New Japan Academy

A manga about wrestler Tetsuya Naito and his journey to become the champion at New Japan Academy

We’ve discussed this on a recent episode.

This is a weird manga. And I say that specifically because it is taking the “career” of New Japan Pro-Wrestling’s Tetsuya Naito and putting that into a fictional story.

Professional wrestling is a fascinating form of entertainment that becomes a mix of reality and fiction. I would’ve preferred an interview style manga that exposed some behind-the-scenes facts about the biggest storylines in New Japan. Instead we get a generic school setting and a retelling of events that are the equivalent of the WWE comics.

Hiroku‘s cute character designs also didn’t seem to match the wrestlers. But this series is 2 volumes total so I might revisit this to see if they get into Naito’s evolution of his character.

It’s available in English from Yen Press.

~dakazu