Welcome to This Week in Shonen Jump, our weekly check in on Viz’s various Shonen Jump series. Viz has recently changed their release format, but our format will mostly remain the same. We will still review the newest chapters of one title a week, now with even more options at our disposal. The big change for our readers is that, even without a Shonen Jump subscription, you can read these most recent chapters for free at Viz.com or using their app.
This week, Rowan checks in with “Martial Master Asumi.” If you have thoughts on this or any other current Shonen Jump titles, please let us know in the comments!
Martial Master Asumi chapter 1
Written and Illustrated by Kawada
Reviewed by Rowan Grover
I hadn’t heard of managaka Kawada before reading this, and upon research, I saw something that tickled my little lizard brain. This guy has experience drawing sports manga, specifically of the contact kind. Now, I’ve been burned by a lot of Shonen debuts lately, so my expectations for this were low, but this little factoid fanned the flames for me. And boy, was I pleasantly surprised!
“Martial Master Asumi” (which cleverly abbreviates to MMA) is at its core, a story about a boy’s complicated relationship with his grandfather. Nito Asumi is a teenager whose grandfather, former Martial Arts legend Baku Asumi, has dementia. Nito cares enough about his family and grandfather that he is happy to help out where he can, but the burden does reflect through him every day. He leads a self-described “C-Average” life, doing just enough to get by in school but never enough to attract too much attention to himself or tire himself out so much that he can’t look after his grandpa. As someone who lives with their own grandpa and often has to cook and help with his daily life, Nito’s struggles touched me. Similarly, as someone who has also lived with another relative who struggled with dementia, Kawada does a great job at portraying the illness in a realistic way, with some artistic liberties.
Baku’s only points of clarity in his life come when he engages in rigorous martial arts training. Now, while it is a stretch to say an ageing man with dementia even trained in the sport could do this, the idea that he has a focus point which inspires lucidity is close to reality. While my grandpa doesn’t have dementia, he is very old, but he breaks through this mould often when he is talking about butchery, his old profession which he was renowned for. What I found similarly touching is that the main twist of “MMA” is that our C-average protagonist Nito is shockingly good at grappler-style martial arts because he practises often with his grandpa Baku to keep his mind as clear as possible. This need to engage with the interests of the ones you love even though it may not always line up with your own interests felt really poignant, and for me, made Nito especially compelling.
This wouldn’t be a good Shonen manga without some exciting action twist, however, and Kawada provides one that keeps our protagonist fallible. When he gets really motivated during his grappling, Nito gets bloodthirsty. And he likes it. And even more interesting? His grandpa can sense it in his training – but he likes it too. It’s very believable that a teenage boy who’s spent so much effort trying to repress extreme emotions gets excited channelling them in an aggressive contact sport. Kawada manages to weave even more emotional conflict into this situation too. Nito’s close friends are wanting to practise MMA in a wholesome way of bettering themselves. Having Nito try to maintain his C-Average visage whilst practising MMA with his pals adds another layer of conflict that makes this story so indulgent and interesting.
As I mentioned before, Kawada has experience with contact sports in his manga work, and while this is evident in the way his characters talk about it, it’s strongest in his visual language. Kawada draws MMA with a deft sequential ability. Every move is fast paced and beautiful, but is choreographed to move through the panels and pages in a way that makes sense and is easy to follow. We see this initially when Nao and Yuya are sparring in the gym, in which no speed lines are used to not distract from the very precise movements Kawada is rendering. He’s teaching us how to follow the action, but it also works within the story: it’s just friendly sparring, it’s not serious. Now, by the end of the story, when we get Nito engaged in full berserker-grappler rage, things get crazy. Speed lines and blurring are used with great screen tone effect to convey how serious and deadly Nito is in taking down his school bullies. It’s a shock to an onlooking Nao and to the readers: for the first forty pages of this manga, things remained tame. To have this high octane action happen now is exciting, and re-engages readers to pay attention to the manga’s hook: Nito’s lust for action. Yet even during the chaos, Kawada retains a beautiful flow to the choreography, leading every action into another but giving it a little more oomf this time around.
What this all comes down to is that Shonen Jump is back on the horse with this one, baby. I can’t say for sure that it will become a mainstay or stick around particularly long, but I dearly hope “MMA” does. It’s layered and intriguing with beautiful character work and relationships. The art holds up on this end too. Kawada may have been an unknown quantity to me before this, but I can see this being a bit of a breakout hit.
Final Score: 9.0 – A superb debut that I sincerely hope will stick around for a while.
