Really gritty story about a top student called Ryo Narushima who is preparing for entering in the best university of Japan, but during that preparation he explodes due to that pressure and kills his parents.

When he enters in the juvenile centre, he is the perfect prey, extremely weak, without knowledge of that world and kind of people nor how to behave, and with a crime that is not seen in a good way by the guys he will share the next years of his life.

Shamo is the best definition of kill or be killed, the survival of the fittest. After entering he already knows that this will be a nightmare. He made a friend there who could buy him some time to decide what to do, but the best option he thinks of is suiciding since his destiny is to be raped constantly.

A Karate trainer called Kenji Kurokawa comes to give the guys some classes, that trainer is on life sentence and is also like an outcast inside Karate due to his oldschool approach towards it, not like a competition of points, katas and movements but as a way to fight, just as what it was created for, a way for regular people to defend against samurai in the past.

Ryo sees this as his only opportunity to survive, to learn karate as his way to really defend himself, not to learn a fancy choreography. Kurokawa sees in Ryo someone who is in line with his view of Karate, who is in a life-or-death situation and decides he is the perfect student he was looking for. This could be defined as a darkest version of Ashita no Joe story in the juvenile with Rikishi, his trainer and how he learned boxing there.

After training night and day under Kurokawa, Ryo began to see some progress since it’s the only thing he cares in life and can make him survive. After being raped, one day he bited the dick of a guy thinking he is already somewhat prepared to face them, and here began his downfall as being a really dangerous guy who will become a demon who behaves like a human gamecock (the meaning of Shamo).

In the street he can’t go through a regular path since his name will always be associated with that hideous crime he committed back then, so he tries to survive on the undercover at anything that arises, mainly as a male prostitute. He finds that his sister who he left alive that day ended being a prostitute like him after losing everything and her mental equilibrium due to what his brother did.

After some time and facing many drug problems and mental issues he starts to work under some people related to night business having a lot of street fights that make him have a fighting style even more brutal than before, only focused on damaging the other, not to look good. But one night he is destroyed by a guy who does Muay Thai and competes in a tournament called Lethal Fight really similar to what was Japan K1 (and whoever is familiar with the story of K1 will knew about the relation it had with yakuzas, money laundry and shady business that ended finishing it even if it was extremely successful, much better than UFC, those were the times with Masato, Buakaw and so).

Ryo decides to “upgrade” his fighting and compete there, to live like Naoto Sugawara, the superstar of the tournament who without them even knowing each other Ryo has decided due to his mental issues that will be his enemy in life (like David Chapman with Lennon) and is going to do anything to live like him, cash, luxury and sexy woman that are not those grannies that pay him for a night. An obsession that will make him learn every style of fighting, taking steroids as crazy that make him even more unstable and driven by outbursts to be able to catch the attention of Sugawara and the tournament.

Even if it looks like I spoiled the whole story this could be the presentation of everything. Here starts the path of Ryo and the confronting of good and bad, the virtuous Sugawara and the crooked Narushima, and how those limits under lace.

Shamo is a work of fiction, that’s clear, but it’s rooted on reality, this is not about some particular events that may look exaggerated in real life but about the “air” the story has. That air and feeling is closer to how that shady part of the world really is than the vast majority of approaches to it by cinema, literature, manga and anime (Yamikin Ushijima-kun is an even better depiction of that, and the only other manga in that line that I know).

This is not another of those manga about juvenile delincuents that are just soft little kids with whatever hairstyle, smoking, skipping classes and doing some robberies and drugs, but about a crazy motherfucker like Narushima who lives in a mental war and the people he hang with that those “juvenile delincuents” fear. Because those are the ones who can fade the bubble they live in and the character they created will drop, since at the end they really don't know what that life is all about except of liking the feeling of being seen as thugs, but without the balls, entourage and life experiences to sustain that act.

And here comes the worst part of Shamo where everyone agrees. This manga has one of the worst endings or final parts ever made. It seems that both authors had a lot of disagreements and Izo Hashimoto abandoned this project. I don’t know if Hashimoto was the master mind here since it seems he wasn’t too involved in this before. Also, when Shamo resumed instead of following the prior events Tanaka decided to make a really weird story about Ryo going to the mountains to learn kung fu in a monastery that looked like a Jean Claude Van Damme movie that really lost its touch with reality and also on depiction of combat sports, introducing ki, chackras and many nonsense plots that were really far of the real spirit of Shamo.

If this didn’t ended like that, I would rate Shamo with a solid 9, but it ends so bad that it’s really difficult to don’t be affected by it. Even so I recommend it to whoever is interested in an intense, exciting and dark story with some of the best fights ever, and touches of really sad and moving moments of cruel poetry.