Asumi Kakeru

Nito is living a quiet high school life while taking care of his disabled grandpa, but thanks to an encounter with a schoolmate striving to be a pro female MMA fighter, his life is about to flip. Sometimes, you just have to fight! This serious MMA story is an all-out battle!

(Source: MANGA Plus)

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Asumi Kakeru was simulpub digitally in English as Martial Master Asumi through MANGA Plus. The volumes were published digitally in English by VIZ Media under the Shonen Jump imprint on April 22, 2025.

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Characters

Asumi, Nito

Main

Kunisaki, Chihiro

Supporting

Okiba, Nao

Supporting

Gejina, Meruto

Supporting

Yakushima, Kyobe

Supporting

Orino, Kenji

Supporting

Sakura, Kinnojo

Supporting

DJ Shaba-zo

Supporting

Hansei-taro

Supporting

Asumi, Kazutora

Supporting

Reviews

Apr 24, 2024

Rammelbips

Recommended

Kawada the author of Hinomaru Sumo is back, this time with Martial Master Asumi a series about MMA. Unfortunatly the series did not catch on in Japan, which let to the series being axed and a sudden end to the series. But even with this sudden end the author managed to write a masterfully crafted story.

Martial Master Asumi looks absolutly gorgeous. The art is clean, vivid and makes the characters pop out of the pages. The characters are well written and diverse in personality. The author managed to make all the characters, even if they only appear for one fight have good motivations and ...

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Dec 18, 2023

Mr_U

Recommended

Preliminary (26/33 eps)

Martial Master Asumi is the best manga to run in Weekly Shonen Jump since Ruri Dragon. Hands down.

It has a large cast of characters that each have their own dilemmas personalities, distinct enough that they don't feel like they blend together or the author is giving you too much. It should be noted that there are some well-written women, most of whom get fight scenes and some solid spotlight.

Asumi's own dilemmas are compelling. The current "main villain" is arguably not evil or a fully bad person, especially when we the manga shows his perspective, he just happen Asumi's own very personal villain.

The art is ...

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Apr 16, 2025

colorboy16

Recommended

Spoiler

(7.5/10)

fun fact i started reading new weekly shonen jump chapters for the first time in late 2023 so this was actually the first ever series that i was fully caught up with & then was also there with everyone else reading the final chapter the day that it dropped. have seen stuff get axed live these last couple years now, but will always be cool remembering this was the first i was ever there for. rly would've never predicted an mma manga being one of the first ones i ever checked out, but i guess that's the cool thing you learn when you start trying ... to read random new shit

i remember back then when i was first reading it, at the beginning i felt the story was kinda mid, but over the weeks it grew on me & i ended up rly looking forward to it every week. the story was never fully mind blowing & not very eccentric or anything, but i think it was a solid lil sports series. i've read a couple other recent smaller sports series at this point & in comparison i do think this manga does a very good job at presenting the sport in a grounded but interesting way. all the fights are depicted rly clearly & all the action & motion & anatomy are well done & easy to follow. i think the little fighting knowledge sprinkled in was cool, & when something like a fighting technique or rule needed to be explained, it was concise & easy to understand & didn't overload with too much info

i know i've seen people say they thought the character designs or art style were ugly in this but i guess i just don't rly agree, i like the design. obviously the design as i said isn't v eccentric or extremely stylized, but i think everything is drawn well & the way the gym & the fighting octagon feel with these characters just feel right idk. i get though that this series art style is rly grounded in reality, it still is a shonen & has some great action drawings, but it's not like some other sports series where even though there's no magic or powers, a character will do a cool but normal sports thing but then in the drawing it's like they're bursting into flames & have crazy ass smoke & super saiyan looking ass energy bursting off of them or something haha. i love those exaggerated takes on sports action too, & asumi does it a little bit here & there but a lot of the action is portrayed more realistically which might feel more boring to some? it also doesn't have like the haikyu effect where everyone thinks all the characters are hot so maybe that could be another thing that lead to its demise lol

but all that said nao is my favorite character & i love her design. it's p simple but she's just cool & looks cool, she's strong & i think the fangs works great for her. prob my biggest wish out of this series would be i wish there could've been more done with her. although i know they exist out there, before this point i never seen a mma girl manga character & i think she was a cool concept for a shonen main girl. i feel like we don't get to see her fight as much but it would've been so sick to be able to explore the whole separate side of the women's mma path & there rly could've been so much there. the times we do get to see her fight are awesome though & i'm glad they actually allowed her to have her own fights, by the time they were introducing real challengers for her it was already getting closer to ending & i wish we could've seen what her career could've panned out to. there was also a whole romance thing set up for her & nito from the beginning & imo that would've been a rly cool & unique couple for a shonen romance, 2 mma fighters as a power couple imagine! damn if it was like a reverse blue box, how blue box is mostly the rom-com with a background of sports, if asumi could've been mainly the mma sports still, but with a stronger background of the romance? maybe that could've been the extra facet that kept people excited & made it just a level more filled out from week to week but idk. either way would've been a cool kinda unconventional couple & i'm sure it would've still been at least a minor part of the story & panned out more naturally if the series had just lasted a longer time, it’s touched back up on in the epilogue so i know he meant to do more with it

but for what this series does do i think it does it p well, i do still like the focus it had on dementia & the brother rivalry. i liked the side characters even in their short life spans & nito as a MC gets more likeable as time goes on imo. idk i honestly feel like the series just gets better & better as it goes, by the place it is when it's ending its like fuckk this was just starting to get great! & although i understand how this story could be axed based on some of the more basic qualities of it, by the end i rly do see how this could've went for so much longer, & i can't say that with every cancelled series i like. second to last chapter was great, shit bout made me tear up, that final big fight they were able to leave it off on was awesome & damn rly made me wish to see more. on this reread i finally read the epilogue & yeah it had some decent lil closures & some cool side character stuff, but rly wish it could’ve just lasted longer & nito & nao’s careers were able to blossom more

anyways kawada's older more succesful sumo series is on manga plus now, imma definitely read that shit! cool i can hopefully still experience a great longer story like MMA through that!

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Poll: Asumi Kakeru Chapter 24 Discussion ARK-13 - Dec 3, 2023	5 replies	by otakuweek »» Jan 6, 7:48 AM
Poll: Asumi Kakeru Chapter 33 Discussion ARK-13 - May 1, 2024	9 replies	by ReaperCreeper »» Oct 19, 2024 11:13 PM
Poll: Asumi Kakeru Chapter 28 Discussion ARK-13 - Jan 5, 2024	6 replies	by sultanjiro »» May 1, 2024 10:20 PM
Poll: Asumi Kakeru Chapter 32 Discussion ARK-13 - Feb 11, 2024	22 replies	by Jordan_TP3 »» Feb 18, 2024 11:24 AM
Axed ARK-13 - Feb 7, 2024	7 replies	by Kiragane99 »» Feb 13, 2024 12:48 AM

Asumi Kakeru
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Martial Master Asumi
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