Katsu!

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First thing to note is the disappointing character artwork. Yet, it didn't bother me. Not to mention that the environmental artwork is amazing, and it's easy to see what's going on too (which is rare for action manga who are more often confusing and sometimes hard to follow).

If you look behind the artwork of the characters you'll most likely find either a blank page, another manga page or... if it's digital: the back of your screen. But if you look behind the way the characters are drawn and actually read a few chapters, you won't even notice and after a while start liking the weird ... artwork.

So I wouldn't put down 'Art' as a negative; since it's not bad, plus it fits the manga fairly well. As far as characters and story go; there is plenty of development ging on. Which isn't so rare for a sports manga; they still need to improve right.

This is a sports manga about boxing; which is pretty much what it's about most of the time. A lot of revealing being done; lots and lots of boxing and boxing and sometims a little romance and some dry-in moments. You see, there aren't any 'blushing' and 'what should I do, I never talked to a girl before' moments in this manga, mainly since it's a boxing manga. But there is romantic development in between; though hard to notice since they never seem to be nervous or surprised about what's happening. I mean, the guy can watch porn in his room, be caught by his dad or anybody and reply with: "o, is that so" without worrying about it at all. Which is different, refreshing you might say. For once a different type of humor which in this manga's case worked out well.

Take a note though, there isn't much 'technical' about boxing revealed besides that two guys hit each other in a ring with some people looking impressed at it in this manga. Which is the only real negative point.

There aren't too many characters; especially considering it's 150+/- chapters. But the characters that do come into the picture are almost always the same in emotion and all that; so not much development there thoughout the story.

There is one thing I can tell you though, this manga entangles you. Mostly because you just ALWAYS have something to read/continue with at the end of a chapter. Since it's fun, you give in and do so. Before you know it, you already finished it (speaking out of experience). Most of the awesomeness is obviously caused by the mangaka Adachi Mitsure, a pure manga genius with lots of good work.

Don't worry about the picture looking lame or the first chapter not leaving a good impression artwork-wise. This manga is definitely worthwhile and a great read all throughout (not any filler-like pages/chapters too). I did feel the ending was rather rushed and would've loved for it to continued; which is a shame. The ending didn't give me a bad/unfinished feeling, rather, it did finish. But it still seemed a little rushed.

If you like sports/boxing, romance, dry-humor and/or something different yet good for a change; this is the manga for you!

I don't understand people's thinking process. People apparently dislike the art, but love the story. In my case, it's vice versa; the art is perfectly fine, but the story is not that strong. I just don't get people at all! To each their own I guess. Adachi Mitsuru's "Katsu!" is okay. I just had to read something that wasn't baseball. Baseball did end up in some of it, so I guess he couldn't help himself. This manga started off well. Katsuki Satoyama is a neat protagonist who I did enjoy. Surprisingly, he's pretty indifferent to the sport of boxing, which is ironic considering he has ... boxing blood running through his veins. The story did keep my attention for twelve volumes, but that last quarter wasn't interesting in the least.
With the first twelve, it was just a honest-to-goodness boxing story with a couple of dramatic plot twist that did shock me. It has hints of romance because why the fuck not, it's Adachi. Everything was just okay until volume thirteen when the story just loses me. I was hardly paying attention because the manga was trying to introduce these new plot points so late into the story that I just stopped caring. The humor isn't really funny. It's just a lot of fourth wall breaking that isn't funny in the first place. YOU CAN make fourth wall breaks funny with the right jokes, but none of them are really funny. It's just characters poking fun at the lifestyle of a mangaka a few times and Adachi making references to his previous work. He does make fun of himself by mocking his art, since his characters all look the same. I thought that was kind of funny.
The ending was a little lame. Everything I thought was going to happen didn't, so that's something. It was very sudden and open-ended. At it's best it can be a 7 out of 10. I'm not going to give it that score because for most of the manga it's not that strong. A 6 out of 10 is more accurate. It's a helluva lot better than H2, but not as good as Touch.

28 chapters in, there's still nothing to care about. Things are happening, but we haven't been given any reason why we should be invested. Mizutani is training to fight her childhood friend, but given either outcome, what's the point? She doesn't have particularly much to prove, all the boxers are already aware of her ability. This childhood friend hasn't shown himself to be an asshole, or given really much of a reason for wanting to win either. We can infer that he wants to be able to stand up for himself since she used to defend him, but again there's no payoff in that; we ... don't have a reason to sympathize particularly with that goal of his. At some point, he will become stronger by default in any case.

Satoyama suffers from the same issue. In the other Adachi work I've read, Rough, there was an obvious point of conflict that carried the story; the feud between families and the question of whether their children would be able to resolve it. But Katsu has nothing like that. Typically a sports story works by having the main character work to be recognized, but there just aren't challenges that have been put in front of the characters like that here.

It gets a perfect 5 because it's a record of a series of events that happened, like reading a report. Nothing good, nothing bad. Did I remember to mention that the reader has no investment in it?