But if I'm gonna gripe, I like to be specific, not just lamely saying "Duh, this suuucks!"
And that means spoilers. So I should do it here instead of at the front.
So here we are at ch. 43, and the younger brother, coach's son, guy who underestimates himself, is fighting. And it seems to me likely he's going to win. It'll be pretty much a downer if he doesn't. He plans to retire if he doesn't, his dad will continue to look down on him, he'll just kind of give up on himself as a loser.
But they've made a fairly big deal of the idea that he's naturally an out-boxer, and if he's going to win he should avoid standing up and trading punches. So here we are, and what do we see? He knocks the other guy down when he gets too heedless of his defence, and then he gets knocked down himself, mouthpiece flying. It's a freaking brawl--as usual, because it just has to be about maximum brutality . . . uh, drama . . . every single fight in a boxing/martial arts manga. Every match has to be *&%#ing Rocky, no exceptions allowed.
Would it absolutely kill the mangaka to just once, having done all the setup to that effect, let an out-boxer fight like an out-boxer? Huh? Would it be so terrible if he danced around on the outside, delivered a lot of stinging jabs, and outpointed the guy? Is there some reason that's absolutely forbidden?
OK, editing so as not to be double-posting, ch. 44 now. And so first of all, having not fought like an out-boxer, he lost. Well, fair enough although wanna bet that angle never gets mentioned? And second, you get this section justifying the coach/dad's approach to training and treating his son. I frankly think it's obscene. He treated his kid like shit because he didn't think he was talented, leading to his being self-destructive and bitter, and it's all OK if it stimulated his competitiveness and made him in some fashion tougher? All fine except he couldn't be bothered even to figure out that the kid might be better as an out-boxer and train him that way, see if he had any talent doing that. So clearly his approach wasn't working to make his son a better boxer or a better fighter or a better anything, and certainly not a better person. No doubt somewhere down the road in the manga there will be some form of reconciliation where the kid suddenly realizes everything his dad has done for him, but in real life that's not what happens; in real life this kind of crap breaks people, ruins lives and separates families. It doesn't make people tougher, it makes them more fragile; it doesn't lead to them winning, it leads to them seeing themselves as losers forever in a self-fulfilling prophecy. The dad's philosophy is both repellent and counterproductive.
Edited by Purple Library Guy, 13 February 2012 - 09:14 PM.