S!O is one of those manga that I found myself initially fascinated by, with its clear Hokuto no Ken influences but placing them in a high school of all things and ramping up the ridiculousness of the situation. The clips on youtube were great and overall it seemed to be a story with a lot of charm going for it.
Key word being "seemed". As I read through the manga, it wasn't long before the cracks started to show, and I ultimately decided to put the manga down after reading through Momo's fight with Jaki. I saw the flaws of the series already and, with more than 20 volumes still to read I figured better to stop at a decent stopping point.
But to the series itself: you got Momo and co. in the wacky and totalitarian Otokojuku, and there is charm in those early chapters when it's clear that for all of the school's faculty about "values" and "tradition" and re-igniting a sense of manliness in Japan, they're comically petty, hypocritical, and money-grubbing, and that there is much buffoonery to go around. And most significantly, Momo plays the straight man in all of this; fairly divorced from whatever ludicrousness is happening around him but with the smarts and skills to resolve whatever problems arise for his fellow first-years.
The problems come when the series starts taking itself seriously with the Kanto Student Alliance showing up and the story starts to fall into predictable beats. J joins with Momo, Togashi, and the newly-introduced Toragami to fight the student alliance. Then all of them join to fight the third-years. Then ALL OF THEM go to fight a bunch of other teams. There's massive cast bloat, when almost nobody except comic relief characters get to actually present any meaningful personality that stays consistent. For contrast, Hokuto no Ken had a good understanding of when a character's arc had run its course and had no problems having them die, without diluting either the story or their actual characterization by having them overstay their welcome. And that ties back into how almost nobody actually dies in S!O either, even as we see them suffer horrific injuries left and right.
I can even pinpoint the exact moment when I came to recognize this problem with the manga too: it was in the leadup to J and Raiden's fight vs. the first team of Third-years and I found myself thinking "wait, has J even said a single line whatsoever since the candle test all those chapters ago?" And I couldn't think of even one meaningful bit of dialogue. He, like so many of the other characters, just add bloat to the story.
And this extends to pacing too. The Minmei Publishing "excerpts" are a cool idea in premise, but they're a godawful way in practice to provide large expositions. They're not comical enough to be entertaining in their own right, and they're often unnecessary or could easily be pared down and explained by a character in-series.
So yeah, if you want to give it a shot, go ahead and look at the early chapters, but past the Four Trials of Terror you're going to be getting diminishing returns on your time investment.
Manga So let's talk about Sakigake!! Otokojuku
S!O is one of those manga that I found myself initially fascinated by, with its clear Hokuto no Ken influences but placing them in a high school of all things and ramping up the ridiculousness of the situation. The clips on youtube were great and overall it seemed to be a story with a lot of charm going for it.
Key word being "seemed". As I read through the manga, it wasn't long before the cracks started to show, and I ultimately decided to put the manga down after reading through Momo's fight with Jaki. I saw the flaws of the series already and, with more than 20 volumes still to read I figured better to stop at a decent stopping point.
But to the series itself: you got Momo and co. in the wacky and totalitarian Otokojuku, and there is charm in those early chapters when it's clear that for all of the school's faculty about "values" and "tradition" and re-igniting a sense of manliness in Japan, they're comically petty, hypocritical, and money-grubbing, and that there is much buffoonery to go around. And most significantly, Momo plays the straight man in all of this; fairly divorced from whatever ludicrousness is happening around him but with the smarts and skills to resolve whatever problems arise for his fellow first-years.
The problems come when the series starts taking itself seriously with the Kanto Student Alliance showing up and the story starts to fall into predictable beats. J joins with Momo, Togashi, and the newly-introduced Toragami to fight the student alliance. Then all of them join to fight the third-years. Then ALL OF THEM go to fight a bunch of other teams. There's massive cast bloat, when almost nobody except comic relief characters get to actually present any meaningful personality that stays consistent. For contrast, Hokuto no Ken had a good understanding of when a character's arc had run its course and had no problems having them die, without diluting either the story or their actual characterization by having them overstay their welcome. And that ties back into how almost nobody actually dies in S!O either, even as we see them suffer horrific injuries left and right.
I can even pinpoint the exact moment when I came to recognize this problem with the manga too: it was in the leadup to J and Raiden's fight vs. the first team of Third-years and I found myself thinking "wait, has J even said a single line whatsoever since the candle test all those chapters ago?" And I couldn't think of even one meaningful bit of dialogue. He, like so many of the other characters, just add bloat to the story.
And this extends to pacing too. The Minmei Publishing "excerpts" are a cool idea in premise, but they're a godawful way in practice to provide large expositions. They're not comical enough to be entertaining in their own right, and they're often unnecessary or could easily be pared down and explained by a character in-series.
So yeah, if you want to give it a shot, go ahead and look at the early chapters, but past the Four Trials of Terror you're going to be getting diminishing returns on your time investment.