Garouden

Garouden is a straight forward story about a man who lives to be the strongest one there is and nothing more than that.
300 page volume is filled to the brim with muscles and violence with rare downtime forming the mandatory minimum of the story to make sense of what happens and give it context.
This is an easy recommendation to any action fans as fights are drawn amazingly well, the flow is coherent and choreography makes every fights feel distinct. It's also surprisingly brutal despite not really going over the top with violence. Instead, you can feel and understand that combatants are just humans to even a bloodless elbow smash to the back of the head looks painful and dangerous.
The art overall is a good match for all this too, not lacking in detail and depicting everything in a reasonably realistic art style. Everything is clean and sharp but there's still a good sense of momentum and impact.
With how well paced it is you could get through it in about half an hour so even if story is not exactly too satisfying, the action is great and worth taking a look at.

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.

Garouden is my favorite martial arts manga ever, even though i love grappler baki, the last sagas really took a tool on me, Baki dou and Baki dou 2 are really a turn off for the fans, but that is not the subject here ! Garouden is one hell of a ride if you are a martial arts fan, praticioner ou just someone who enjoy combat sports, i am a martial artist since 12 years old, and series like hajime no ippo and baki, especially baki, made me dive into that and train in many styles, and Garouden only made that flame for fighitng inside me burn even more. The story follows Tanba, who is a karateka and also a dojo crasher, he jumps into a wrestling gym that belongs to the FAW, which ends up to be the greatest wrestling federation in Japan, run by the man himself The Great Tatsumi, who is based on the real life wrestling legend Antonio Inoki, there Tanba ends up beating beaten by a wrestler that later becames a fan favorite in the federation, after the lost, Tanba dissapears for 3 years, training around and learning new methods, implementing wrestling techniques to his main karate style. Later he ends up meeting the karate demon Shozan Matsuo, based on the legend of karate, founder of kyokushin styles, Masutatsu Oyama (the style of karate i trained btw XD), when hearing about Tanba, Shozan also creates a interest on the boy, and there the story goes, no spoilers here go read it ! And now i will to a technical review for you to see if that is worth the read.
Before i put the points on, it is really worth it XD, the story is nice, but not that dense or elaborated, there are no plot holes or "author forgot" moments, but, there are no super interesting plot twists or stuff like that, the main thing here are the fights, they are realistic, but surreal at the same time, there are no energy blasts, astral projections or weird techniques like some of the Baki ones, even though, there are a lot of superb throws and strikes, but it is nice to see and you know it haha. A great positive point for the series is that every character gets they spotlight, and the protagonist has to grow alongside everyone, he is not super milestone ahead of the others, from the beginning there are real treats, and then there is the major positive point for me, they show how someone who is blindfolded by their style will always be wrecked but strong fighters, like karatekas who got twisted by wrestlers and jujutsu specialists that got crashed by karatekas, the ones who train eveything are the strongest, the ones who refine their styles, who are flexible, like bruce lee used to say, we cant stick just to one style, we got to mix it up and make it functional. With that in mind, the major and pretty much only negative point for me, is the fact the story never got a endiing, it is on hiatus since the last chapter, every previous arc was finished, but the last one "the terror of Gozo murase" barely started and the manga ended, sadly we propably will never know how did it end, but it is still worth it, give it a chance guys, i am sure you will LOVE it, i know i did, see ya !

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.