TSUYOSHI: DAREMO KATENAI, AITSU NI WA
STATUS
RELEASING
VOLUMES
Not Available
RELEASE
Invalid Date
CHAPTERS
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DESCRIPTION
Tsuyoshi Kawabata is just a regular convenience store employee in a mid-sized city west of Tokyo. Except... he also happens to be the most powerful fighter in the world. Although he doesn't particularly want to fight, his reputation precedes him, and martial artists come from all over the world to test their might against the mythical Tsuyoshi – and invariably end up handily beaten, clutching their battered family jewels in a convenience store parking lot. Should you wish to fight him, he has three rules to minimize inconvenience: 1) You only get one fight. There will be no rematch. 2) You will fight in a secluded area, where you won't be seen. 3) You will tell nobody about it – even if you lose.
CAST
Tsuyoshi Kawabata
Hoshizaki Ainosuke
Teru Yumeoka
CHAPTERS
RELATED TO TSUYOSHI: DAREMO KATENAI, AITSU NI WA
REVIEWS
obskyr
An entirely different story – and a more generic story – from what it promises to be.Continue on AniListTsuyoshi is not what it promises to be.
Tsuyoshi promises to be seinen; instead it's a standard shonen battle manga.
It promises to be about a wimpy-looking strong man; instead it's about a revolving cast of martial artists.
It promises for Tsuyoshi to be the main character… instead, he's not.❧ What kind of story is it really?
Though filed under “seinen”, the seinen elements primarily amount to window dressing. Occasional cleavage; characters who take sexual pleasure in being beaten; innumerable strikes to the family jewels. There are also some truly uncomfortable Sniper Elite-style internal views of bones being crushed or organs being damaged. But those are all accoutrements: the nature of the story, rather, is that of a shonen battle manga: rather than focusing on what Tsuyoshi brings to the table, the story revolves around fighters who come from across the world, duel each other, and pit various countries' martial arts against one another. Though the title translates to “Tsuyoshi: No One Stands a Chance… Not Against HIM”, only a fraction of fights involves Tsuyoshi himself – perhaps precisely because no one stands a chance, and thus, any fight with him has a foregone conclusion. It's a shame, though: fights between increasingly strong combatants is something we've all seen a million times – and they're awfully drawn out, comprising the lion's share of the story – whereas Tsuyoshi's fights have a refreshing air of creativity and humor.
The tropes the story engages in also fall decidedly under the shonen umbrella. Defeated villains repent and become allies. Characters' big moments are invariably preceded by a flashback to a tragic backstory. Every human emits a “threat aura”, which can be felt and seen. As the story goes on, the fighting becomes more and more outlandish, with “chi blasts” funnily enough being introduced as a technique – this becomes somewhat less amusing when the author insists in an afterword that the series is still realistic, because “chi is real, can be seen with the naked eye, and can heal otherwise incurable illnesses”.
This isn't to say that there aren't moments of greatness! There are laughs to be had, especially for someone who enjoys slapstick or silly visual gags. One thing I found particularly notable was that in a spectacularly rare move, the story occasionally treads where other manga dare not, and touches on controversial political topics – Vladimir Putin; Tiananmen Square; the 1% – which lends some heft that impressed and engaged me. The moments where the title character is front and center are offbeat and gratifying – though those moments are oddly rare…
❧ So who is the main character, if not Tsuyoshi?
The story's perspective shifts between a number of challengers – whoever's closest to Tsuyoshi at the moment; a kind of audience proxy; and in the variation that offers, it lends novelty. For someone whose trope tolerance is higher than mine, the characters might be enjoyable. Regrettably, every female character is a walking trope – although they certainly have agency, they're also objectified and dripping with gender roles. The majority of the cast are either gratingly condescending or villainous – most everyone is a terrible person (played for laughs; your mileage may vary), including the eponymous Tsuyoshi. Though in his case, that turns out to be an entertaining, subversive trait!
In the story's generic swaths, which unfortunately comprise most of it, Tsuyoshi is relegated to the sidelines. When it's good, though… Tsuyoshi is an inexorable force of nature; a John Wick-like existence. Far from the meek youngling one might expect, Tsuyoshi is a revenge-driven, nigh-homicidal maniac when his “switch” is flipped: all “yan”; no “dere”. He's often – and hilariously – depicted as if it were a horror manga – less likely to say “please, I don't want to fight…”, and more likely to say “you lookin' to have your ears ripped off, huh?” One of the story's best parts, many volumes in, is told from the villains' perspective as Tsuyoshi enters an unbridled Alien vs. Predator mode – and he's both Alien and Predator. He's the Alien, stalking through corridors and incapacitating anyone in his way, and the Predator, using his supernatural chi sight to see people through walls and home in on weak spots. It takes circa 10 volumes, but eventually, these Tsuyoshi-focused moments grow in frequency as the focus shifts to revolve more around him personally, making the experience somewhat more unique.
❧ In a nutshell…
Tsuyoshi is a manga with a captivating premise that it largely fails to execute on. It's peppered with laughs and glints of glory here and there – and for someone who enjoys a run-of-the-mill shonen story it would certainly be a different beast – but I found myself impatiently flipping through chapter after chapter to “get back to the good parts”. Distilled into a single phrase, I would describe this manga as “more average than it lets on”.
saulgoodman
Transforming gimmick into novelContinue on AniList
I Martial arts is a genre that I love dearly in this medium, but sadly is one that I find boringly traversed these days. In my eyes, most are defined by a gimmick that quickly wears out or overstays its welcome and becomes erratic. Really, only a handful of releasing series in the past decade had decent competency, namely OPM, Reiri, Batuque and Hinomaru Sumo and a few Bakis. Unsurprisingly, there's been a shift in the genre's landscape compared to a couple of decades ago. There tends to be more focus on hype characters/moments and gimmicks, like the battle royale format or isekai, which mostly comes off as cheap and monotonous in my eyes. This isn't where I raise a pitchfork and demand a return to traditional values, though. There are series that fit this described mold somewhat, yet possess refreshing value. Tsuyoshi being the fore front runner.
As a simple analogy, Tsuyoshi reads off like a cynical blend of OPM and Baki.
II The impervious, ordinary-looking protagonist. I blame a certain manwha for spreading this trope like wildfire in god-knows how many manwha and manhua, often reducing it to "aura farming" and fast power development for easy dopamine. Obviously, there's no merit in criticizing brain-rot for being brain-rot and I enjoy it as much as the average 16 year-old Indian. But there's not much thematic presence in how this trope is typically done OPM, however, did it extremely well in its comedic relief with Saitama indifferently one-shotting monsters but also presenting the consequential emotional isolation of being the strongest. Tsuyoshi does this and adds even richer characterization.
Tsuyoshi wears his heart on his sleeve. He's one of the strongest characters in the series and emotionally and mentally the weakest. Martial arts mangaka generally follow two lines of writing or some variant in regards to their protagonists; a weak underdog rising and coming up on top or a strong individual with some lofty goal. The point being that the protagonists possess or develop an iron-clad mental fortitude that applies beyond fighting and to our mundane lives. Tsuyoshi, however, does not. 300 chapters thus far, and he has, does and likely for the foreseeable future will have a child's emotional and mental intelligence.
Tsuyoshi mocks the genre. The cookie-cutter martial arts, or general action shounen, protagonist's strength and character development grow in tandem, while Tsuyoshi stagnates. His romantic endeavors have failed thrice in a row, his estranged family relationships grow further estranged, he loses his legal identity as a result of political strife, he's extremely inept at the single thing he's passionate about, all his circumstances eventually result in unwanted conflict. All of these consequences of his strength. It's mockingly comical how, rather than gaining, Tsuyoshi continuously finds himself in deeper loss because of his power, both in the material and character sense. And ironically, this anti-genre approach is what makes Tsuyoshi a worthy inheritor of my favorite golden-age martial arts series, in its originality by breaking away from the mold. The most important aspect of any martial arts series that I value is subversion. There's no point in fights if the audience already knows the outcome, lest you're doing parlays. And subverting other areas of writing benefits this, which I find is Tsuyoshi's brilliance.
III Going on a brief tangent, Baki remains my all-time favorite martial arts series. For pure-blooded martial arts series, I find it very rare to find one that imposes its side characters as fully-functional rather than vehicles for the protagonist's development and fight scenes. Certainly, there's Baki's longevity to credit, but Itagaki's proficient in imbuing his characters with their own martials art philosophies and personalities that make every interaction, both mundane and exciting, charming and ridiculous. Maruyama writes in a lesser, but similar vein. Tsuyoshi possesses both comical charm that doesn't wring out the same gimmick and bears characters with circumstances that aren't solely external vehicles. Teru being one such great instance, exemplified by his fall-from-grace, his ascent, another fall-from-grace and another ascent but with very different and interesting circumstances and characterization in each scenario.
The characters gravitate to Tsuyoshi for his strength with interesting motives that pave way to exciting conflicts, which instill him and others with characterization. The China/Japan vs Russia arc being another great example. It transformed the overpowered protagonist bit into a Cold War reenactment. Although not nearly as ludicrous as Baki, Tsuyoshi maintains a ridiculous plot at times, but the progression is sensible and keeps the audience excited. It doesn't rely on a tired out gimmick to retain entertainment value, Tsuyoshi draws from its characters, plot progression and fights to continue interest. The gimmicks don't tire themselves out, either. Maruyama surprisingly retained the simp gimmick's comedic value longer than I expected, but also wrote it into Tsuyoshi's character development as of late. Same application with Teru's one-sided bromance. It's extremely satisfying to see a mangaka competent in keeping his sources of entertainment refreshing for over 300 chapters at this point in time.
IV Refreshing martial arts manga are a scarcity these days and Tsuyoshi is the golden child among them. Maruyama has proved great competency in making an original mold out of the overpowered protagonist trope. He maintains a great balance between sensibility and ludicrous, gimmicks and somber characterization, and exciting plot progressions throughout 300 chapters thus far. In today's martial arts landscape riddled with one-trick gimmicks, Tsuyoshi traverses it as my number one favorite manga at the moment. Perhaps others may find it ridiculous or generic, but I believe that there's well-thought out writing behind it that continues to keep me immersed.
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SCORE
- (3.3/5)
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