Takeki Ryusei: Unedited Audio and Recording Notes (Patreon)

Manga Details

• Roughly translates to “The fierce dragon star/planet”
• Hara seems to like including the kanji 星 (star) somewhere in the title of his works.
• Author: Hara, Tetsuo
  • Notable people they were an assistant for:
    • Yoshihiro Takahashi (author of Silver Fang: The Shooting Star Gin)
    • Kazuo Koike (author of Lone Wolf & Cub)
      • More a student than an assistant
  • Notable people they had as assistants:
    • Koji Maki (Godsider, Metal K)
    • Masanori Morita (Rokudenashi BLUES, ROOKIES)
      • They had a ton of notable assistants but this is the big one
      • Worked on fist of the north star
    • Hirohisa Onikubo (very accomplished hentai artist, chief assistant for Hirohiko Araki on Battle Tendency/Stardust Crusaders, currently works with David Pro on the JoJo anime)
    • Yuuko Uramoto (The Life-Changing Manga of Tidying Up: A Magical Story, written by Marie Kondo. Yes, that Marie Kondo)
• Author’s other works:
  • Iron Don Quixote (1982, 2 vols, Weekly Shonen Jump)
    • Debut! A motocross manga, didn’t catch on. Currently being fan-translated, so future flop eligible with any luck.
  • Fist of the North Star (1983-1988, 27 vols, Weekly Shonen Jump) written by Buronson
    • You don’t need me to tell you what this is. Star-making, genre-defining, massively influential. You’re already dead.
  • Keiji (1990-1993, 18 vols, Weekly Shonen Jump) based on Ichi-mu-an Furyuki by Keiichiro Ryu
    • Hara’s second hit, a fictionalised biography of Keiji Maeda, a somewhat flowery samurai gangster. Revisited many times since with Hara and longtime editor/partner Nobuhiko Horie overseeing sequels and spin-offs.
  • Fist of the Blue Sky (2001-2010, 22 vols, Weekly Comic Bunch) supervised by Buronson
    • A prequel of sorts to Fist of the North Star, set in 1930s Shanghai. A cool comic for cool people, and it had to be, as the flagship of Coamix, the new company Hara, editor Horie, City Hunter creator Tsukasa Hojo and others founded in the wake of Weekly Shonen Jump’s changing environment.
• Run dates: Apr 18, 1995 to Oct 31, 1995
  • Series it replaced:
    • Shin Jungle King Tar-chan by Masaya Tokuhiro (20 vols, HIT)
  • Series that replaced it:
    • Kaosu Kanburiya by Ton Okawara (1 vol, 9 chapters, FLOP)
  • Series from same round:
    • Ayatsuri Sakon by Masaru Miyazaki & Takeshi Obata (4 vols, anime, so who even knows)
    • Ryuudo no Sieg by Takashi Noguchi (2 vols, FLOP)
• Chapters/Volumes: 26 / 3

About the Manga

• Plot
  • Katou Ryusei is a former 16 year old biker gang leader. He’s returning from working on a boat for 2 years only to discover that his gang has been taken over by the Yakuza, who make them sell drugs. After defeating Yqshiro, the man he left in charge of his gang, Ryuu qgqin takes leadership over the bikers after almost burning everyone alive to establish dominance and decides to go to war with the Yakuza. After stocking up on weapons Ryuu assaults the local Yakuza building with dynamite, getting the attention of Kido, a big Yakuza boss guy. Kido then approaches Ryuu with a katana, challenging him to a duel between men. Kido slashes Ryuu with his sword, but when Ryuu says that Kido looks sad, the yakuza boss realizes that he is dealing with a true gigachad. After Ryuu passes out from blood loss, Kido takes him to a secret hospital and goes to talk to his bosses. When they demand Ryuu’s death, Kido staves them off by cutting off his own arm as penance to show just how much of a chad he is. Kido goes to speak with Ryuu and says that he saved him because as much of a chad Ryuu is, he knows a super ultra mondo gigachad who Ryuu would love to meet. The next thing he knows Ryuu wakes up in Hong Kong face to face with the most powerful sigma male he’s ever encountered named Jouga Tsurugi. Jouga is trying to build some kind of world wide Japanese nation in Hong Kong or something? A place where people who don’t fit into Japan can live freely. You could say he’s some kind of big boss. They step outside and are immediately under assault from various cars full of assassins trying to kill Jouga. Ryuu helps fight them off but a big guy who helped fight them dies and Ryuu and Jouga both honor their fallen homie.
  • Jouga takes Ryuu to meet a total 10 out of 10 smokeshow baddie named Asaki, who drives Ryuu and a bodyguard to a fancy rich guy ball, dodging busses of assassins and making a cool fast-and-the-furious-style leap over a broken bridge to get there. We find out that Jouga is in a rush to accomplish his dream because he’s dying and thinks that Ryuu may one day be sigma enough to take over his business for him. They get to the ballroom where a big wig named Phillip, who sent the assassins, makes small talk with Jouga. Ryuu punches him in the face and Jouga hits him for causing a scene. When Ryuu gets up he’s applauded by Jouga’s men for being enough of a chad to do that for the sake of their fallen homies. Ryuu decides to assault Phillip’s compound himself but Jouga’s men say they want to accompany him, but after speaking to Jouga, who tells him to fight with purpose, he decides to sit somewhere and think all night. The next day Ryuu tells him that he isn’t a giga enough chad to take his place yet, but in two years he will be, and decides to head back to Japan. Ryuu’s bros finally see him again after being worried, and Ryuu tells him about the cool dude he met in Hong Kong, saying that he wants to go back there. As he prepares to go on his last ride he is met by thousands of bikers and they tear through the city in a huge parade of manliness. Ryuu then decides to stowaway on a fishing boat where he’s thrown in the brig by the douchebag crew with a bunch of refugees, causing him to start a revolt. Just then though it turns out that the idiot crew was shooting at a baby whale, causing the daddy sperm whale to fight the tiny fishing boat. Ryuu saves the baby and telepathically communicates with the father who realizes that Ryuu is a true man and leaves them alone. As they get to Hong Kong Ryuu teams up with a refugee named Han, who tries to get Ryuu to join a prize fighting ring, which Ryuu refuses until the champ, Foei, decides to start some shit with a poor grandpa and his kids.
  • Furious, Ryuu destroys his fist and decides to start prize fighting to help the grandpa pay for his kids’ various medical problems. Just then, before Ryuu’s match can start, they’re interrupted by Chouki, the nephew of Foei who wants revenge. They start fighting but Ryuu looks into his eyes and tells him that he’s sad, causing Chouki to realize that Ryuu is an ultra gigachad and pledges his loyalty to him, placing his gang of 300 under Ryuu’s control. Meanwhile Asaki strips naked, showing off to the reader how sexy she is, to  meet with the head of the Hakka group in a swimming pool of nude babes. Han then brings Ryuu and his gang to a construction site where some old people are trying to build a side road to avoid a heavily tolled main road. Just as the road is completed it’s blown up by the owner of the main road who is attacked by Ryuu’s men. The gang then decides to assault his bosses mansion only to discover that it’s the head of the Hakka group that Asaki showed her boobs to earlier. He fights with Ryuu in a battle of chads until Ryuu looks into his eyes and says he looks lonely. Hakka’s like nuh uh, and as a bunch of assassins from a rival group suddenly attack he’s saved by two bodyguards. Hakka’s like “see? I got these guys I’m not lonely.” But then a god damn tank appears and his bodyguards are like “fuck that shit” and run away. Hakka’s like damn I guess he’s right as the tank points it’s gun at him. Ryuu saves his life. That’s it bye.
• Characters
  • Katou Ryuusei
    • Badass biker
    • Slapperman
    • Cares about his sister
    • His tough guy is kinda a shield he puts up like damn this bullet really hurts get me a dcotor
    • Chadest Chad to ever chad
    • Mary sue
  • Kido
    • Big bad
    • See potential in the mc
    • Turns into a good guy
  • Jouga tsurugi
    • Mob Jesus

Why it failed

• Fuck this is edgy but it was the 90s
• The art is so detailed it’s kinda hard to tell characters apart
• Nothing kinda happens? Like idk what the point of this manga is midway through the first chapter
• This is a huge fist of the north star ripoff lmao
• Everything is just kinda grandstanding like nothing really matters
• None of the characters matter or plot really
• There's not as much action as id like
• It kinda feels like a theme park ride where if you look at it too much it kinda falls apart but it's fun in the moment
• Just sort of ends

What it did well

• Wow that’s some good-ass art
• It's actually funny
• There's a lot more depth to Ryu than I was expecting
• The characters are fun if a little two dimensional
• Cool action

Where it could have gone

• Card-games fights on motorcycle
• I kinda think a fighting tournament as the main motivator would have been cool or a plan to take down all the bosses it just kinda feels like it's missing something

Misc Thoughts

• Culundo is in FF Brave Exidus
• Man the MC of Ayashimon would have been MC with this dude
• The art kinda feels like it’s colored and we’re reading BW versions
• This feels very araki like
• I wasn't expecting every chapter to immediately follow the next it feels like one long scene
• 
  
• Maxy Bee thoughts:
  • GOOGLE THIS MAN. HE LOOKS LIKE A FUCKING GANGSTER.
  • Cannot overstate how big a deal Coamix is. Several classic Jump authors taking their ball and going home after Shonen Jump’s audience and style had left them behind. This was a huge break-up, and changed the landscape of manga FOREVER. They also run the Silent Manga Audition, one of the first global manga contests, a notable landmark in reaching outside of Japan for talent. To be a founder of this company would immortalise Hara alone, never mind his massively influential body of work.

Final Verdict

• Six Word summary
  • Community
    • Tucker:
    • Maxybee:
    • Portal man: What if kenshiro controlled Hell’s Angels | Muscles glasses has a gang now
    • duderocks the earthchild stan: Fist of the crazy-a$$ himbo
    • 
      
    • duderocks the earthchild stan: This counts as a sws right?
      • 
    • duderocks the earthchild stan: (Since no one made a joker one yet) this says a lot about society
    • Meru (Charly): The MAN amongst men has returned!
    • 
      
    • Meru (Charly): Fist of the axed star |  I know, it was cut before finishing it
    • LordAnubis, #1RedHoodFan/Mourner: Your series is already dead.
    • SuperDave: Tetsuo Hara, You Are Already Canceled
    • Sandmandf: Akira meets fist of North star | The man amongst men has returned
    • blahmoomoo: Insane Cool Man Dreams of Imperialism
    • Andy's Islands: The legend of the whale whisperer.
  • David: hot blood cooled by tepid plot
  • Jordan: ken voice: you are already sad
  • Guest: Strong Start, Falls off a Cliff