Super Ninja Dan

Interestingly enough, for a long time this work was regarded by both Kariya and Shimamoto as part of their "dark period". For Shimamoto, he was just starting out his career and figuring out his style (he's the one that brought most of the silliness in, which didn't mesh very well), while for Kariya, he was making the transition away from honor-and-chivalry centered yakuza manga (after which he would write the second-longest cooking manga of all time until as recently as 2014). While both of them are more accepting of it now, they were pretty ashamed of it and didn't speak of it for years.

I'm not expecting everyone to like this manga (in fact, I find the protagonist to be the scummiest of all Shimamoto manga I've read), but because it's such an interesting and controversial piece in the history of two big-name manga artists' careers, I figured it was at least worth a translation. Maybe down the road I'll translate some of Kariya's yakuza manga, too (but I am not crazy enough to do Oishinbo).

Look at his hair - it's the 80's alright.

Let me guess, late 70s/early 80s?

It's fairly melodramatic at times, silly at others. Pretty standard stuff, if it wasn't for the somewhat cavalier violence depicted in the first chapter.

Overall, I think this could have been a much better manga if Kariya-sensei's editor had pushed him to "show more and tell less"...

EDIT: 1982-1986, according to the Japanese Wikipedia. The drawings sure looked like a 1970s-era Go Nagai production, though.