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Vizuyos
Jun 17, 2020

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tweet my meat posted:

His whole arc was being built up as being this super strong rear end in a top hat and then having most of that facade stripped away when the real badasses show up. I liked the way it was done and saying he was supposed to be on the level of Agito is just missing the point.

The problem is that this describes Purgatory's entire lineup so far. They were all introduced as big badasses, only for their Kengan opponent to take a couple chapters to figure out how to counter their gimmick and then immediately steamroll them. After four in a row, it's starting to feel a little one-note compared to the Kengan Tournament. The fact that Carlos and the Falcon managed to officially win their matches doesn't really make Purgatory feel like any less of a chump lineup right now.

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Vizuyos
Jun 17, 2020

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AtomikKrab posted:

Mudo didn't feel like a chump in my opinion. Julius just broke his limiter and crushed him with PURE POWER.

Compare it to Julius vs Wakatsuki. That fight felt like a clash of the titans where both of them were giving all they had to beat the poo poo out of each other, a back-and-forth slugfest where both of them were adjusting to each other's tactics to try to outfight each other. It really felt like a battle between equals, where even the winner emerged significantly beat-up.

Mudo, on the other hand, just used his counter move over and over, inflicting minor damage, until Julius revealed his new ability and utterly crushed him in two hits. It made Julius look impressive, but I wouldn't say it was an impressive fight.

Vizuyos
Jun 17, 2020

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Kengan Asura usually made a point of trying to introduce characters before they step into the ring, so readers can experience some setup for the character that doesn't come from pre-battle banter, mid-fight flashbacks, and ringside spectator exposition.

RoR doesn't do that, choosing instead to keep most of the fighters as mysterious as possible until the moment they enter the ring. And Omega isn't so good about it either, which makes it a lot harder to get attached to the Purgatory characters.

Vizuyos
Jun 17, 2020

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Spuckuk posted:

Okubo is gonna get absolutely smoked isnt he

Nah, Okubo's been playing the long game. He spent the entire arc acting like a clown so he won't actually get clowned in the ring.

Vizuyos
Jun 17, 2020

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golden bubble posted:

https://cubari.moe/read/imgur/GZVfuIn/1/1/

"I hope you will change your impression of Tai Chi after this match"

And then he swaps to other martial arts before half the chapter is done.


It's Carlos all over again. Making a big deal about how awesome he is at one particular martial art that's his personal specialty, and then within a couple of exchanges he's forced into revealing his super special trump card: using some other martial art that he has far less experience with.

Vizuyos
Jun 17, 2020

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Catpetter1981 posted:

Ohma - Advance
Kure family + Lu Tian - Removal
Alan Wu - Guihun
Fei Wangwang - Divine Demon


There was Setsuna's Fallen Demon form too, which I think counts even if it went with a different aesthetic

Vizuyos
Jun 17, 2020

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I almost want Wakatsuki to hurry up and lose by ring-out so that the tournament arc can be done already and we can move on to the Worm's real plan, which will no doubt render the entire tournament scoreboard moot anyway. And that way Wakatsuki can be up and fighting for the post-tournament events, instead of getting pulverized into the infirmary to show off how strong the TRUE NIKO STYLE is.

Vizuyos
Jun 17, 2020

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At the rate things are going, I hope the ultimate conclusion is that wanting to be The Strongest like Ohma and Koga did is dumb and pointless, and instead you should aspire to make a bunch of friends and have a blast hanging out with them all the time like Rihito or Yamashita do. Because the Worm's quest for ultimate strength is getting excessively ridiculous at this point.

Vizuyos
Jun 17, 2020

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Wakatsuki's whole thing in Asura of "he's not just a super-strong fighter, he's a super-experienced fighter" made for some great fights. Wakatsuki vs Mutenba was an amazing fight, because it didn't just boil down to slamming gimmicks against each other. They both spent a lot of the fight trying to compensate for the damage they'd taken in previous matches while trying to ward off each others' decisive moves.

Meanwhile, this fight was basically just Wakatsuki having all of his moves dodged or countered while Fei tries to take him out by just punching and kicking. Yeah, sure, the powerup made him really really strong, but the last person who tried to just punch Wakatsuki into submission was Julius, and that's a hell of a fight to live up to.

Vizuyos
Jun 17, 2020

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Really good at punching, so strong that he can't find a decent opponent...isn't this just first part of the Carlos fight all over again?

Vizuyos
Jun 17, 2020

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Xia and his nameless flunkies had our former main character, Koga, on the brink of defeat. They came very close to straight-up executing Kazzy. The rest of the Worm talks a ton of poo poo about Xia, but he felt like way more of a direct threat than all of these Worm folks who are either lurking sinisterly in the shadows all the time or engaging in one-on-one no-killing-allowed fights in a tournament over the ownership of the Kengan Association. And ever since the moment Ohma returned and effortlessly undid that near-death situation, he's been nothing but a joke.

Vizuyos
Jun 17, 2020

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AtomikKrab posted:

Edward I think is Literally wiping out all the other instances of Wu Hei as part of some scheme. I think he literally only wants to pass along "his" version of Wu Hei

Well, all the non-Edward instances of Wu Hei seem to absolutely suck, so that probably wouldn't be a terrible idea. They're all supposed to have the mind of the same guy, but they don't act very similarly at all.

Vizuyos
Jun 17, 2020

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I don't mind Edward getting killed by Raian, but it seemed kinda early?

He's been foreshadowed as a plot-important character for a while now, and this fight was absolutely not plot-important in the slightest. He hasn't really done anything except talk poo poo, kill nameless mooks, and beat up side characters for fun. Raian taking his head off while Erioh makes funny faces is cool and all, but I dunno, this whole thing just didn't feel important. The Kures taking revenge for the death of a minor character offscreen sometime before Omega is sweet and all, but also not especially relevant.

And I never woulda thought I'd say this, but I'm getting tired of Raian just insta-decapitating people with his hands. It's a good trick, but we know the Kures have other techniques - Ohma's shown us a bunch.

Vizuyos
Jun 17, 2020

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The end of the chapter is very clearly alluding to Masaki being another Wu clone, but this whole arc has been dangling mysteries in front of us and then constantly faking out the audience. How many times has the Purgatory tournament already pulled "are they a Worm agent? are they using the Niko style? nope, even though they're super suspicious, it turns out they're some totally unrelated weirdo with totally unrelated suspicious secrets"? So foreshadowing and allusions aren't worth much anymore, because this arc's already thrown so many red herrings at us.

Vizuyos
Jun 17, 2020

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Well, they still haven't really established exactly what's going on yet since we only just had that timeskip. But the Worm as an international terrorist syndicate with cells all over the world making guns and doing suicide bombings doesn't really seem suited for Kengan, which is fundamentally about a small number of superhuman punchmans beating each other up in one-on-one fights. The bodysnatching conspiracy fit extremely well into a world where billion-dollar business deals are settled by muscle bros planting their fists in each other's faces.

Vizuyos
Jun 17, 2020

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Looks like season 2 of the KA anime is on the way

https://twitter.com/NetflixAnime/status/1506646952338931722

Vizuyos
Jun 17, 2020

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ZepiaEltnamOberon posted:

I'm curious why the leader of the Worm says he's dismantling the (current) Worm for the Connector's sake.

Just what is their objective??? Are they gonna make a new Worm after this????

If the Worm's leadership has some ultimate end goal that they're directing the resources and manpower of "the Worm" as an organization toward, then they might not need that organization after they've accomplished that goal.

Vizuyos
Jun 17, 2020

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I hope Xia Ji and Koga become best pals and hang out having fun as the new dual protagonists

Vizuyos
Jun 17, 2020

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I hope they give us a reason to give a poo poo about this tournament

Kengan Asura had established the stakes for its big tournament before it even told us who the competitors were

Vizuyos
Jun 17, 2020

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gimme the GOD drat candy posted:

"who is the SECRET WORM INFILTRATOR????"

"oh, it's this guy. and that guy. and those two guys over there. and also a bunch of worms are just running around the venue being cryptic and violent."

also, their evil plan was to publicly reveal their secret Worm affiliation in front of everyone (after years of secretly infiltrating), and then force their opponent to brutally kill them for ???reasons???

Vizuyos
Jun 17, 2020

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Kanos posted:

Almost all of the cool Kengan characters that we like started off as randoms in a tournament arc!

It's a little different now that we've got established strong characters, though

Omega is gonna have to work real hard to convince me the generic randos in Pool B are there for any reason besides to job to the KING OF STRANGLERS

Also, pouring one out for my boy Chiba who's signed up to lose, like every other fight he's had. Hopefully he's merely beaten, rather than getting killed in the ring by someone going murder-crazy

Vizuyos
Jun 17, 2020

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RareAcumen posted:

Yeah but that doesn't answer my question. I'm pretty sure this is the third time they've done this extra theme. Why is Rolon now Karla sized? He was closer to the Adam Dudley/ Jose side of the scale.

the one-off comedy side chapter set in a wacky dream does not give an extensive explanation of the motives behind the artist's design changes to each of the characters

Vizuyos
Jun 17, 2020

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Hypocrisy posted:

New chapter 165.

In which we find out that having your face caved in just needs a band aid to fix.

Also not sure if there are any Chiba fans but uh...RIP.


Chiba fan here

but he got to win a fight in this arc (even if it was entirely offscreen), and that was already more than i expected from him

Vizuyos
Jun 17, 2020

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well, he wouldn't be Rihito if he wasn't talking poo poo

and getting hit

Vizuyos
Jun 17, 2020

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that was one boring-rear end fight

gotta crush some mook occasionally to maintain his jobber cred so people act surprised when he loses fights

hopefully Rihito vs Saw Paing is more hype, though

Vizuyos
Jun 17, 2020

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Jose posted:

still kind of wild julius was sinvolved in killing a guy by standing still with an F1 car chained to him

it was way cooler than anything Toa Mudo ever did

Vizuyos
Jun 17, 2020

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Cosmo can just hit him in the head a couple dozen times, Julius isn't gonna deflect that with skull muscles or whatever

Given that Cosmo's superpowers are "really good at dodging at the last second" and "really good at attacking people's weak points with impeccable techniques", I think he'd be a pretty decent match for a guy that can one-shot nearly anyone and basically doesn't feel attacks to anything but a weak point

Vizuyos
Jun 17, 2020

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the problem with all the Worm stuff is that it leaves very little room for incredible fightman bromances, which are the best parts of Kengan

the Connector being dumbass-buddies with Koga's uncle and Kazzy? that's a thousand times more fun and interesting than whatever sinister secrets he's actually supposed to be involved with. give me twenty more chapters of him pounding down beers with the other old dudes while doing fight commentary in his head

the long-haired goofball getting bullied by literally everyone, and then holding his own because whining makes him stronger? fuckin hilarious, I could watch him clown on badass muscle dudes all day

but literally everyone else in the Worm is either too cool to hang out with people, or getting ready to off themselves at the first possible opportunity

Vizuyos
Jun 17, 2020

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Artelier posted:

Okay, but why does people knowing where Ryuki is means he has to surrender man this makes so little sense to me

it's because Ohma was holding him off and keeping him away from where they were keeping Ryuki, but the writer needed him to come to the room with Ryuki so Koga could go off on him like this, and the writer didn't want either him or Ohma to clearly lose their fight

now that he's said "I surrender" and promised to give a little exposition, not only has Ohma brought him to the room where Ryuki is, but Ohma is standing further away from Koga and the defenseless Ryuki than he is. one little phrase, "I surrender", and they've all basically dropped their guard against the guy who fought Ohma evenly and can beat all the rest of them

Vizuyos
Jun 17, 2020

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Kanos posted:

There's no kung fu bullshit technique or mix of steroids that will let someone punch their fingers through solid steel or stone or be able to physically dominate an F1 race car, either.

Kengan has always relied on fantasy nonsense techniques, it just cloaks them in pseudo-realistic terminology to ground them a little.

That stuff is mostly being done out of combat to show off, though. Julius is tough to hurt, but there's no "your fists must pack more force than an F1 racecar to even give him a bloody nose or bruise" requirement in battle. Gensai can punch holes in steel and block bullets at close range, but when he's actually in the ring, he's not ripping people to shreds with superhuman strength and senses, he's just really good at martial arts.

Indestructible in particular has gotten a lot more silly as the series has gone on. It started out as "slightly reduces the damage of blows, giving an excuse for why Ohma can endure so much getting the poo poo beaten out of him", and after a while it became "ha ha, you broke your fist on my face because I tightened my muscles up a bit, shouldn't have underestimated THE NIKO STYLE".

Vizuyos
Jun 17, 2020

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we'd better see "The Connector" Shen Wulong tear Gaoh to loving shreds, it'd be a nice palate cleanser for this mess of an arc

Vizuyos
Jun 17, 2020

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ZepiaEltnamOberon posted:

I think my favorite fight in the Purgatory tournament was the Judo matchup.

Jurota's ability to throw his opponent from virtually any contact is in the realm of fantasy, but it's the kinda fantasy that you can imagine about. He's vastly more skilled than Masaki but Masaki's special aptitude for pain + Purgatory rules (no killing) limiting his ability to inflict additional damage on Masaki + Jurota's weakness in other fields (because he devotes himself solely to throwing by choice) results in him losing. But it's still clear that Jurota is an incredibly strong dude and even Masaki acknowledges he only won cause the rules of Purgatory were in his favor.

The Purgatory rules actually massively favored Jurota. It's just that Masaki was too important to be completely chumped, and the authors thought the dilemma you describe was too good to waste, so they conveniently memory-holed the rule that interfered with it (or they did a mid-tournament rule change and I just forgot).

You say that Carlos won like a bitch, but how did he win? By throwing his opponent out of the ring! With that in mind, the biggest throwing genius in the world standing there in a tournament with a ring-out rule going "how do I beat a pain-resistant guy by throwing him without killing him" is kinda goofy.

CharlestonJew posted:

at this point I'd be surprised if gensai could even touch the connector, given how powerful he's shown to be. Even gensai ended up taking a hit or two in fights against people weaker than him, and shen's just effortlessly dodging everything a kuroki-level fighter is throwing at him

I don't think Gaoh is anywhere near Kuroki level. He's tough, but he couldn't land a single clean hit on Ohma. Feels more like a mid-tier Annihilation Tournament fighter, but with the catch that he's not fighting under any rules and has absolutely zero interest in clean fair fistfights, so there's always the possibility he can pull something tricky on someone who's more powerful than him in a straight-up fight.

Vizuyos
Jun 17, 2020

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ZepiaEltnamOberon posted:

Jurota wouldn't toss Masaki out because Jurota does not want to win that way at all.

This is a guy who, after beating everyone in the judo world and found no one worthy of being his rival, pretty much gave up on the idea of having a good ol' fashioned judo fight until he saw this kid and became convinced that he'd grow up to give him the fight he was looking for. Even when Masaki (the original) turned out to be crazy and killed his father & fellow disciples, Jurota thought, "Yeah, he'll pop up again sometime" and still continued to hone his craft.

And despite the original Masaki dying in Asura, Jurota's patience was still rewarded when he got to fight Masaki (the clone) in the Purgatory vs Kengan tournament.

Why would he want to ring out Masaki? Why would he want to end the fight he's been looking forward to for literally 2+ decades by tossing out his glorious rival out the ring? There'd be no point in that.

It ain't goofy at all, it's Jurota being true to his desires. He has a very specific way he wants to win. With judo, not with ring-outs.That's why the Purgatory rule of no killing was so unfavorable for him. Most people would get knocked unconscious after repeated throws, but Masaki is literally born different and can keep getting back up. So Jurota has to deliberately weaken his throws so they don't end up killing Masaki, and it's hard to fight while restraining yourself.

Hell, even if they were operating on Kengan rules, Jurota might not have wanted to kill Masaki anyways. Masaki was still far from the peak potential that Jurota envisioned - Jurota probably wanted Masaki to grow even stronger so they'd be on a more even footing in the future.

Maybe if the fight that he'd been looking forward to for 2+ decades was more interesting than "he throws a guy a bunch of times, realizes that the guy's immune to throwing, and then throws the guy another dozen times while Rolon reminds us every three pages that he's supposed to be an awesome throwing genius". It's no Cosmo vs Ohma, that's for sure.

And Kengan needs the fights to be awesome in order to ward off the cringe. If someone has a lovely fight, then you realize their muscle magic is bullshit or somebody's backstory is "he won too many judo tournaments and then spent twenty-some years obsessed with a kid he saw at a middle school judo competition once", and then it just feels even worse.

Vizuyos
Jun 17, 2020

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ZepiaEltnamOberon posted:

Rereading the old Omega chapters and drat the Worm legit seemed threatening all the way up until Chapter 50, when Ohma and Raian appear to kick their asses in.

Prior to that you have them sneaking in, killing, and replacing fighters / Kengan Association staff. Like, the conversation where Idematsu tells Yamashita that the Fake!Mumon was using a different style of Snake Fist was a big moment where Yamashita realizes he might not even be able to trust the very people around him.

You have Yamashita learning that the Worm has been in contact with both his son and one of Japan's most notorious serial killers.

Then you have Xia Ji sneaking around and having his men steal Ohma's hair so Yamashita ends up with the wrong results.

And then you have one of Xia Ji's dudes kill the guy in charge of conducting tests for would-be fighters and that poo poo is loving brutal, the dude has the top part of his head sliced off via wire. That's loving gruesome poo poo.

And finally you have Xia Ji and his boys ready to kill both Koga and Yamashita.

And then after that Xia Ji and the Worms rapidly start becoming cartoonish evil dudes who never win a loving fight.

to be fair, it was really funny when Xia Ji turned out to be a super badass who was just too much of a lazy cowardly rear end in a top hat to make anything of it, so he was a total pushover unless he was terrified out of his goddamn mind

shame about the entire rest of the Worm, though. I think the worst part is that they all either die at the end of their first fight or are too high-ranking/sociopathic to hang out with anyone, so we don't get any post-fight bromances with them

the post-fight bromances are one of the best things about Kengan and it sucks when we miss out on them because of stupid poo poo like "this guy decided to kill himself in the ring to convince Ryuki that murder is good"

Vizuyos
Jun 17, 2020

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super not psyched for the new tournament, so i hope the inevitable twist wrecks it completely

it hasn't been that long since we had a tournament between the top kengan fighters and the top purgatory fighters, and it honestly wasn't all that great. so having a tournament between the top kengan fighters, top purgatory fighters, and outside fighters (most of whom will be worm infiltrators anyway) doesn't sound like a ton of fun.

Vizuyos
Jun 17, 2020

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Saw Paing vs Julius, the unbreakable skull vs the unstoppable fist

Hassan vs Mikazuchi, two fighters who take pride in their speed

Jerry Tyson vs Nikaido Ren, a showoff between the elite master of old kung fu and the elite master of new kung fu

Vizuyos
Jun 17, 2020

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i think people just get happy when the fights are all like "with my incredible martial arts skills and the special abilities granted by my weird hosed up body, I've spent half the fight setting you up for my finishing move, which is actually a normal martial arts move slightly adapted to work on my opponent's weird hosed up body"

and they get mad when the fights are all like "sure, you literally shattered my fist bones, and the remnants of my ribs are shredding my internal organs, and you just slammed the base of my skull directly into concrete, but i don't feel like losing yet, so i'm just going to keep getting up until i hit you once and win instantly"

nobody gets mad if saw paing takes a sledgehammer to the skull and keeps on walking, or if julius trips and falls into a meatgrinder and shatters the blades with his muscles. it's cool and awesome when that happens

Vizuyos
Jun 17, 2020

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i knew the Worm stuff was going to end up being supremely dumb but this is really surpassing expectations here

Vizuyos
Jun 17, 2020

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the Worm's head's real power is an aura of stupidity, isn't it?

literally everybody in that room should drat well know better than to think that someone is harmless just because they don't have a weapon

Metsudo and Nogi, of all people, looking shocked that a Martial Arts Guy took down a bunch of people with guns

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Vizuyos
Jun 17, 2020

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i refuse to believe that terashi, the human vibrator whose brain explodes if he takes off his dumb mask for too long, is a better assassin than Inaba Ryo and Kure Fusui

suspension of disbelief, shattered

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