The story of Tsuyoshi follows Kawabata Tsuyoshi, who is challenged day to day by different fighters, martial artists, delinquents and all sorts of people wishing to ambitiously test their strength, against a man who has never been beaten, Kawabata himself.
Its starting point introduces two very important characters, Hoshizaki and Teru, best friends and technically-former martial arts rivals. Teru, having been beaten by Kawabata, has lost all will to fight ever again, and Hoshizaki upon hearing this, resolves to challenge Kawabata himself, and loses.
Wanting to understand Kawabata's strength himself, Hoshizaki resolves to get closer to him. Eventually, this resolves into friendship, and along the way
...
Hoshizaki learns that Tsuyoshi is approached every single day by the most random people looking for a fight, his coworker is a spy from a different country and that Tsuyoshi himself has piqued national interest, without his knowledge.
During his fights, Tsuyoshi always sets rules: no rematches, and don't spread his name after. Of course everybody who fights him disrespects his wishes, and ask for rematches just to prove to themselves that their impossible to beat.
To be fair, the whole story almost revolves around disrespecting and mistreating Tsuyoshi, as ironic as it sounds. And not just this, but the characters themselves, are major problems.
Hoshizaki is the only character worth liking, he is the only one with Tsuyoshi's best interest at heart, the only one Tsuyoshi can confide in without being judged. Sadly, with each passing arc, he's pushed farther and farther away from Tsuyoshi
Everybody else, with the exception of Teru due to certain reasons, is only interested in how beneficial Tsuyoshi's strength is useful to them, or their country.
The story progresses and gets crazier and crazier, with Tsuyoshi at the forefront of competitions between even countries.
Basically it follows this formula throughout:
- Let's hold certain competition to determine who is strongest// who gets control over Tsuyoshi/the situation
- Tsuyoshi goes into a rage and doesn't want anybody to control him and goes home
- Other character takes advantage of Tsuyoshi's feelings and kidnap him
- Repeat
Most of the characters introduced have seemingly interesting backstories, but they're easy to forget after every arc, especially when the baseline for everything is ownership of Tsuyoshi, which Tsuyoshi himself doesn't want in the first place. Sometimes the characters even go on their own side quests and hold their own personal competitions, which are only beneficial for the sake of power scaling and nothing more.
The story quickly devolves to one simply about bullying. After a while it's more: Just how much can we mistreat Tsuyoshi? If it's not enough that Tsuyoshi has to accept fighting commands from people he doesn't know, he also has to contend with kidnapping and basic denial of rights. His mental state is constantly getting frayed by the situation that is apparently his fault for being so strong. And just when he's able to find his way out and seems to want to get back on his own feet again, someone jumps in and makes things two times worse.
In a particular arc, he's falsely arrested and hounded to admit to crimes he didn't commit, or get the death penalty (whut?) and in another, he's kidnapped after being glued to his own bed (don't ask how that's possible...). To be honest, there isn't anything wrong with mistreatment of a character in fiction, what's actually wrong is a lack of condemnation for acts like that. There never seems to be a voice of reason, or rather, an opposition to the mistreatment that takes place. And this is what I particularly dislike about Tsuyoshi. It seems to me that it depends too much on the reader's want to sympathize with the mc
For example, after having Tsuyoshi arrested and completely changing his personality to make Tsuyoshi side with him by convincing him it was a prank (you don't have to believe me), one of the characters partakes in a competition to determine who 'controls' Tsuyoshi...again.
During the competition, the only character who even mentions Tsuyoshi's arrest is one who literally just shows up for the first time in the manga, and only mentions because of their relation to Tsuyoshi. Every other character either brushed it off, blamed Tsuyoshi, or stared in confusion. Tsuyoshi doesn't even like this character, and so directs all his anger and confusion at them, instead of the one who's actually deserving of it.
Another example would be the female characters who deceive Tsuyoshi and utilize his personality for their own goals only to attempt to insert themselves back into his life like nothing happened, and with no indication that they ever did anything wrong.
In the present arc, or at least what I'd read up to this point, we see a certain character use Tsuyoshi to fulfill his delusions of what he believes Tsuyoshi to be. Once again, he is put in a situation where he has little to no control of what goes on around him.
To summarize, the plot: is basically inexistent. Read this if you're just looking for something to pass the time. There are a lot of comedic moments that make the story seem worthwhile though. The story follows a sort of 'progressive' style where things just happen with no foreseeable conclusion or direction.
Characters and character development: Asides Teru, Hoshizaki and Kawabata, the rest are just there. Sometimes they just do the most inexplicable or frustrating stuff.
The character development can't even be called character development, as any change in Tsuyoshi's personality was completely forced on him.
Overall: Tsuyoshi is an unsatisfying martial arts comedy where the OP MC is mentally tortured and antagonized, while the true antagonists never get what they deserve, and continuously have the blame pushed off of them and onto the main character himself
Jan 14, 2025
The story of Tsuyoshi follows Kawabata Tsuyoshi, who is challenged day to day by different fighters, martial artists, delinquents and all sorts of people wishing to ambitiously test their strength, against a man who has never been beaten, Kawabata himself.
Its starting point introduces two very important characters, Hoshizaki and Teru, best friends and technically-former martial arts rivals. Teru, having been beaten by Kawabata, has lost all will to fight ever again, and Hoshizaki upon hearing this, resolves to challenge Kawabata himself, and loses. Wanting to understand Kawabata's strength himself, Hoshizaki resolves to get closer to him. Eventually, this resolves into friendship, and along the way ... 
Oct 8, 2024
R.O.D: Read or Die
(Manga)
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If I were to summarize Read or Die in one word it would be: 'disappointing'
If I were to do so in one sentence: 'It could have been better' To summarize its issues separately, we have: Characters: The characters are probably the biggest issue in this story. Every single one of them was one-dimensional, shallow and had zero motivation for their actions whatsoever. This made them hard to remember in following scenes, as it was very hard to connect with them in any way. They really just seemed to 'show up'. Also, this meant we had no idea of their 'inner voice', which is one of the most ... |
