Holyland

A manga about bullied teenager who teaches himself martial arts and becomes street fighter known as the delinquent hunter.

We’ve talked about this on an older episode.

Holyland is the first Kouji Mori manga I ever read. I was immediately taken with the comprehensive breakdown of martial arts and fighting techniques displayed in this series. You can tell Mori did a lot of research into different fighting styles like boxing, wrestling, karate, kendo, kick boxing, and even knife fighting. Whenever characters would match up for fights Mori would break the 4th wall and address the audience with quick informative panels that broke down the mechanics of the moves. While our co-host Seamus hates this kind of stuff, I personally love it. It gave an extra layer of realism to the fights without sounding like shonen battle exposition. Mori would later use these info dumps for survival techniques in Jisatsutou as well.

A solid fighting manga for sure.

~dakazu