Manga and Anime

Karate Shoukoushi Kohinata Minoru is one of my favorite martial arts manga. I regularly go back to this manga because I like it so much. The early art and storylines are a bit crude, but I think the depiction of karate and the transition from full contact karate to kickboxing is so interesting. There's a lot of training motivation for me in the manga and it's this manga that got me to practice rolling thunders back in the day and really nail the rotation of the movement. Of course, I have no intention to ever hit anyone in sparring with a rolling thunder or to ever really use it in a street fight, but it's a fun and flashy technique to show off lol. I also partially attribute my makiwara practice to this manga. The main character's introduction to karate is hitting the makiwara 10,000 times which shreds his fist to pieces but shows his resolve. It's also said that the main character's makiwara practice resulted in his fists becoming heavy like concrete bricks. I don't know how true that is, but I do like hitting the makiwara, it's partially for some knuckle conditioning, but also because the seiken is my favorite technique. I think it's just cool, and it's the first technique any karate practitioner is ever taught. So I like to think I have a particularly heavy and strong seiken, but I don't ever really use it much in sparring.

Convict Colosseum is such an underrated masterpiece. It's an indie comic made by a single person and it's self-published online. The entire comic is drawn with pencil and although the early chapters are a bit rough, it quickly picks up steam and becomes one of the greatest martial arts comics in the field. It's highly inspired by Kengan Ashura using a single tournament to tell it's entire story and reading it as each chapter came out has been one of the greatest thrills in recent years. The action is incredibly fluid and the choreography is immaculate. Please go read it.


My favorite pokemon