Usogui

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Usogui is a manga with profound insights and contemplations on life. This is evident in the way it predominantly delves into the philosophy of gambling and the psychology of gamblers. However, there is more to it than meets the eye. Usogui treats gambling as a metaphor for life, and life as a gamble. At its core, it explores the philosophies of living and the psychology of humans.

While the gambles serve as a framework for thematic exploration, they are not merely superficial elements. In fact, the gambling scenes are exceptionally well-crafted, featuring intelligent characters and brilliant mind games and tactics. Usogui also incorporates exciting and well-choreographed ... fights, which, like the gambles, often serve to reinforce the underlying themes.

All of these elements are complemented by fantastic artwork that is not only visually appealing but also serves as an effective storytelling device, with its expressive and dynamic style.

In conclusion, Usogui stands as one of the finest manga I have encountered.

It’s one of the mangas ever made.

The first like 15 volumes are so good. The heavy atmosphere, the fights, the jokes, the mastermind of Usogui himself. It’s amazing.

It kinda fell off after some arcs, not gonna lie.

The story is filled with needless dialogues and rule explanations that add nothing to the outcome.
I did skip a lot of text boxes and panels.

There’s more women in the first 5 chapters of Tenjho Tenge than in the 49 volumes of usogui. In some points it was uncomfortable.
...
Overall, nice art, smart plot twists and a lot of text.

“He’s fragile, but he’ll never be broken…”

STORY: 4

Meet Usogui the king of gamblers! He has an agenda and he is willing to bet his life to succeed. Along with his companions, his fate will cross a LOT of very colorful (read mostly psychotic) characters along Kakerou, a mysterious organization of game referees (and at the same time assassins because why not) that operates in the shadows of Japan.

The story is a succession of high-stake 'games' that Usogui takes on to conquer power. Call the right number and immediately 30 guys in black suits show up to insure the game goes as it should. Each game is anything-goes as long as ... it's within the set of rules decided by the Kankerou referee. And then things get boring very rapidly as the same formula is repeated non stop over 49 volumes:

1 The nice guy starts the game with some super smart move.
2 However, the enemy saw that coming with an even smarter strategy that encompass all possibilities and moreover he is cheating using extremely convoluted ways. How evil! All hope seems lost!
3 But wait! The hero had an even more complicated strategy that includes all the possible actions of the enemy and had somehow anticipated for the treachery of the enemy and has used an even more cunning way of cheating.
4 There he wins! Oh but no! The enemy had a last, even more unrealistic and unlikely trick and it's over for the hero, who would have thought!
5 As despairs arrives, in an totally ridiculous twist (and after dragging for a loooong time), the hero ultimately wins because he had planned for basically all events in the universe (with flashbacks to explain how things truly went).. No wait nothing makes sense! Oh whatever, you will get tired of it quickly anyway.

On top of this tedious adventure add (at the same time) a ton of tough characters that pop out from nowhere for testosterone brawls with constant power-ups and you have a boring, over-confident mess of a manga.


ART: 5

As a half enigma and a half manly-fights manga, the focus is clearly on faces and bodies with some influences from titles like Baki or the Jojo saga. Lines are very detailed and show the experience of the author with some flexibility and ranges of emotions but the end-result is not that great. The main problem being that the approximate anatomy (the author is struggling with chins) makes the artwork feel weak.
Everybody looks the same and we need haircuts, accessories or moles to keep track of who is who in the huge mess of characters.
There is some clear skill progress along the many chapters, however, and a few nice panels, but globally the art self-seriousness fails as much as the story.


POLITICAL POTENTIAL: 4

Kankerou, the shadow organization of game-referees has ramification up to the corrupt government or the police and.. that's it.
Each of the too many characters has long tirades about justice, heart, power, but they mostly feel like incoherent babbling given the lack of consistence in the story.


FEMINISM: 3

Here is a manga that loves men so much that the female to male ratio feels like it's around 1:30. On one hand you have men characters who engage in brutal violence just for the kick of it and you can feel that the author enjoys depicting those over-the-top fights where the feeling of manhood is more important than any attempt at realism. That glorified violence in Usogui, similar to the masculinist classic Baki, is so ludicrous that it seems to have been written by a 13 years old.
On the other hand, the only two noticeable female characters are made into the 'femme fatale' trope: they are strong, beautiful and deadly. As often with this trope, they are shown as having a very active sexuality that makes them abnormal (which is a threat for men). And here you go, basically two women over 49 volumes.

There is also one bad allusion to sex through the manga: in one episode, a grateful host wants to reward one of the heroes. He then gives him two girls for sex like if they were objects. That scene is purposed for comedic relief and does not succeed -_-.


CONCLUSION: 4

Usogui is a failure of a cross-over between Detective Conan (for the crazy enigma) and Baki (for the ridiculously-strong manly-men lame fighting). Unconvincing in most of its aspects, sometimes unwillingly funny, it could have been so much better if it were 10 times shorter.