Holyland, Kokou no Hito Recommendations
I just finished marathoning a hundred or so chapters of The Climber, and I must say, The Climber and Holyland are two great mangas that achieve their messages both strongly and similarly.
Enter in two character that struggles with loneliness and identity. They are somewhat introverted, mysterious, quiet, but nonetheless different from others. To channel their concentration, frustration, relaxation, happiness, and essentially, their everything, they find an activity that they fall in love with. Both mangas strongly represent the loneliness aspect of each person's life, and both do so differently. And the characters--remarkably considering other stuff I'm sure we know of--grow throughout the story, and we
begin to see--actual!--maturity/develop over the course of the series.
But what is most prominent is of course the sports aspect that we are introduced with. Holyland is the indepth sports commentary of street fighting and boxing, and The Climber is the indepth sports commentary of climbing. The amount of detail, in reality, description, imagery, hell even throw in history are all phenomenal. By sports description alone, I would recommend these series to individuals.
However, don't expect some easy-going, shounen, arc-based, romantic-comedy, blah blah, you know what I'm talking about. If you may, excuse the language, but to put it bluntly, this is, in all honestly, some hardcore motherfucking shit. Remember guys, these mangas are about loneliness, and the reality of these kinds of plot is that life isn't just some lovely dovely pleasant adventure someone gets plopped in. Oh sure, there maaaybe some nice lovely parts here or there, but this isn't like some supercomeback Eyeshield stuff going on, this is some deeply psychological, well-thoughtout plots. The bleakness and harshness, infused in the loneliness and identity aspect, infused in two different sports, brings you two excellent, innovative, breakthrough mangas, Holyland and The Climber.
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The feeling that you want to run away from society, and find your place where you belong to
