Flex your muscles to follow the adventures of Kenshirô. The history of China and Japan, gangs, deadly fighting techniques return in volume 2 of Soten No Ken at Mangetsu.
Coming out of retirement
The first volume of Soten No Ken revealed that the teacher adored by the students of a girls' school was previously one of the leaders of a powerful gang in Shanghai in the 1930s. He was nicknamed the king of the underworld. Accompanying the last emperor of China to Japan, a former companion informs him of the death of his gang comrades at the hands of the Bloody Poppy Union. The rival gang of the Bloody Poppy Union won and gentrified. Kenshirō then makes the decision to return to China to avenge them. This quest begins with Goran, former lieutenant of the group and now organizer of clandestine fights. Even religion cannot save them. This volume is a direct continuation of the previous one. Kenshirō fights in a totally crazy ring with barbed wire and, at every corner, burning chimneys. It must be said that the drawing insists on this unreality: Tetsuo Hara makes epic each blow making a fight a moment of intense stress.
A striking narrative (literally)
In Soten No Ken, rivers of blood and sweat flow. Like the first volume, we find the style of the screenwriter Tetsuo Hara: outrage in all areas. The supervision of the original writer of the first series, Buronson, reinforces this fidelity. The fighting is disproportionate and the places totally improbable. A punch causes a man to turn around. A man is cut like a sausage by a swordsman. Torture is difficult for the most fragile readers. Sexuality is as unbridled as it is strange. This outrage even becomes funny by the stupidity of the characters. The bad guys are all idiots and rush headlong instead of making a plan. Are they driven by panic? The arrival of Kenshirō awakens the violence of these mafiosi… but also their fears. Due to old injuries, they are harnessed with crazy splints. Both in the prestigious past of the gang and the darker present, Soten No Ken alternates between these fights and gang intrigues. The representation of Shanghai transcribes well the mixture between the westernization of modern buildings and the maintenance of oriental slums. However, Soten No Ken should not be seen as a historically accurate narrative or a moral view of the past. Tetsuo Hara mixes genres with a swordsman with a cape and a man (De Guise) as out of a Dumas novel while we are in the 1930s. This series depicts the delirium of an author using the past to express his impulses: strength and virility. Like Gabin or Eastwood, Kenshirō is an old-fashioned masculine ideal: an outstanding fighter, a unique strategist, an inveterate smoker and even a talented pianist. At first, a burnt and hungry man becomes a powerful and flexible Olympic fighter by stepping into the ring… Well, we can believe it. This masculinism and the very stereotypical vision of women could rightly disturb some. As in the first volume of Soten No Ken, the reader is never bored. The action of the scenario and the dynamism of the drawing make the reading very fluid and captivating. The stakes rise as Kenshirō pursues his revenge and gradually rises to the top of the rival gang. But what will the Westerners dominating Shanghai do? You can find a chronicle of another series of the same mangaka, Keiji and Manchuria opium squad taking place in the same historical period.
