Mar 19, 2024
I think this is the first time I am not able to properly deduce a rating for a manga. I seemingly glided through the chapters but it had its ups and downs.
Toppuu GP is a manga about Moto GP, the motorcycle racing championship, and about things related to motorcycle racing. In short, it is a motorcycle racing manga. Now I am pretty oblivious to all this motorcycle racing stuff and sports manga genre as a whole for that matter. I was just scrolling through my list and saw that I do not have anything related to sports other than Blue Lock or Ao no Hako.
...
So after blatantly ignoring the two sports manga on my "plan to read" list, I decided to randomly pick a sports manga and came onto this.
So firstly about the story, a rags to riches story with some cool racing scenes is all it takes to get me going. But I wouldn't say it is necessarily good. The story essentially portrays the journey of the main character rising to the top, but doesn't do anything to actually connect us with the characters of the story. Also the character development is pretty lackluster. The only development we see are in his motorcycle skills. The development of the side characters are neglected too. They are all there to give the mc the push he needs to overcome his next obstacle. It only has cool racing scenes to gawk around but that's it. Also it is extremely rushed. The story is built in such a way that the mc encounters minimal to no hinderance in his journey to be the number one at all or if he does, they are pretty tame. And it ultimately results to a story with no real stakes.
Also while the races are pretty entrancing and interesting to look at and follow, I find myself sometimes lost or crushed beneath all the terminologies related to racing used which seems all too foreign to me. The manga does try to explain some of the things happening, but it proves to be inadequate to fully enjoy the ride. At times I find it difficult who is who as all of them are beneath gears and all of them look nearly same in them. Although this one is all on me, it does cut the fun short.
About the art, it reminds me more of the art style of 2000s manga than the year it was released in. Actually I thought it was an old manga considering its art style and the character traits at the starting of the manga and was shocked that it was much more recent than that. The art is fine even when nothing is happening, but when something is happening (something here refers to the races), the artist just seems to step up his game and we see very gorgeous and extremely detailed drawings.
Now onto the characters, the characters are surprisingly average. Maybe due to the fact, that the story doesn't do much to flesh them out. Now that I am talking about characters, I have to talk about something. For half of the manga I was actually in a dilemma as to what is the age of our MC. Like actually. Because it all seemed unrealistic for a middle schooler to participate in a motorcycle competition. I mean I never heard of a 12 year old biking on the road. And the Wikipedia seemed to agree with me as it explicitly tells that it follows that journey of an 18 YEAR OLD. But as I read the manga more, I realised that he was indeed a middle schooler.
*Someone correct that Wiki page.*
So at last, I want to at least clear that even though I found the manga flawed and had sections which I didn't understand at all, I enjoyed reading this manga.
Reviewer’s Rating: 7
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