Tough

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This needs a new anime adaptation by a studio with bones or madhouse level quality.

It's criminal how unknown this manga is.

Characters and story are so well written that you genuinely feel goosebumps when things gets bad or a character is just in panel. Expressing tension when you want to perfectly is surprisingly difficult yet the mangaka that wrote this has such a solid understanding of it and how the ins and outs of real martial arts work you gain a new respect for it. Of course there is some Baki level absurdity yet when you see the things some of the characters do it feels ... possible. If you've read this manga you know what/who i am talking about.

bottom line is Tough holds a special place in my heart and if it was longer shows like Baki or Kengan Ashura wouldn't hold a candle to it.

Tough is the sequel to Tekken den Tough, which if you read it was okay but nothing more. Tough is more evolved than that.

Art-10
The art is realistic, gritty, and overall very good. I really enjoyed looking at the panels during fights and seeing how much the author must have researched in order to draw out some of these scenes. reading through you can see how the characters get caught and trapped in submission holds, how their bones break from taking serious blows, how their ligaments get stressed from certain actions. The art is no holds barred, it can be a little gross for some ... readers so I would recommend going into it expecting blood, bonesbreaking, bones sticking out, ligaments being torn, etc.

Story-7
The story is like any other martial arts mangas. Pretty basic, straight forward battle to battle writing. There is some parts where the main character is able to get out of something using a move that the reader had no knowledge about, which is a cop out to me. I wouldve preferred consistency, in that the main character is always hiding something from the reader, something that we had no idea was even in his aresenal. But other than that, the story is straightforward and is really easy to follow. There is some great plot twists that I found surprising and I foudn myself reading to the end quite fast becuase the pacing from each fight was really good.

Characters-8
The characters felt kind of weak, as I find with a lot of martial arts manga like this one. In the beginning the main character reminded me of a shounen. Talks about never giving up, and always wins at the end with some random trick, but as I read on I started actually liking the characters. They arent just muscle heads, there is actually really good character development (although I cant say I agree with a certain characters development throughout the story, felt like another cliche but I cant say without spoiling)

Overall-9
I really enjoyed reading this, I really cant recommend this enough especially if you read and liked Baki. It really is a great manga to read through fast, as there is not much dialogue needed to understand whats going on. And between fights the author does keep the readers entertained with different twists that surprised me.

I'm really shocked that nobody wrote a review on this one yet so I'll break the ice for now.

I need to make this clear from the beginning: If fighting isn't your thing, drop this manga, it's not for you.


STORY 8
If you read the prequel and liked it, you'll love Tough!
But even if you started with this one, you won't be dissapointed, you don't really need to know what happened before to appreciate Tough!
As a fan of martial arts/full contact I can assure you that this manga is the real deal.

...
ART 10
I was really impressed by the art.

CHARACTER 9
I love all the characters in Tough!, antagonists included.
The most impressive one is Kiichi of course, he's what I would call a "real man", someone who'll respect his principles and promises no matter what.
The characters may not be developped too deeply like in other mangas but as I mentioned before, Tough! is a fighting manga, too much words are useless.

ENJOYMENT 9
Delightful to read thanks to the fights and the art but again, I may be repeating myself, this only applies if you're into full contact.

OVERALL 9
No need to explain why, this is a paradise for those who like/practice MMA.