Kamigami no Itadaki
The Summit of the Gods

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The manga that inspired Made in Abyss

Tsukushi Akihito has repeatedly said that this manga greatly influenced made in abyss.
There are many obvious similarities with made in abyss

I read it, and i have no regrets.

This manga is a love letter to the world of alpinism.

The art is gorgeous. I have never seen a manga with more beautiful backgrounds.
...
The character of Joji was very unique. He obviously influenced Riko from made in abyss with his obsession climbing to the top of dangerous mountains.

If you like made in abyss or alpinism, then you will appreciate this manga.

From the master Jiro Taniguchi himself comes the greatest and most gripping high altitude stories you will find.
I love Taniguchi's work, the detailed background, soft flow of the reading, the calm moments. His work is poetic and outstandingly beautiful.

For summit of the Gods, it was the first time I was reading a story of his that had a faster pace, lots of action and suspense. And as always he does it brilliantly.

Story: It's about alpinism, it's about the mountains, the cold, the solitude and being one with a hostile environment.
I knew not the slightest thing about mountain climbing and I still LOVED discovering the ... passion of these men who are ready to die for their love of the sport.

Plot --> a photographer for an outdoor adventure type of magazine, Fukamachi stumbles in a shop on a camera that could have belonged to Mallory. Mallory attempted the ascension of the Everest summit in 1927 but disappeared with his colleague Irving and no one knows if they actually made it to the top or not (if so they would have been the first ones on record).
While he's investigating Fukamachi finds out he's a lot more interested in finding out about the man who found the camera Habu Joji and piecing up his past.
We follow the investigation of Fukamachi on both the origins of the camera, how it was found and the mysterious Habu who's been hiding in Nepal for many years. In the alpinism world, he used to be a prodigie, capable of climbing many dangerous summits with ease but he disappeared one day without leaving a trace.

I never imagined a story on the mountains would be so addicting. But it's so well put together, the tension, the emotion, the hard work it takes to carefully, one step after the over claim a difficult summit. It takes courage, it takes instinct and incredible mental strength. Habu Joji is absolutely fascinating with his love for climbing, like nothing else matters. You look at mountain climbing with new eyes after this series. People die every year practicing their passion and the emotion really transpires in the series. I loved this story to bits, I would even give it an 11 out of 10.

Art: it's Jiro Taniguchi. Expect only the best. The backgrounds in Nepal and in the mountains really were my favorite but everything is stunning. Only fault I can find is a lack of diverse facial expressions but that's also his style of having mostly stern characters.

Characters: I gave it only 8/10 because although they were all amazing, some weren't really necessary to the plot. And again, it's sad that there isn't a more diverse ray of facial expressions. I loved the complexity of Habu Joji's personality and all he's been through. Fukamachi was for the longest time just and observer, I couldn't really relate too but he has a lot of development.

Enjoyment: Can't you tell? I loved it. Only thing is, I find Taniguchi's works to be a little mentally taxing, it sucks you into the story so much that sometimes it's a bit overwhelming and I often had to take breaks to read something lighter.
But it's well worth the read because it's epic and amazing. I have never felt so gripped by a manga series before, it pulls you in until you're completely obsessed by it. It took me a while to get over this amazing story.

If there's one thing you should know it that you should read it. It's my favorite manga and I have found no other like it. Taniguchi is a genius and the writer Baku Yumemakura knows how to write an extremely compelling story.
I love this manga.

WARNING: THIS REVIEW CONTAIN SPOILERS

The Summit of the Gods it's about many things, beyond the sport of climbing and the mystery presented at the beginning of it. It's about perseverance, until what point the human obsession can arrive in order to achieve our dreams, inspire others to be better and so much more. For this review, we gonna analyze, first, the positive aspects and, then, a few negative aspects that this manga had. So, let's begin:

POSITIVE ASPECTS

1. Fukamachi: He was a photojournalist that was asigned with the mission of collect the disappeared George Mallory's camera with the evidence of his conquering of the Everest Mount ... in 1924, in order to proove that he was the first climber that conquered this legendary mount. Later, he discovered that Habu, the other protagonist, took position of that camera and then, suddenly, disappeared. From that moment, he started to investigate everything about Habu.

He started just reading articles and newspaper about Habu's life and his achievements, next, with not enough information, he asked close people to Habu about him obtaining the possible location and the current activity (climbing) that Habu was, possibly, realizing and, finally, he climbed the Everest mount with him to collect the evidence that Habu climbed it succesfully from the southwest face. As we can see, The charisma and competitve spirit of Habu inspired Fukamachi to keep researching about him. At one point, the other journalists from Fukamachi's company told him to stop and look for another case, however, Fukamachi was already inmerse and determined to find Habu's location and solve the mistery of the camera. What started being just a searching of a camera ended being a challenge to collect the photos with the evidence of the conquering of the Everest mount in a way that had never happened before, in other words, being part of history.

I really enjoyed the organic and well executed character development and obsession of Fukamachi. He even risked his own life in the Everest mount climbing being him warned from the risks before start it. At the end, despite obtaining what he was looking for from the beginning of the story (Mallory's camera), he still wanted to continue climbing with Habu and also understood the philosophy of the climber which includes the continuous improvement (if you reached the summit you can reach it in a more difficult way), satisfy the human wish to be a better version of ourselves everyday and, indirectly, inspire others to reach your legacy.

2. Habu: He was a climber who was been reported as a dissapeared many years ago until Fukamachi saw him with the Mallory's camera. Usually, in sports anime, we have a rival that helps the protagonist to improve himself and with his character development. In the first volumes there was a "rivarly" with Fukamachi for the Mallory's camera. Next, we knew his backstory thanks to Fukamachi research, where we discovered that after conquer the difficult demon wall in winter he met with his human rival, Hase Tsuneo, another climber that have conquered the demon wall, but he did it alone unlike Habu, overshadowing him and taking the fame that he had obtained to this point. This was the moment where we saw his character evolution and the growing of his obsession of being the best climber to the point of turning in someone extremely arrogant and, thanks to this, none of his friends wanted to accompany him in the climbing of the wind walls; nevertheless, a young climber, Buntaro, showed his intentions to be his company in this climbing after being inspired by the perseverance and challenging spirit of Habu. At the end, Buntaro died by a accident in the climbing, transforming in a trauma to Habu and making him decide to climb alone since that moment. I really liked the messages that this little arc, particularly, left to us like the inspiration, the fact that this type of accidents happens and we don't have to look for a guilty and the value of forgiveness.

After losing against his climbing rival and, the death of the last one after trying to conquer the southwest face of Everest, he decided to took this dangerous challenge. Early in this part I've mentioned that Hase Tsuneo was his human rival, and this is because, since that moment, Habu had to compete against his biggest rival, nature itself, the creation of God itself. When he noticed that Fukamachi tried to accompany him to take photos as an evidence of the conquering of the mount he rejected this thanks to his past trauma, however, thanks to the big determination and willpower of Fukamachi he decided not only let him to take that photos, also, he gave the Mallory's camera to him. Despite his arrogance and the Buntaro's trauma, when Fukamachi was bout to die, Habu rescued him and assured that he can return to the bottom of the mount alive showing his respect and humanity that he had, apparently, lost to this part of the story.

The challenge of conquer the southwest face of Everest was extremely brutal. A challenge against the limits of human endurance, the amount of weight the body must carry climbing such a high mount, the difficulties of reaching it without an oxygen mask in a certain height, the way the cold seeps past all protections until it becomes part of you, in your skin, in your bones, in your mind, to summarize, an environment made to be anti-human, hostile to life as we know it. Now you understand why Habu showed a tremendous respect for Fukamachi after seeing his determination to climb with him and, also, what was the obsession level of Habu to take this deadly challenge. Despite people told him it is a impossible challenge he, at the end, conquer it paying a huge price, but, at the end, achieving his biggest dream. Definitively an inspiring character that immerses you in his history and his philosophy of life. In the end you understand his motivations and his reason for being.

3. Art: Simply outstanding. Not only looks incredible, it's also complementary to the plot. For example, during the climbing of the Everest mount, we saw how the author represented the tiring of Fukamachi in a terrorific way due to the situation in which he was involved at the moment. Another example is when Habu had his accident during his rivalry against Hase, how the author shown graphically him nearly dead and completely frozen before being rescued. There are more examples of the greatness of this art during the reading. Don't miss them.

4. Messages: There are a lot, all of them correctly executed. For this reason, I'm gonna focus in the main two. First the "never give up" message. This was shown not only with Habu with his obssesion to achieve his biggest dream, but with Fukamachi's persistence to obtain the camera and, eventually, try to obtain the evidence of the legendary conquer of the southwest face of Everest. For the second one, I remember the main phrase of the 2012's olympic games: Inspire a generation. Well, this manga is the pure embodiment of this. The unique charisma and determination of Habu made Fukamachi, Buntaro and myself try to follow his steps and reach such great heights like he did at the end.


NEGATIVE ASPECTS

1. Mystery: Unfortunately, the execution of the mystery, in my opinion, had it's issues. For example, during the first part we saw that when Habu showed himself, magically, people forgot what happened during that time. The reason of this unnatural event wasn't explained and, thanks to this, Fukamachi had to start his research from scratch. It's extremely convenient that all the characters contacted by Fukamachi gave him the information as if nothing. Couldn't one of them give Fukamchi false information to increase the tension and sense of mystery of the manga? I don't know. Also, During his stay in Nepal, he raised a family, which, conveniently, seems to care little or nothing about what could happen to him. I understand that it's extremely difficult to deal with the obsession of Habu, however, is his fucking family and, also, they didn't have a significant contribution to the plot since most of the important information was obtained previously.

2. Non-continuous narrative flow: Most of the time during the first arc was summarized with the backstory of Habu. The issue here is that this made Habu a distant character and, also, the writer skipped some important parts of his character development thanks to the time skips during each part revealed of this. Despite all the positive things that I've talked about Habu, it's true that this mechanic to explain his backstory was something awkward to read in some moments, specially when the time skips were several years.

CONCLUSION

Despite the flaws previously mentioned, my conclusion is that The Summit of the Gods is an incredible manga that can and should be considered as a cult work with a lot of messages about life, determination and self improvement and I recommend to read it, at least, once in life.