The Stranger by Bastien Vivès
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
French manga? Why not.
A fighting tournament, a mysterious stranger, a weirdo with a mustache, and a boy who must overcome the twin obstacles of being a crappy fighter and having a supremely hot mom.
Fighting tournaments have to be one of the most popular fictional settings/story catalysts, no? I feel like you can hardly read or watch or play a thing without running into a fighting tournament, and yet I feel like there are so few…perhaps none of this type in real life. Fighting tournaments where there are no weight classes or style restrictions, no rules about what you can and can’t do, all that stuff.
Examples:
Street Fighter: Fight your way around the globe. Fight a Japanese Sumo. Fight a brash American soldier. Fight and Indian…who wears skulls around his neck and blows fire. Fight a South American abomination with electricity powers. And then fight a Major who I don’t think is actually aligned with a country but just made his own military and made himself a Major.
Mortal Kombat: Basically Street Fighter, but with murder. Murder you see, anyway. I can’t imagine that you can be consumed by flame and concussed by a sumo flying at you with full force and not suffer some adverse effects. You know, I always admired how, in Street Fighter, if someone got hit just right, they puked, and then kept right on fighting. That’s someone who knows how to rally.
Best of the Best: Actually, I’m mostly thinking of BOTB2 because that’s the one they showed on TV all the time. Tournament fighting, but with a twist because the ring announcer is Wayne Fucking Newton.
Killer Instinct: Want to push 3 buttons and hit someone 800 times? I’ve got your Huckleberry.
Timekillers: Not super notable except that characters had cutting weapons and could cut each other’s arms and legs off without ending the fight. Also, you could be a chainsaw-wielding punk named Rancid who was straight out of The Lost Boys.
Primal Rage: Because we all wanted to be a giant ape that beats people up with farts.
After that sentence, I’m cashing in my chips here.