Manga / Mashle: Magic and Muscles

Mash Burnedead: The Boy Who Lifted

"These muscles will flex in the name of peace."

Mashle: Magic and Muscles is a fantasy/comedy manga written by Hajime Komoto, which ran from 2020 to 2023 in Weekly Shonen Jump.

Set in a world of magic where magic is used for everything, deep in the forest exists a young man who spends his time training and bulking up. Mash Burnedead can't use magic, but he enjoys a peaceful life with his father. One day, his life is put in danger! Will his muscular body protect him from the magic users who are out to get him? Powerfully trained muscles crush magic as this abnormal magical fantasy begins!

An anime adaptation covering the first 5 volumes by A-1 Pictures premiered in April 2023 with a 2nd season adapting the whole of the Divine Visionary Candidate Exam Arc announced for January 2024.

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Provides examples of:

• And the Adventure Continues: The manga ends with Mash and friends continuing their adventures and studies. This time replacing the prejudice with endless peace.
• Adults Are Useless: With an exception of a few, most adults don’t really take part in the main conflict. In fact, most of them want Mash dead due to the prejudice against non-magic users. If they’re a parent, well…
• Abusive Parents: Hoo boy, this series is a big contender for having some of the most vile parental figures in any manga. A lot of them come a cross as emotionally abusive, physical abusive, and the at worst will resort to murder their child if said child even remotely offends the natural order in the magic world.
• Actor Allusion:
  • This is not the first time Yūki Kaji voices a two-toned hair character, either being parted in the middle or black and blonde.
  • Similarly with Chiaki Kobayashi, for voicing a Badass Normal who has Charles Atlas Superpower in a fantasy setting.
• Adaptational Curves: The anime adds a bit more thickness to the legs of the characters when they're in their school uniform without deviating too much from the skinny silhouette they had in the manga.
• Affectionate Parody:
  • Of most nekketsu type manga, including those within its own magazine. The story could be loosely described as a shounen manga where instead of powering up and solving his problems with Hot-Blooded fighting and screaming, the protagonist simply smashes his way through issues with incredible ease. Much of the manga's humor is derived from how Mash skirts around traditional shonen tropes with his Super-Strength, like ignoring enemies when they try to make a speech or effortlessly defusing difficult situations by brute force. While the rest of the humor derives from the contrast of all the characters around him playing those same traditional shonen tropes completely straight.
  • Mashle wears its Harry Potter references on its sleeve, with even the first volume parodying the Japanese cover of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone. However, it takes just as much fun gleefully running over tropes common to the franchise as it does playing some straight.
• Afterlife Antechamber: Parodied in the final arc where a mortally wounded Mash finds himself in a kind of limbo after Innocent Zero rips out his heart. A godlike being there tries to barter a resurrection in exchange for the memories and connections he has with his friends. After Mash refuses and thwarts every attempt to make him accept, he manages to bum a free resurrection from him anyway, but asks if he can work out in this featureless otherworldly void for a bit so he can get stronger for his rematch against Innocent Zero.
• Aloof Big Brother: Rayne Ames appears to be to be to Finn and Finn seems to think himself as a disappointment. However, it's implied Rayne does actually care about Finn and supports Mash because the latter risked getting expelled to protect Finn from Cavill's bullying.
• Anti-Magic: The Deadervants are monsters completely immune to magic. This makes them unbeatable opponents for most people... and not threatening at all to the magic-less, super-strong Mash. Of course, they can get back up pretty easily too.
• Archnemesis Dad: Innocent Zero is Mash's biological father and plans to use Mash to gain the ultimate body.
• Artifact of Power: The 13 Master Canes are Ancient Artifact Magic Wands who chooses who wields them.
• Back for the Finale: Lovingly parodied in Chapter 158 of the manga where Lemon and Kaldo rally almost every major and minor surviving character in the book to hold back Innocent Zero's ultimate Darkness spell. Mash is touched, but given how briefly he met a number of them, he can only remember some of their names.
• Badass Normal: Mash, a magicless human in a world full of magic users who through sheer hard work gained the Charles Atlas Superpower of Super-Strength.
• Beach Episode: Chapter 73 of the manga and episode 24 of the anime has Mash, his friends, and Wahlberg at the beach dressed in swimwear.
• Cain and Abel: Subverted. Having no memories of growing up with them, Mash feels no innate sentimentality towards any of Innocent Zero's other children and casually shrugs off any gestures of familiarity they try to lob as they antagonize him.
• Calling Your Attacks: Mash and most magicians preface their moves with this, but really powerful (or serious) spell casters can perform magic without saying a word.
  • True to the parodic nature of the setting, Mash calls his Charles Atlas Superpower “Muscle Magic”, and names his attacks after muscle groups.
• Cape Punk: This is a world where almost every single person is born with the ability to use magic. Those few who aren't are executed out of fear of contaminating the gene pool.
• Casting Gag:
  • The Latin American Spanish dub brought many voice actors from the Harry Potter franchise, which the manga and the anime parodies to, voicing some previously related role that they did there:
    • Jorge Santos, who voiced Vernon Dursley, voice Wahlberg Baigan.
    • Alejandro Orozco, who voiced Nigel Wolpert, voice Lance Crown.
    • Magda Giner, who voiced Minerva McGonagall in Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, voice here another teacher, the Flight Teacher.
    • Rebeca Manriquez, who voiced Narcissa Malfoy, voice Regro's mother.
    • Arturo Castañeda, who voiced the titular young Harry Potter in Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, now voice Lloyd Cavill.
    • Víctor Ugarte, who voiced Harry Potter's adult self since Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, now voice Abel Walker.
    • José Luis Orozco, who voiced Lord Voldemort, now voice the Minister.
    • Gerardo Reyero, who voiced many roles in the franchise, including Arnold Guzman, Gellert Grindelwald and Igor Karkaroff, voice Farman Cregos.
    • Carlos Hernandez, who voiced James Potter, voice the narrator.
  • Howard Wang once again voices a white-haired man with the name of Abel. Wang himself also notes this in a Tweet.
• Charles Atlas Superpower: Mash acquired vast superhuman strength through a lifetime of weight lifting.
• Chekhov's Gunman: Rayne Ames is first shown in a newspaper in Chapter 1 prior to his actual appearance in the series.
• Comically Serious:
  • Mash takes everything in stride no matter how silly the situation he's currently in is.
  • Abel has some of the funniest moments thanks to his formal demeanor and nonchalant reaction to everything, including Mash's crazy stunts.
    Mash: You know that's a doll you are talking to?. Also, I may have broken your door. Sorry.
    Abel: Thanks for bringing that to my attention.
• Cerebus Syndrome: After Mash's nature as a non-magic user comes to light and the reveal of Innocent Zero, the series takes a noticably darker turn. However, comedic moments are still spreaded throughout, ultimately subverting the trope.
• Crapsaccharine World: The world the manga/anime inhibits is filled with magic and wonder… Except, it has frequent prejudice and executions for those without magic. Losing magic ends up being equivalent to being euthanized for not being part of the majority. Things aren’t much better for those whom have no talent with magic and unnatural magic; with people either suggesting killing oneself or just straight up committing murder to maintain status and order.
• Curbstomp Battle: Quite a few.
  • The first few arcs, before Mash's super-strength becomes well-known, sees him overcoming supremely overconfident wizards with his muscle power, rendering them speechless.
  • The final arc has the Divine Visionaries show off their power by effortlessly defeating Innocent Zero's monster army — only to be effortlessly defeated by his sons, to show off how powerful they are.
  • And again in the Final Battle; Innocent Zero, after his first defeat, rewinds time over and over again to have the greater advantage — only to get crushed each and every time by Mash.
• Damsel in Distress: And Distressed Dude. Both Lemon and Finn are turned into marionettes by Abel.
• Deconstruction: The setting heavily deconstructs the Wizarding World. In Harry Potter, wizards are portrayed as an insular and bloated bureaucracy in a parody of the British parliament, but the more sinister elements like their hierarchical society or their emphasis on bloodline purity are mostly kept to the background fluff. In Mashle, these elements take center stage and directly threaten Mash's life. Bloodline purity has evolved into outright genocide of anyone who can't use magic in order to "keep the gene pool pure", and the rigidly hierarchical society has given birth to many individuals who abuse their status within the system for all it's worth. Those without magic aren't merely kept out of The Masquerade as the muggles are, they're actively hunted down and executed, with the implication that this can even happen to infants. Even those with magic can suffer, as Regro, whose magic is only mediocre, experienced countless hardships to the point of contemplating suicide before finding Mash, and when Lance's sister Anna loses her magic after falling ill, her parents were willing to kill her. Many of the antagonists, such as Abel, Abyss and Lance before his Heel–Face Turn are motivated by the ways they've been mistreated, and it eventually becomes Mash's goal to completely upend wizarding society in order to fight for his right to live.
• Defeat Means Friendship: As a good shonen protagonist, Mash tends to make friends with his enemies after the fight is over. It helps that he is very forgiving and simple-minded.
• Driven to Suicide: Mash's father was about to kill himself after a life of being derided for his mediocre magic when he found Mash. Seeing this infant with an even worse lot in life gave him the will to live and to give Mash a happy upbringing.
• Earn Your Happy Ending: Mash goes through his entire time in the academy after being blackmailed, threatened, and ridiculed. However, he never loses sight of his goals and gains a number of allies and friends along the way. He eventually wins the right to becoming the divine visionary, but declines in favor of his original goal: living his life in peace with his grandfather. Despite rejecting the position of divine visionary, Mash instead offers a speech that all living creatures, regardless of magic ability, deserve the right to live. And with that, those with magic and those without it begin to live in harmony to the point that the prejudice that plagued the entire series has disappeared.
• Facial Markings: In the saga's world, magic power is defined by lines that appear on one's face. The more lines you have, the stronger your magic is.
  • Mash naturally has no lines on his face, but has a fake one drawn on so that he doesn't stand out. Even after the public finds out about his lack of magic, he keeps the line on his face.
  • Rayne Ames has three lines on his face, as befits a magical prodigy.
  • Two-line mages who achieve sufficient power will manifest a third line while using their strongest spells.
• Fantastic Fruits and Vegetables:
  • Mandragoras are screaming vegetables that becomes a universal ingredient in potions should they be silenced. Typically magic is used to silence the plants, but Mash's lack of magic causes the Mandragora he is attempting to silence to become erratic and grow larger. Mash then subdues it by slapping it into unconsciousness and becoming silent.
  • Slaughtermelons are watermelons with tentacles that wrap itself on victims to drain their bloods. Dot brings one for the Smashing Watermelons activity that Mash smashes into pieces after it wraps its tentacles on his head.
• Fantastic Racism: People born magicless are considered subhuman and a danger to society. Anyone who loses their mark or is born without them are executed without fail.
• Genre Savvy: After a while, Mash's friends know better than say that something is impossible when Mash is around. Whatever it is, he just will do it effortlessly.
• Happily Adopted: Despite being sometimes (and understandably) exasperated by Mash's antics, Regro loves Mash very much and the feeling is mutual, with Mash being determined to enter magic school so that they can live together in peace.
• Healing Magic Is the Hardest: Despite how powerful spells can be in the setting, healing magic readily accessible to the average magician can only cure superficial injuries, and mortal wounds and severe diseases are still life-threatening without proper medical attention. Of the various characters introduced, only two of them can comprehensively restore someone to health, and Innocent Zero is the only one seen who can do it easily with no actual drawbacks.
• Hidden Depths: For someone as kindhearted and amenable as Mash, he has zero restraint with pronouncing his desire to kill someone if they threaten his or his friends' lives. He's also able dish out some seriously badass one-liners and battle tactics despite his less-than-stellar intelligence.
• Internal Reveal: Mash's friends don't learn he was born without magic until chapter 38.
• Idiosyncratic Episode Naming: Each chapter and episode name has the formula "=[Character name]= and =[important event of said chapter/episode]=".
• It Amused Me: After Mash returns from the Afterlife Antechamber, Innocent Zero is mystified by how he could've gotten so much stronger, especially since he claims the source of the strength is pumping iron in the mindscape, which obviously should not have any effect on his real muscles in the physical world. He wonders whether a god lent Mash his power. Cut to the god in question, watching from the Afterlife Antechamber, who says "I did just that, in fact. For a laugh."
• Kangaroo Court: Mash is taken to one of these after the truth about his lack of magic comes out. Thanks to the intervention of Headmaster Wahlberg and Rayne, followed by Mash saving the judge's life, it's agreed that he will be spared if he becomes a Divine Visionary, though some of the Divine Visionaries plan to sabotage him every step of the way.
• Leaning on the Fourth Wall: Mash often calls out the many tropes the series dishes out.
• Logical Weakness:
  • During their fight, Macaron shows the ability to move at the speed of sound with the snap of their fingers. However, this requires them to actually snap their fingers, meaning anything that interferes with that will prevent their high-speed movement... like tartar sauce covering their fingers, for instance.
  • Cell has the ability to make his skin diamond hard and thus impervious to Mash's punches. However, his inner organs are not and Mash defeats him by choking him until he passes out from oxygen deprivation.
  • Innocent Zero's Time Master powers allow him to slow the time of any target to 1% of normal speed, rendering them effectively motionless compared to him. Mash overcomes this in typically absurd manner: by moving 100 times faster than his already superhuman normal speed. It doesn't matter how fast you are, whether through purely physical means or through magic, if your opponent is even faster.
• A Nazi by Any Other Name: The Magical Society the series takes place in has a lot of Fascistic undertones to how it's run. Might Makes Right is a commonplace philosophy, with many of the antagonists that Mash fights throughout the series being wealthy nobles or giftedly powerful magic-users willing to torment and murder other people over perceived inferiority, the implication being that there are no repercussions for doing so. Since magic is considered a divine gift from god, those with great magical power are considered blessed and are therefore superior to those with less. Those born without magic, lose their magic later in life due to illness, or possess any skills with Anti-Magic are considered subhuman and are hunted down and executed by the authorities in order to keep it out of the gene pool, with implications that parents are willing to kill their own children if it came to that. The Big Bad Innocent Zero takes this worldview and brings it to its logical conclusion; because he sees himself as the only being with any worth, that gives him the right to steal everyone's magic, enslave the world and attain godhood.
• Off Screen Moment Of Awesome: Abel and Macaron defeat some of the Walkis school team during the Tri-Magic-Athalon Divine Visonary Final Exam Arc battle, but that happens offscreen compared to the onscreen fights of Lance, Dot, and Mash.
• Outfit Decoy: Mash is able to Flash Step out of his clothes to avoid an attack by Orter Madl and temporarily fooling him to give Mash an opening to counterattack.
• Overclocking Attack: In chapter 53, Mash overpowers Carpaccio's Master Cane, the wand of healing's damage absorption by doing Rapid-Fire Fisticuffs.
• Portmantitle: Mash + Muscle = Mashle
• Random Power Ranking: A magic-user's magic power is indicated by the number of lines their mark have. A double-liner is not only more powerful, but often have access to more powerful magic in the form of a Secondth, in turn the rare triple-liners are even more powerful and have access to their Thirds, which also allows them to summon their associated god. While one can be born a double, it is also possible though intense training and danger for a magic-user to gain more lines.
• Reasonable Authority Figure:
  • Headmaster Wahlberg and Rayne Ames. Wahlberg in turn was inspired by his mentor Adam Jobs, who spent his later years offering public assistance to the magicless.
  • The Kangaroo Court judge, after he gets saved by Mash, pledges his support as gratitude for being rescued.
• Redemption Equals Death: After being defeated and rebuked by his father, Domina saves a paralyzed Mash from dying at the cost of his own life.
• Running Gag: Spectators regularly witness the impossible feats of strength Mash pulls off in his fights and are shocked silent while Mash’s opponents are left stunned, wondering how Mash hit them.
• Samus Is a Girl: Macaron turns out to actually be non-binary.
• Scary Scorpion: Forest Scorpions are used in one lesson for students to take the stones embedded in their heads for coins.
• Shout-Out: Mashle revealing he has two super heavy bracelets that keep his strength at bay during his fight with Domina, and discarding them, resulting in massive explosions of dust due to their weight is a direct reference to a similar thing that happens in Naruto in the fight between Rock Lee and Gaara, where the former shows to have weights in his legs to hold his speed.
• Shut Up, Hannibal!: Mash has a tendency to drop these with a side of extremely Brutal Honesty, which often leaves everybody speechless by how bluntly he's shutting his opponents down.
  • "No one asked you to force your expectations upon me. Save your disappointment for your lover, not me. You're making this weird."
  • "There's something I've been meaning to say. Don't you think you've outgrown using nicknames? I mean, someone as old as you going by Innocent Zero? It's a little cringe."
• Smashing Watermelons: The Beach Episode has Dot bringing in a Slaughtermelon for this activity. Dot warns it will drain Mash's blood as it wraps its tentacles on his head, but Mash smashes to the ground into pieces.
• Summon Magic: A few elite magicians are able to tap into their wand's power and summon godly beings to do their bidding.
• Superpowerful Genetics: The foundation for the eugenic and once genocidal directives of magic users against the unmarked. In the present day, this results in the members of established, illustrious families having similar personal magic like the Madl brothers having individual variations of Dishing Out Dirt. However, this isn't a guarantee, and even siblings such as Rayne and Finn can have completely different unique spells at their disposal.
• Tempting Fate:
  • During the Tournament Arc, the announcer describes the magic-immune Deadervants as being unbeatable, and the audience mock this year's candidates for being weak... then both are shocked when Mash defeats one of the Deadervants. Then they get right back up anyway due to an impressive Healing Factor.
  • In the same event, Finn thinks that even if his crystal gets broken it will be fine as long as Mash and Dot keep theirs. Cue them accidentally breaking them before the test even starts.
• Trademark Favorite Food: Mash really, really likes cream puffs.
• Wham Episode:
  • Chapter 38 has Mash out himself as not being a magician during his fight with Cell War.
  • Chapter 66 has Mash learn how he's connected to Innocent Zero.
  • Mash suffers his first outright defeat against Master Doom in Chapter 100.
  • By Chapter 144, the heroes are unable to stop Innocent Zero before the eclipse, which he takes advantage of by achieving a One-Winged Angel form and ripping out Mash's heart.
• Wizarding School: The story takes place in Easton Magic Academy. It's a Hogwarts expy with the students divided in houses, flying lessons, a quidditch-like sport, and the students earn coins competing against the other houses.

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