Shamo offers a lot when it comes to developing the protagonist, Ryo Narushima, and showing you how he shapes the people and world around him. All of his changes and feelings are expressed through his martial arts, both while learning and while being a complete menace in the ring. The supporting cast has their own merit, but there aren't too many recurring characters. Once somebody has gone through their own arc of having their life changed by Ryo, they rarely come back. Some people will be fine with this, others won't. I personally don't mind since Ryo is the major focus of everything. They're not bad characters either, just... tossed out, sometimes.
Many people online complain about the latter half of the series being of diminished quality compared to the first, but I find that claim to be ridiculous. Not only does the art objectively improve, Ryo's bizarre, ruthless, technical fighting goes nowhere, and the resolution of his character at the end was satisfying, if not in a bitter way. Most harbor grudges against the Toma arc for "not concluding" Toma's character, and the Dobu-Gumi arc (the last arc) for introducing nonsensical, hypocritical characters as Ryo's final opponents. For both of these points, I thought Toma's character ended splendidly with one of the best double-spreader pages of imagery I've ever seen in a fight manga, and the Dobu-Gumi brothers are... eccentric, but they serve their purpose. There are very good reasons as to why they are so different compared to previous antagonists, which I feel like I don't need to justify to people who didn't treat the series as a pure fight manga.
Because, it isn't. This is a fight manga *after* it is a psychological deep-dive into an adolescent criminal with the power of martial arts in his hands. If you are looking for back-to-back epic battles like you'd find in Kengan Asura, Baki, or Record of Ragnarok, you will be deeply disappointed. And I think that's one of the biggest reasons so many people have a sour spot for this series. Audiences of hits like Homunculus and Monster will like this more than anybody with a fight manga background, as odd as it sounds.
Anyways, if you're a fan of the average popular seinen manga, and the premise of Shamo sounds interesting enough, I fully recommend checking it out. Just stay away from it if you're looking for a fight series.
9/10 for an in-depth and thoughtful read, about a 3/10 for a casual one. It's not a short series and it tends to drag it's feet between fights, especially near the end, so I wouldn't nudge this towards a casual reader at all.
