Shamo (Manga)
Shamo ( Japanese軍 鶏, also シ ャ モ, translated "fighting cock") is a manga series by the Japanese illustrator Akio Tanaka based on a story by Izō Hashimoto , which has been published since 1998 . The comic, which has so far comprised around 5,000 pages, is aimed at an adult, male readership, so it belongs to his genre.
action
Sixteen-year-old Ryo Narushima goes to a prestigious private school and has good grades. One day he brutally stabs his parents to death because they would ruin his mind. The case has attracted attention across Japan and sparked a debate about the country's educational system. Ryo is sent to a reformatory for juvenile offenders, from which he could be released after two years if well managed. In the asylum, Ryo is first raped by other inmates, but takes revenge by biting during oral sex.
Inmates are given karate lessons from a prisoner in another prison who has been sentenced to "life". Although Ryo seems to be bad at martial arts at first, the karate teacher sees in him fighting spirit and gives him tips. Ryo continues to be despised by the guards and the other inmates and beats anyone who bullies him with his newfound karate skills. Ryo continues to improve his karate training and practices in his solitary cell as often as possible. This makes him strong and can assert himself against the other prisoners who want to take revenge on him.
His sister Natsumi, who witnessed the murder, comes to visit him to tell him that she can understand why he murdered the parents, but still hates him for it. Because of this traumatic experience, she dropped out of school and will work as a prostitute since the relatives took away the inherited assets. She's getting into the drug scene.
After two years, Ryo is released and initially works as a prostitute. Then he becomes a professional karateka. After intensive training, he wins the Banryukai tournament in the lightweight class and injures a Thai professional fighter so badly in a fight that he can never fight again. The audience despises Ryo and always cheers on his opponent.
Ryo now wants to compete against Naoto Sugawara, who is considered one of the strongest karate fighters in Japan and fights in a higher weight class than him. To get him to fight him, Ryo raped Sugawara's girlfriend. A fight ensues in the Tokyo Dome and it turns into a media event. Although Sugawara originally intended to kill Ryo in the fight for revenge for his girlfriend, this does not happen. He only just wins. Sugawara then undergoes tough training and invites Ryo to a duel in a secluded Buddhist temple. Sugawara loses this fight and is seriously injured.
Ryo flees to Shanghai and appears in illegal attraction fights , where he defeats numerous strong opponents and thereby secures a good reputation for himself. In order to increase his savings, he also works as a prostitute. He sends the money he has earned to his sister Natsumi, who is in a rehab and hardly recognizes her brother. An opponent named Son Goku appears during the attraction fights, who constantly wears a mask and threatens to defeat Ryo until Son Goku's former master appears. The master trains Ryo in a secluded place in the mountains of China. There Son Goku appears and gives the master, weakened by an illness, the coup de grace . Ryo tears off Son Goku's mask in a fight, whereupon Goku falls down a cliff.
Publications
Shamo appeared in Japan for the first time in 1998 in the manga magazine Manga Action , in which Akira Sasōs Shindō was published at that time . Until August 2003, when the magazine was discontinued, a new chapter of the manga was published every week. The manga has been continued since 2004 in Evening magazine , which is published by Kōdansha , a major publisher. The individual chapters published in Manga Action were brought out by the Futabasha publishing house in nineteen edited volumes. Since changing the publisher, Kōdansha has been publishing the other volumes. A total of 25 have been published in Japan so far.
The manga was also published in France (as Coq de combat ), Spain (as Shamo: Gallo de pelea ), and Germany. Egmont Manga & Anime brought out the first volume in June 2002 in German. In November 2006 the publisher discontinued the manga after the nineteenth volume, as the rights would have had to be renegotiated after the change of publisher and Shamo brought in a loss of around 7,000 euros per volume for the publisher due to poor sales figures. While the first volume sold around 5,000 copies in Germany, the seventeenth only sold 1,400 copies.
Shamo was filmed in 2007 with the participation of Izō Hashimoto. In 2010 this film version appeared for the first time in German under the title Shamo - The Ultimate Fighter .
Awards
The manga was nominated for the Osamu Tezuka Culture Prize in 2003 , but was ultimately not awarded. At the Festival international de la bande dessinée d'Angoulême 2005 the manga was nominated in the category Best Series and for the Audience Award as Best Album .
swell
- ↑ Shamo Manga Artist Sues Creator for 150 Million Yen. Anime News Network , June 28, 2008, accessed December 30, 2013 .
- ↑ Chat with Georg Tempel, December 18, 2006
- ↑ Georg Tempel in the Comicforum