fun fact i started reading new weekly shonen jump chapters for the first time in late 2023 so this was actually the first ever series that i was fully caught up with & then was also there with everyone else reading the final chapter the day that it dropped. have seen stuff get axed live these last couple years now, but will always be cool remembering this was the first i was ever there for. rly would've never predicted an mma manga being one of the first ones i ever checked out, but i guess that's the cool thing you learn when you start trying to read random new shit
i remember back then when i was first reading it, at the beginning i felt the story was kinda mid, but over the weeks it grew on me & i ended up rly looking forward to it every week. the story was never fully mind blowing & not very eccentric or anything, but i think it was a solid lil sports series. i've read a couple other recent smaller sports series at this point & in comparison i do think this manga does a very good job at presenting the sport in a grounded but interesting way. all the fights are depicted rly clearly & all the action & motion & anatomy are well done & easy to follow. i think the little fighting knowledge sprinkled in was cool, & when something like a fighting technique or rule needed to be explained, it was concise & easy to understand & didn't overload with too much info
i know i've seen people say they thought the character designs or art style were ugly in this but i guess i just don't rly agree, i like the design. obviously the design as i said isn't v eccentric or extremely stylized, but i think everything is drawn well & the way the gym & the fighting octagon feel with these characters just feel right idk. i get though that this series art style is rly grounded in reality, it still is a shonen & has some great action drawings, but it's not like some other sports series where even though there's no magic or powers, a character will do a cool but normal sports thing but then in the drawing it's like they're bursting into flames & have crazy ass smoke & super saiyan looking ass energy bursting off of them or something haha. i love those exaggerated takes on sports action too, & asumi does it a little bit here & there but a lot of the action is portrayed more realistically which might feel more boring to some? it also doesn't have like the haikyu effect where everyone thinks all the characters are hot so maybe that could be another thing that lead to its demise lol
but all that said nao is my favorite character & i love her design. it's p simple but she's just cool & looks cool, she's strong & i think the fangs works great for her. prob my biggest wish out of this series would be i wish there could've been more done with her. although i know they exist out there, before this point i never seen a mma girl manga character & i think she was a cool concept for a shonen main girl. i feel like we don't get to see her fight as much but it would've been so sick to be able to explore the whole separate side of the women's mma path & there rly could've been so much there. the times we do get to see her fight are awesome though & i'm glad they actually allowed her to have her own fights, by the time they were introducing real challengers for her it was already getting closer to ending & i wish we could've seen what her career could've panned out to. there was also a whole romance thing set up for her & nito from the beginning & imo that would've been a rly cool & unique couple for a shonen romance, 2 mma fighters as a power couple imagine! damn if it was like a reverse blue box, how blue box is mostly the rom-com with a background of sports, if asumi could've been mainly the mma sports still, but with a stronger background of the romance? maybe that could've been the extra facet that kept people excited & made it just a level more filled out from week to week but idk. either way would've been a cool kinda unconventional couple & i'm sure it would've still been at least a minor part of the story & panned out more naturally if the series had just lasted a longer time, it’s touched back up on in the epilogue so i know he meant to do more with it
but for what this series does do i think it does it p well, i do still like the focus it had on dementia & the brother rivalry. i liked the side characters even in their short life spans & nito as a MC gets more likeable as time goes on imo. idk i honestly feel like the series just gets better & better as it goes, by the place it is when it's ending its like fuckk this was just starting to get great! & although i understand how this story could be axed based on some of the more basic qualities of it, by the end i rly do see how this could've went for so much longer, & i can't say that with every cancelled series i like. second to last chapter was great, shit bout made me tear up, that final big fight they were able to leave it off on was awesome & damn rly made me wish to see more. on this reread i finally read the epilogue & yeah it had some decent lil closures & some cool side character stuff, but rly wish it could’ve just lasted longer & nito & nao’s careers were able to blossom more
anyways kawada's older more succesful sumo series is on manga plus now, imma definitely read that shit! cool i can hopefully still experience a great longer story like MMA through that!