Shamo

"Shamo" I knew this manga by name for a pretty long time now
I began to read it without any expectation, just knowing that it was a violent one.

Well, I was disappointed. For me, it's as if I was reading some fighting manga with sex, violence, drug ..... and I laughed hard when I saw people's review about Shamo : deep psychology, deep moral...

Let's talk about the beginning which may contain "deep psychology" : A boy - "Ryo" also nicknamed "Shonen A" after, kills its parent with a knife. Precisely, he brutally murdered them. We don't know why, only few moment in the manga explain that.
Well, I though that he had a good reason but no- he killed them because he was too oppressed. You can imagine a reason : his parent wanted him to do something he didn't want, wanted to erase his personnality,to look good with their son before others, loving him too much, writing with right hand wheareas he is left handed, too much love... nothing is precisely explained.

Come on, Kids should kill teachers because they give a lot homeworks. Kids should kill their parent because they receive spanking...let's party!

After he is send to the Ajigasaki Reformatory for 2 years where youngster are send for theft, killing, rape, violence.... Sort of jail but for minor. Ryo get raped here, beaten ,forced to do oral sex with a man., bitten the man's hot-dog.... He got raped and what after ? For me, he didn't seemed affected weirdly or it was badly shown. I was expecting more but it's not a caracter centric manga after all.
Ryo learn karate to defend himself at first and is unexpectly good at it. It will be the beginning of his love for Karate ((Banryu-kai) and violent fights

And after that, you have street fights, lethal fights .... fight

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The issue I have with that is it's not well developped which is bad for a "deep" manga . Ryo kill his parent then almost don't give a shit. He doesn't ask himself "what he have done ?" "why ?" "the consequences" and doesn't feel any remorse. It doesn't affect him much emotionaly.
His sister became a prostitute and junkie thanks to him and is not asking qestions - "Is she alive", "does she hate me ?", "what if i didn't kill my parent", "how she is feeling ? "... no he don't care...
Our little Ryo swear that he would protect her - something he didn't do earlier. He searched for her during one chapter then forgot, only thinking about fighting, raping someone girfriend.... Let's say he dont give a shit about her :)

So that's why I don't see anything deep. The beginning maybe but after that, It's only fights with some redemption moments... to try to make us like this unlikeable caracter

If you love violent, free rape manga but poor story => read
If you like developped caracters => don't read

Shamo is one series that is difficult to write a simple review for, but I'll try to keep it brief. I may as well get it out of the way - Shamo has one of the worst endings to a manga series that I've ever seen, There's no resolution, no ultimate lesson, just a strong feeling that the author wanted the series over and done with. Now, there are plenty of mediocre manga series but it is particularly distressing here because of the way Shamo started out. The first several volumes or so were cerebral, dark and well-paced. It took a lot of risks, giving us a main character that was clearly a villain, but who the reader is compelled to root for. This is done by giving the reader a clear look at how he got to be where he is and how he feels during the whole process. It gives us a look at the less savory elements of Japanese culture, but the themes are fairly universal. One of the central themes is how society can never really forgive a criminal and often perpetuates their unlawful behavior because of it. What we get is a character study of a person completely shunned by society. While he is intelligent and talented and desires recognition, his experiences and bad decisions continue to haunt him and prevent him living a rewarding or even a normal life.
That's why I need to give this manga a good rating despite its glaring flaws. The latter half of the series really begins to lose track of what the story is about. The last few volumes are a complete waste of time. Those that have followed the series know about the long hiatus it experienced. It was stuck in a long, messy lawsuit where the creators fought over ownership. In the end, it's understandable how the series ended up but no less disappointing.
I still recommend giving it a read. Just don't bother reading after the first half or so.

I can't help thinking about this manga in 4 very distinct arcs of which, for the most part, I'd keep the first and obliterate the rest.
It's not fair to make that distinction, but up until Volume 14, Shamo had earned it's masterpiece status, at least in the world of martial arts manga.
It wasn't violence for violence sake, it was a study of a loathsome character, a true villain who, true to classic villain fates, had to fight odds stacked entirely against him but which he "deserved" due to his heinous, egotistical actions.

Story:
This follows Ryou Narushima, a brilliant teen who, out of the blue, knifed his parents to death, this being shunned and sent to a reformatory.
In there he was bullied, raped and, eventually taught karate by a shady yet talented figure. At this point, and arc is formed, where Ryou goes from desperate teen to victim of a harsh world, to the sprout of a villain that we will see grow in every sense all the way through to Volume 14, where the whole thing takes a dive into Crying Freeman, more or less, only to then turn and go back to it's grounded setting, but never recovering it's intense focus or purpose.

And that's the thing, there was a purpose, there was a line to follow, one which could end with Ryou's redemption or absolute fall into the darkness.
Neither came to be, though.

Characters:
Ryou Narushima is the absolute focus, the titular battle rooster with a deep feud against life. A man who ruined his own life when pressure got to him and never really looked back, yet not entirely devoid of ethics, morals or empathy. The tragedy of this is that Ryou isn't a psychopath, he's an insecure egomaniac, a survivalist, but also a thrill-seeker. A cunning mind, yet a thug. He lives by his own rules but he can't find happiness because he's unable to see himself for what he truly is. He can't ask forgiveness, he can't forgive himself and he can't escape his increasing number of evil deeds. So he's haunted by them.

Natsumi Narushima is Ryou's sister, who's life was essentially ruined by him, which she didn't take too kindly. She goes into her own spiral of doom, trying to survive, but finds herself perhaps even more lost than his sibling.
She's not properly developed and she's there mostly to be a burden over Ryou.

Kenji Kurokawa is Ryou's karate master, the man who changed his life by giving him the first tools to survive and shape his surroundings.
A mentor figure to him, he also carries a terrible evil within, some of which is passed down to Ryou in one way or another, being instrumental in shaping him as a selfish, violent man.

Naoto Sugawara is Ryou's first and foremost nemesis. The man who did everything right. A strict yet fair karate master who rose to the top by honing his talent and becoming an icon. Ryou hates him immediately.

The rest are other players in Ryou's story. If it isn't obvious yet, it's all about him, it is his character study fist and foremost, and all the other developments serve to move his story forward or add some nuance to it,
but these four are definitely the key players of first and better part.

Tragedy:
There was a point to all this. To all the violence and the suffering and the horrible things happening. This would either be a story about falling into the darkest pit and drown in his self-provoked misery... or a story of redemption from that darkest of pits. Unfortunately it was none.
Somewhere around the third arc, where another, more flashy nemesis was introduced to contrast and perhaps save Ryou from himself... the already unfocused authors had a falling out and got entangled in a legal battle from which, after a long time, the artist, Akio Tanaka emerged victorious with the rights to the manga. This was not so great.
While it's former right wasn't doing his best, at least he seemed to have remembered the point of it all and was moving forward in that direction.
Then the change happened and the point got further and further away.
The last 4 volumes of this are, essentially, painful to read.
Terrible characters are introduced, lots of threads are left loose and the conclusion to it all is an irritating, pseudo-poetic drag after the most ridiculous fight in the whole series. It's a mess.

So yeah, I'm giving the whole of Shamo a 7. The art reaches a peak and never goes down from it -some weird arm anatomy aside- while the highs of the story somewhat compensate the lows -although some of those basically destroy the initial point of it all. To me the first arc gets a 9, the third arc gets a 7, due to a lousy finish, and the second and last arc... they shouldn't exist. So a 4 or something.

Conclusion:
If you like martial arts stories, if you like dark stories, if you like to understand the origins of evil, to see the worse depths and not feel like you're reading adolescent edgy angst, there is a wonderful story for you... up to volume 14. Then there's a whole arc to skip until volume 17, where you get an interesting complimentary story... that falls flat at the very end, in Volume 28.
And then you evaluate your inertia. I can't deny there is no satisfactory conclusion, but sometimes it's about the journey, not the destination.
And skipping a couple of stations.

Over the last month or so I've seen a ton of praise for the manga "Shamo" and recently I just read the whole thing and I feel very let down.

Overall the characterization of Ryu just felt like really all over the place and I didn't feel like it was because he was crazy, it just felt like the author didn't know what he was doing exactly with the character and experimented a lot more than he should have.

Then there's the whole constant perspective swaps that end up taking up nearly half of the chapters in the series. Ryu is the protagonist, he's the "interesting" character yet many other characters half the time characters who have just been introduced get the spotlight namely Toma and the retarded brothers at the end.

Also Ryu was constantly learning new things throughout the series then in the next part he would completely forget it. There was the whole arc (which I thought was a large part of the downturn of the series) where he learned to use ki. I guess the author thought that addition was as pointless and stupid as I did because Ryu never used that shit again. Then there was the whole "left-handed" concept where Ryu swapped to southpaw in the middle of the fight between him and the Heavyweight champ that was also never used again. Basically anything he learned to do for a fight, any training regimend, any new technique, he would forget by the next time a new fighting opportunity came up.

Overall the whole "arcing" concept and the pacing in general was really poor and disjointed. The author once again felt like he was just experimenting with what he wanted to do with Shamo and some of the arcs could have been different series in themselves because of how different they were. Like the ki arc and the end one with the retard brothers, so off from the overall feel of the series. The ki arc felt like freaking dbz, he just defeated the strongest opponent then all of a sudden he gets stomped by a completely unknown dude and he has to power up his ki to freaking win. The latest arc is practically a gag manga in it's stupidity.

Maybe I went into the manga with too high of expectations from all of the people praising it in this sub but damn I definitely stopped enjoying the manga when his conflict with the karate champ ended and it's not like it was the perfect manga up to that point I would say like 8.5/10 but the quality after that point was crap.

as a writer, one of the basic rules is that your main character has to be either likable, sympathetic, or someone cool enough that readers will admire him. Shamo breaks this rule, and unlike other series *cough*Tenjou Tenge*cough* they do so on purpose. Ryo is a horrible, horrible person. A murderer, rapist, prostituting, violent, insane sociopath, he isnt likable at all. In the beginning he had some sympathy, with the condition of his life, but he quickly loses all of it. Ryo is a monster. his sole redeeming feature is how he does care for his sister and occasionally does random acts of charity, but while this seems to prove he is capable of redemption, he adamantly refuses. that being said, Shamo is great. looking past the incredibly dark and violent story, one can see it is very deep. recurring themes include society's cognitive dissonance towards violence, the justice and prison systems being counter productive, that parents shouldnt be pressuring and overbearing as they are in real life, and so on. So much is up to interpretation, including who is the villain. a lot of people would say Ryo, but i disagree, he's a byronic hero who fights because of a warped and sickened survival instinct. but then who is? Is it society as a whole? is it the chairman of the MMA association? is it the main characters parents who he murdered in the beginning? its all up to interpretation, but its incredible nonetheless. There is much more to it than the graphic content, but it still is pretty graphic. But, if that doesnt bother you, then I highly recommend it

Shamo is not something for those light in heart to read. In chapter two the main character is sent to prison were he is raped, not only once, but twice. On top of that, the story if very violent, lost of fights happen as the main character grows.

Good story over all, but not something for people used to Shonen. This is X-rated stuff.

I read some of the reviews and how can someone hate this manga? yall just don't understand the latest chapters, the message from the author, and the philosophy of it. tbh I was going to score this manga 9, but the ending made me score 10.
everyone is upset with the ending, but why you hate something that you don't understand? Shamo doesn't deserve a score below 7-8 trust me. everyone has their own opinion, but saying like that "It'S BaD" makes me mad. People who keep saying that in shamo there were no psychological meanings, no philosophy and that was just stupid story, had no development, then I have nothing to say to people like that, I just feel sorry for you cos you don't understand and won't be able to feel Shamo's aura, philosophy. The ending was truly a masterpiece... I didn't read, I felt every moment, I felt everything in the latest chapters and it even made my mind gone high... People who are laughing at shamo and now at my review, are people who hate things, that can't/don't understand. It just like with Monster Urasawa Naoki's other masterpiece, some people laughed at monster cos they couldn't understand what was the point and "who was the monster" I know everyone has their own opinion so I'll stop my anger from now.
I don't want to spoil it so I'll just write my own opinion about this Masterpiece...

firstly I wanna admit while reading the first chapter I was like: "wtf is this?" IDK why, I was 14 yr and didn't understand art, aura, didn't liked so much I guess... after 6-7 chapters I remember that I changed my mind and started to like it very much! It starts with a young boy, who killed his parents, goes to juvenile prison, he is a passive boy who can't even fight and defend himself, every prisoner beats him, but one day when one prisoner forces him to..... ahem! I can't write that on MAL I fear moderators will ban me so.. :d
He stands for himself... (SPOILER ALERT) he will kill that prisoner after that character really changes a lot, you can't recognize him, even more... you actually starting to hate him, but It's too soon to hate him cos story develops in every chapter, so as a character too...

THIS IS MASTERPIECE right here fellas! so read this if you want, don't listen to hate reviews, If it's bad check it by yourself and make your own decision.

Shamo was a lot of 'firsts" for me: First manga i read all the way trough,first "politically incorrect" manga i ever read,first "trully evil" protagonist i ever saw (light yagami doesn't count,he tought he was making "justice'). Seeing ryu's "dark evolution",from a killer in juvenile prison to a violent thug and eventually a professional MMA fighter was great. But,do a favor to yourself and stop reading when the sugawara arc ends. Anything beyond that can just be called a "clusterfu#k of ideas with no relation to each other".

Aparently the people responsible for the manga were passing trough some juridical tribulation regarding copyright ownership and it definitelly shows. The plot completelly loses its track after sugawara saga,even to the point of shoving KI powers and kung fu mysticism that is never mentioned again.

The last arc is what can only be called "michael bay-ish".Car chases,explosions and whatnot....but in the end,the antagonists were way too silly and completelly unrelated for this manga and the single atempt to give them a single remnant of 'depht"was cut short by its sudden and unsatisfactory ending.

To this day i search for news about manga regarding a possible return for a proper ending to be made. But,as it is,its like delicious cake filled with s#it.Just stick with top of the cake,the frosty,the upper layers,etc. Don't go all the way to find the shit.

If it weren't for the manga being on hiatus, I would consider this the true spiritual successor to Fist of the North Star. (Hokuto Shinken)

One has to only look at the first few panels to wonder why I'm comparing this to something more fantasy based as FotNS.

...and I think this is what makes Shamo a masterpiece if it actually had a legitimate ending.

The manga is just pure existentialist material for me.

On one hand you had the basic premise. Shamo shattered any doubts I had that a legitimate exciting MMA manga could be made.

On the flip side, Shamo's failure in doing that, is something that would break or make the illusion of the very concept of manga. One close comparison to this is if you've watched Nadesico and was conflicted with what Nadesico was in terms of it's war torn reality.

On one hand you had the fictional idealism of heart, courage and guts willing towards heroics typical of manga. On the other hand, the idealistic heroes not only died but in the Prince of Darkness OVA, even the pragmatic ones were tortured beyond your typical dark manga. (and not blatant sociopathic kick the puppy type of scenarios either.)

This is more magnified in Shamo...but only if you have a surface knowledge of martial arts especially in this age ...and it is this manga's greatest strength and greatest turn off.

See nobody truly believed that the Hokuto Shinken martial arts where real even during FotNS' time but the way those styles and characters just appealed to the battle fan, you just can't helped but feel it was...tolerable. Tolerable as in the battles might be fantasy but the struggles transcended towards reality but obviously using fantasy elements.

This to me has always been what got me into anime and then later on manga.

As a kid, I wasn't exactly watching the deepest of animes but the difference between something like DBZ to me from that of say your average brutal masterpiece like Clockwork Orange was that even though DBZ was kid's stuff...it was more "mature". It dealt with more mature people trying to rise up to the challenge in more character building/character destroying incidents than simply a moving script.

Maybe that's going too far since I'm not exactly representing the masses here and Shamo isn't exactly a manga without nudity (though as a kid I was too much looking into plots that I didn't really get bothered by nudity) so let's shift it into something much more related to real life sports.

Everyone probably knows such classics as Hajime no Ippo and Slam Dunk and while no Japanese ever really had been like the Ippo or Rukawa of reality, there's a certain sense that manga is transcending between the lines of reality and fiction and in turn it is recreating what made us excited about the sports even though if you know something about the sports beyond the surface level, it clearly is tailored for excitement and escapism like any type of pop entertainment product.

It never bothered me though and I think for the majority of fans, they too accepted the margin of fantasy inter-mixed with the margin of reality and those manga just inspires fans to be more passionate about their passions even though they weren't "realistic" but came too close to being idealistic inspirations.

Shamo doesn't do that. But unlike how it often is, Shamo doesn't do that because it is a step above. It took what Fist of the North Star's claim to fame originally was and it evolved it into modern perceptions.

What I mean by this is that even today, even the greatest battle manga that has come and gone, there has nothing quite like Fist of the North Star where you literally had Superman but this wasn't Superman as in Super Powers or Superman as in Martial Arts power-up like Goku but Superman as in the guy who literally took assassination to it's utmost fantasy limits while retaining close to the anatomy of a realistic human body in a battle type setting. Simply speaking, Fist of the North Star pre-empted many of the pseudo realistic appeals that manga like Slam Dunk and Hajime no Ippo had. Especially if you looked beyond the violence. And it did that for one of the most mystical concepts in our world which was martial arts.

It is what it was for martial arts then. Hokuto Shinken added the fantasies we all had of martial arts but it also added the reality of fighting in the sense that if you're not some brutal supermaster martial arts, you just died. You just get killed and died. Even if you reached the temple of greatness, you simply disappeared. It is only because the concept kept itself close to fantasy battles and wars that it didn't feel like a downer. Yet at the same time, no one would say it wasn't stretching what was acceptable for fantasy. At least for me, it transcended the struggles often seen even in real life accounts. It had horror, it had reality, it made you want to desire women but at the same time accept that having the utmost power of fucking a beaut isn't exactly the highest showcase of martial arts superiority. Sure it was post-apocalyptic and it based itself on an American movie but like Slam Dunk, like Hajime no Ippo, like other quality battle or sports manga...there was a sense that it was just sugar coating for the present reality.

...and all that, only manga could deliver and if it got through an anime sometimes it reaches more audience while retaining mostly the same soul of rugged pseudo-fantasy, pseudo-reality, pseudo-inspirational, pseudo-downer that manga had brought forth that not even many Western comics could do at a consistent rate especially in terms of depth. (Just look at Sin City where the events literally had to take itself within a city and it was all close to one shot arcs because the characters couldn't interact too much with each other or else the grittiness dies)

In many ways though, you can't improve much on the formula outside of art or concepts because at a certain point, fantasy becomes standard fantasy. Even if you bring up an unorthodox character, you can never replicate the times where people wondered about Reiki, Dim Mak, Bruce Lee and all those times of innocent mysteries that made the concept of certain mangas much more "innovative" emotionally for people living in those times. (especially if you're not the type to laugh at the bad fashion or the bad science or whatever)

...at least until this manga, I never thought it was possible to spiritually succeed Hokuto Shinken. Sure you can make sequels but you can overall overhaul the thing. It would take something really special to break something that is already really special. After all, even when you have video games with epic storylines almost all of us understand that elves are elves, energy blasts are energy blasts, pressure points are pressure points...and in reality for martial arts, Muay Thai, Wrestling, Jiu-Jitsu, Machida karate, Counter-boxing are more proven effective arts than pure Judo, pure Sambo, pure lots of things at a generic level...the only mystery really left is the mystery of willing disbelief or ignorance.

You can no longer be a fan of Bruce Lee and then research on Lee at a surface level and not encounter the fact that Bruce had no real combat experience compared to even bar room brawlers much less many of the guys who cross train nowadays and easily have both technique and strengths.

Yet this is what Shamo tries to break. This is what makes this notable from a contemplative psychological standpoint.

If you're just going to look at the basic premise, I still say this manga is enjoyable but it's no 9.

It is only by understanding what Fist of the North Star added and what Shamo tries to bring back but does with modern martial arts that you get back this old sense of urban post-apocalyptic nihilism and a guy who simply tries to rise over that but in turn gets destroyed by the very same bureaucratic society he was born into and it is critical to empathize from that perspective in order to really understand why this is not just a manga you pick up and read. At best you're doing yourself a favor by checking this out as early as possible after finding out what this manga is.

At the same time, it still cannot be denied that the manga fails.

It fails both because it has a 2nd arc that is irrelevant to the 3rd arc and it fails because simply you're stuck with the fantasy elements where even an elementary knowledge of martial arts nowadays would dissolve any type of pseudo-realistic elements the characters should have and in the end you almost have the same type of caricatures as past their era pseudo-realistic depictions where the final product becomes silly...yet appealing.

...and yet digging deeper, trying to create a review from my perspective that doesn't mimic other reviews, what makes Shamo most difficult to portray is that it simply digs too deep. The artwork and scenes are just too close to reality that you can't help but say...well...they're fake once it hits the more fantasy parts.

Albeit Fist of the North Star is not exactly a hard manga to review. It's just that with Shamo, I'm not trying to portray it as the next Fist of the North Star as much as saying imagine Fist of the North Star's innovative elements pushed towards the modern context of the world of martial arts. How dry would that be on one hand because most modern arts are full of go to moves rather than flashy moves but not only that flashy moves are proven failed attempts. How can Shamo get away with that and yet still be that pseudo-realistic mega-violent nihilistic apocalyptic battlefield of one-on-one that Fist of the North Star popularized? ...and bring it to an overall product?

Sometimes you just can't. Sometimes it's easier to just say Shamo is a different product. Shamo failed at representing modern martial arts by trying to be about Karate. Shamo simply is a crude attempt that came close but never sniffed at the results...but then that wouldn't be fair to the overall journey that a manga like Shamo can bring forth to a reader. So how?

Do a reviewer just say it's a martial arts manga? Do we just settle on the protagonist Ryo Narushima being a step above your desperate manga protagonist?

I'd really like to not settle on that perception because it doesn't do justice to what it brings. This is not just a masterpiece level manga, it is a very unique manga that ranks up there with some of the best manga and it is only a 9 because it is both unfinished and it is unfinished in such a way that it detracts from how the characters were built in the first place.

That said, since I can't seem to portray this manga well at all, all I can say for potential readers is that: the first chapters are dry. This manga has no conclusion. It is unfinished. Character developments aren't perfect. Sometimes you wonder if the manga isn't a real type of manga at all and everyone took LSD and had hallucinations and yet...

If you're ever a fan of manga that challenges your concepts of manga especially if you're a martial arts fan, you owe it to yourself to read up on what is currently out there for Shamo. Even if it's just scanlations. The arc might be incomplete but unlike most incomplete quality works (especially since I'm not the type to read a manga until it is finished) the experience brought forth by this manga is pretty complete. I'm not sure if you will have a concept crisis as to what manga is like what reading this did for me nor can I guarantee you this manga will blow you away especially with the dry introductions but this manga is as special as it gets for me.

Recommendable for anyone looking for an easy to follow, dark, action filled psychological seinen, which follows a young troubled protagonist. It's complimented with a visceral and detailed art style.

The story is an interesting commentary on Japanese underground crime culture, following a twisted anti-hero's struggle. It is mainly martial arts orientated and character/fight driven, so anyone looking for an exceptional or detailed story, maybe should look elsewhere. The manga does flow and read well as an outcome of this though.

What it lacks in complexity it makes up for in character development. The mangaka does a great job in engaging the reader with the characters choices, as well as the violence and despair he continually faces. it is often dark and sometimes too nihilistic (comparable to the early volumes of Gantz). This can leave more to be wanted from the protagonist, who's personality can be described as one dimensional, despite its complexity. This may be intentional though.

The fighting is probably the manga's biggest strength, displaying a gritty and realistic representation of mixed martial arts.

It is of course important when mentioning this manga is to bring up its hiatus, which it has recently came back from. The manga isn't yet finished, but can be split into 4 parts. A often complaint is the abrupt departure from the story in the 3rd part, and its consequences that I am not sure was the cause of the hiatus.

Nonetheless to anyone also returning to read this series, it is now well back on track and heading in the right direction. Like I said before, it isn't incredibly deep, but it more than well makes up for it in entertainment and shock value. Along with its great art, it is very easy to pick up and read for anyone who struggles with manga or particularly the seinen genre.