally stopped playing with his food!" and Wakatsuki writes Okubo's eulogy from the stands, is that there is a level of strength at which you cannot be ignored. It takes an incredible arrogance to look at one of the world's greatest fighters and say, "Now that I have studied all his moves and know my stats are better, he will simply never hit me again." Wrong, idiot! Get punched in the face.
And this ties into the one thing Gaolang and Okubo have in common, alone among all the other Kengan fighters (Sekibayashi being an odd exception in the middle, as pro wrestling is kind of its own thing): They're public fighters. Which means they can't have a 'hidden edge.' That's the open secret everyone tacitly agrees not to talk about in this series (except Kaneda and Chiba, for whom this is their only hope at victory): any surprise advantage or unique quirk these two have would be instantly publicized and analyzed and dissected the moment they used it in a match. The highest tier of Kengan matches are private, and if your best fighter loses to Kiryu's Rakshasa's Palm, you aren't going to go public with it, you're going to keep the knowledge of the Palm to you until you've found a counter to it because knowing its existence is the only unique advantage you have against Kiryu compared to everyone else. Nor does seeing the Palm, or Rei's Lightning Flash or any of these moves, once in a single fight mean you have a complete understanding of it and can prepare a counter.
Meanwhile, almost every fight Gaolang and Okubo took part in is recorded from multiple angles in glorious 4k. They probably have fan wikis where people break down the exact speed of their individual punches. Everyone knows everything about them. Their only option when coming to an underground fighting ring full of secretive asshole with superpowers and ancestral techniques to break down human limits and special hits no living human has seen before and who also have studied every public match Okubo and Gaolang ever fought in preparation for this day is to be strong enough that it doesn't matter. Their only recourse is to Just Be That Good.
There's no magic trick to beating Okubo Naoya. Your first step is: You have to be faster, stronger, have more stamina, and have better technique than him. The Fang checks all these boxes. That's good.
Now you actually do still have to beat him.
Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the face.
Incidentally, this is still a very insightful way of describing the fight, because even here Okubo didn't really lose because his One Weird Trick got shut down. Agito got one over on him while he was unprepared for his sudden growth and that one hit instantly put him into a coma, but if he hadn't, well… I don't think Okubo had a chance by that point, but I don't think he was out of the fight, either. Okubo didn't make a mistake, Agito just made the perfect move, and in a lot of ways that makes both parties even scarier.
I don't think Okubo ever had a chance in the end, and that becomes clear once Agito "evolves", after which the fight ends in two moves: Agito rushes in, has his attack blocked, and then lets Okubo come in so he can counter Okubo's own style. He wasn't going to close the gap between them, no matter how small his synthesis of skills made that gap become: it was a matter of when Agito would adapt to his fighting style, and so the fight ended exactly as soon he showed himself skilled enough that Agito turned his fightmonkey brain on.
The real testament to Okubo's skill here is that he made that happen, while coming in cold having never seen the Fang at all; and there's a really interesting bit to compare that with right before this fight: when Wakatsuki has his flashback to his first fight with Agito, we can clearly see that Wakatsuki could not reach Agito enough to get his fightmonkey brain going. Okubo did that, and he did it without Wakatsuki's strength or any of the special techniques of gifts the other fighters have; he got that far with pure skill and knowledge of how to leverage what he knows.
Okubo is a fantastic character, both as a fighter and a person, and I wish he got more to do in the story than he does. He was never going to win this tournament, but he was gonna give some people hell to get past him.
Agito responds by noting there's two fighters in the left block which outclass Wakatsuki (which is…who exactly? I know from previous reads that one of the guys he means is Julius, but I'm genuinely unsure who else could possibly measure up)
And on that subject... Ah, Okubo. It is a crime that this man has one of the worst win-loss ratios of this manga because he is clearly one of the best fighters in it.
Well, that's the post match wrapup done a little early, where were we? Right, yeah, we were in the observation box, where a sad CEO notes to Metsudo that ultimately he doesn't regret hiring Okubo. He believes the man can make it one day. And it really is kind of a shame too, Okubo really would have fucking wiped the floor with most of the roster, and it wouldn't even be close. His Kengan match record looks deceptively bad. Off behind the two business moguls though, the masked Bodyguard muses on something that admittedly clashes a little with everything we've seen so far. That Okubo is lucky, and if it had been more of an even match he'd be dead. Which…I guess it kind of makes sense in a purely mechanical sense, if Okubo had been quick enough to deflect that last punch but not the followup he might have gotten his head caved in, but it really doesn't mesh with the tone or how everyone else is treating the fight. Even Metsudo, literally the most arrogant man alive.
I take this more as an establishing character moment for Agito. Okubou gave him enough fight to push him into his bloodlust but the fight ended just a little to quickly for Agito to completely lose control of himself. Agito has a beast inside him but it's not as simple as his real collected self just being a mask.
Okubou is in the perfect spot to really push Agito and force him to get better without being really strong enough to face him once the chains come off.
We begin on Okubo's final memories of the match. Agito, hair fluttering in the wind of his passage, unleashing a left straight that becomes a feint for the right hook that intercepts Okubo's shift in technique. Then nothing.
And then the changing room ceiling. Himuro and Kushida are there.
He sits up abruptly, some lingering instinct from the fight, but then he just. Sits there. Silently, for a moment, as he stares into the opposing wall before speaking. He lost, didn't he? He doesn't get a response, as he further wonders what the hell he just saw. What happened about halfway through the fight. He was keeping up until then, but…
Despair isn't a good look on Okubo.
This, Himuro muses, is the true danger of the fang. He pierces not just his opponents flesh, but the way he fights, his immeasurable capacity, the fact you fought so hard to match him and then he just…entirely shifts in paradigm mid-fight, it pierces through to their soul. Breaks the fighting spirit. The will to keep pushing, to be the best. The Fang is the breaker of fangs, disarming his opponents and stripping them of their dreams. It's an extremely evocative impact for an antagonist to have on people, and it's sold doubly well by the person chosen to demonstrate it. Okubo, your hero, as he'd put it, shivering like a wet cat with his head clutched between his hands as he struggles to process what he's been through. He's very clearly one of the best fighters in the tournament, and one of the most firmly confident at that. Not just presented as completely secure in his strength, but very thoroughly established within the fight itself as secure for good fucking reasons. He's a man whose fist can and did reach the Fang. And he's still been left shaken, grasping at the foundations of the art. How do you beat someone like that? Someone who can meet you at your best, and the instant you find a crack in their strength into which to dig your fingers it seals shut and sprouts spines?
This is what it's like to fight the eternally adapting top shelf genius, the sort of person who doesn't just improve during a fight but can enter entirely new realms of untouchability in a matter of moments. In a way, the Fang really is the closest thing in reality to the illusion Chiba tried to conjure, though he doesn't do it in any such trite a way as copying an opponent's specific techniques. He simply finds the seams in them, bites deep, and breaks them wide open. This is what it means to be the Fang.
And it is this man that Ohma, who struggled with a mid-tier assassin, is presently antagonising in one of the arena's entry corridors. With a smug expression of blissful ignorance, he calls Agito a Greased Up Asshole and tells him that Tokita Ohma will be the champion of the left block.
While everyone else is still processing the audacity of this bitch, Akiyama shouts him down, tells him not to provoke Agito now. Which is just, incredibly funny, because Agito immediately tells her it's fine, because Ohma couldn't fucking scratch him. Complete and total disrespect, which very obviously gets to Ohma as well. And just as Kuroki lectured Rihito, so Agito lectures Ohma now. You are weak, he says. He kind of ruins it by pointing to Raian as strong, but I can dismiss that as the blatant hand of the author, since he then also notes that Wakatsuki is in a completely different league to Ohma. Winning the left block will be impossible for him. And frankly, at this point he's right. It totally is.
But of course, Ohma's never taken shit like this well, especially when his chill is off on a smoke break somewhere.
Absolutely beautiful. Ohma still isn't as much of an aggro piece of shit as he was in the earliest chapters, but god damn bro what the fuck were you thinking. Even if he didn't get distracted by a bodiless voice at the last second, Agito was still gonna play his head like a drum set.
As Wakatsuki stands between the women and the fight (which for once I'm not gonna particularly judge the manga for, they're secretaries) and Agito comments on the miserable performance from Ohma, the man himself is busy wondering what the fuck just happened. He could swear he heard "his" voice for a second. The classic, nebulous japanese "him". Fortunately the manga doesn't fuck us around all that much, and the next pages show us exactly who it was, as he tells Ohma that, yeah, the fucker's right. You can't beat him right now. As everyone peers at Ohma with varying flavours of bafflement, he looks up into the eyes of Tokita Niko. The phantom, that is, which we saw previously in Ohma's head. And he immediately confirms that no he still isn't alive, he's still a figment of Ohma's imagination, and Ohma must look like such a tit to the people watching him.
And then calls him a massive fucking idiot for trying to throw away the life that Niko saved, as a vision of Niko striking Ohma's midriff flashes behind his eyes.
As Ohma reels, sweating and gasping, incapable of processing what the fuck he just saw, Niko tuts. Still can't remember, huh? Well, as Ohma is now, Niko agrees he's weak. He can't beat Wakatsuki, and he certainly can't beat Agito. Not unless he goes back to his old self. But if he does…he's going to die. Ohma's "restraints" are coming off as they speak, though, so either way Ohma's kind of fucked right now.
Hey! More progression on the Ohma mystery subplot. Granted, this is as much as anything just a reminder that it even exists, how many chapters ago did we get the Nosebleed and all that shit? But there are a couple of itty bitty steps forward here. Whatever happened, now we know it involved some kind of fight, but not necessarily a hostile one, since Ohma knows Niko died to save his life. We already had a bunch of hints that Ohma hasn't got long to live, and could definitely infer that it's connected to the Advance, but now we have direct links being drawn between it and Ohma's overall strength. We know Ohma isn't up to par with the Tournament's real heavy hitters, we've seen all of them now and Ohma just got fucking styled on by the favourite to win. And now the manga is drawing a specific mechanism by which he could rise up to par, tying it into his personal arc and progression. And it's even something which doesn't stress suspension of disbelief too much, he isn't magically multiplying in strength, he's remembering things he used to know. In theory it's a great angle, tying mechanical progression to personal progression is a classic move, but we'll have to see going forward how well it actually gets executed on. It's barely been a presence so far, which isn't exactly a fault of Ohma's storytelling specifically so much as the format sidelining him for so much of the first round, but that's nothing a good storyteller can't work around. There's hope going forward, in the less wildly expansive second round, for Ohma to be more of a character but I guess we'll have to see.
And it definitely isn't happening this chapter, 'cos he screams his head out at Niko and is immediately choked the fuck out by Metsudo's bodyguards. The masked guy and the goatee'd one specifically, the ones that are always around Metsudo himself. And I'm not exaggerating either, Ohma's out cold. Akiyama's shocked they did it so easily, even given they snuck up on him, but frankly Ohma got pingponged around the corridor like a pachinko ball, I'd be surprised if he didn't have a concussion, and was presently literally hallucinating. It was probably the easiest job they've had all day.
Then they chide Agito, reminding him that fights outside of the Matches are forbidden, and the funny fucker responds that he didn't fight at all. He kicked a pebble out of his way.
Absolute disrespect.
Wakatsuki then takes a moment to ponder for the audience's benefit on the present situation, with all three of Metsudo's top Bodyguards present in one room. The Three Crows. The Fang himself of course. Takayama Minoru, the one with the mask and the man considered closest to the Fang in strength. And of course goatee guy, Omori Masamichi, the previous Fang of Metsudo. Who is here with a message to all the fighters, from Katahara Metsudo.
And with that…we get a nice little roster summary, of the people passing on to the second round.
The winner of match one, Imai Cosmo, hangs out with Adam Dudley eating chicken drumsticks.
The winner of match two, Akoya Seishu, walks tersely next to his situationship in the Dome's depths.
The winner of match three, Kure Raian, is going on a lovely nature walk, probably grinning at a passing bird.
The winner of match five, yes I know we missed one don't worry about it, Wakatsuki Takeshi stares his most serious stare at the messenger.
The winner of match six, Julius Reinholdt, pulses ominously in a dark room.
The winner of match seven, Muteba Gizenga, is wearing an absolutely fabulously dapper white suit as Togami snarls into her phone behind him.
The winner of match eight, Sekibayashi Jun, chats with his new student as the massive boy happily eats an ice cream cone which is probably normally sized but in his hands looks comically tiny.
The winner of match nine, Yoroizuka Saw Paing, poses for the front cover of a sports magazine.
The winner of match ten, Mikazuchi Rei, poses for the front cover of a high budget romantic drama.
The winner of match eleven, Kuroki Gensai, drinks whiskey on the rocks in a dark room while visibly wondering if he was too harsh earlier.
The winner of match twelve, Kiryu Setsuna, smiles quietly under a cloudy sky.
The winner of match thirteen, Hatsumi Sen, smokes anxiously in a well lit room using the most extravagantly long pipe I've ever seen outside the hands of a woman in a kimono.
The winner of match fourteen, Bando Yohei, is nowhere to be found.
The winner of match fifteen, Gaolang Wongsawat, kneels before his king.
The winder of match sixteen, Kanoh Agito, scowls into the camera.
And then we get the funniest fucking panel in the manga.
Our protagonist, ladies and gentlemen. Could you possibly have imagined this sort of indignity when we started? I couldn't have. I mean, if I hadn't read the manga already. You know what I mean.
The prologue is over, the manga tells us. And even fiercer battles are to come. I'm looking forward to them.
Part one, fin. And no, I'm not covering the second genderswap special that ends this volume. Fuck off.
And that's Round One! Thank you all for keeping up, this was a long haul.
I'll be taking a break now, to rest up and rebuild my buffer. After the christmas special next monday, updates will resume on February 2nd, and we'll begin the leadup to the next round.
Because if you thought there was some bangers in round 1? Well you were right, but god damn. Now we've gotten rid of the chaff we have some real ones coming.
See you next week for The Dragon, The Hero and the Courier, then in february for round 2, my beautiful readers.
The Four Komas are nice, though. There's two funny ones about King Rama - we learn that he travels everywhere by elephant, and always has a huge retinue accompany him, which are both very funny things to do, especially as the premise of the Komas are that he's trying to be incognito.
We also have Seki feeding Cosmo, where Cosmo just eats everything Seki cooks for him, while Seki stands behind him like a proud grandma.
And finally, there's one funny one where Karla is chatting with Fusu the sniper Kure over the phone about Ohma, and gives a brief physical description, prompting Fusu to mentally imagine this:
from "Nice Body, Strong, and Seaweed hair". It's cute, doesnt' diminish Karla, and isn't even horribly sexist or anything.
I love how Agito fucking ping pongs him between the wall and ceilings. Ohma watched that entire match and still went "Nah I'd win" before instantly getting kicked so hard he bounced off the ceiling. Really his mindset still seems stuck in proving his cred by picking a fight with the toughest guy he can find.
Also seeing all the heat being built up for a match between Ohma and Agito, which will continue as we get the Other Niko stuff, makes Kuroki swooping in and devil lancing through the plot armor all the more interesting. I think it's pretty clear he was planned to win from the start but the level of narrative red herring is impressive.
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