Kento Ankokuden Cestvs- Cestus - The Legend of Boxing in the

[wrigleys]

 Today i bring you this manga that i've been following for a couple of months now, it is an interesting story that takes place at Rome during the gladiators era. We see the story through the eyes of a young slave boy. The Story, the pacing,figthing scenes, the drawings are pretty good even though sometimes it has quite the text it's a really good read.

[onepenguin0]

I've heard various things. Does this manga center on the technical aspects of the fights, or the boy's growth as a person, or is it about the Roman world as it relates to gladiators, or...?

[boggyb]

I gave it a try and got to page 10 of chapter 2 before throwing in the towel.

[onepenguin0]

Because?

[boggyb]

May 13, 2018 1:24:05 GMT onepenguin0 said:

Because?

Let's say I didn't connect with the plot, the setting, the characters, or the art.

[jedah]

May 13, 2018 1:45:52 GMT boggyb said:

May 13, 2018 1:24:05 GMT onepenguin0 said:

Because?

Let's say I didn't connect with the plot, the setting, the characters, or the art.

That's a pretty damn good reason.

I'll have to check this manga out when I have the chance.

[boggyb]

One of the things that irritated me immediately is the "If you lose a fight, you die!". That's not historically accurate at all. Trained fighters are valuable. Trained slaves are doubly valuable since their owner didn't have to pay them a cut. Yes, they sometimes died in fights and there were fights to the death, but that was the exception, not the rule. They pretty much only did that when someone ponied up money to make it worthwhile to the person putting on the fights. In Rome, the blood "sport" was mainly Damnatio ad bestias.

Is that a petty concern? Probably to most, but not to me.

[jettatore]

From this author I read Blaster Knuckle. The manga is like Berserk, but with an African-American protagonist and instead of the Middle Ages is the Wild West. It only has 3 volumes but I do not recommend it very much.

[onepenguin0]

Blaster Knuckle was abruptly canceled, as I recall, hence the fucked-up ending. Though, it was agreeably entertaining for what it was up until that point. It seemed that the author had wanted to incorporate some outside-of-the-box ideas into that manga, which should be a fine portent for anyone considering reading this manga.

[shenlong]

I remember Blaster knuckle. It wasn't great, but I remember it was a fun read, and very berserk like (except for the part where Berserk is awesome, but you know).

[onepenguin0]

Well, I doubt that many of us would speak to the first two(?) volumes of Berserk as being particularly outstanding, much in the same way.

[ungora]

I don't follow this one as i have already too many things on my manga follow list.

But i read occasionally some chapters without much attachement to the characters.
Though i have read most of the recent ones that involved some kind of gauntlet tournament between fighters from the roman "german guard" and fighters from the persians immortals (that were borrowed by another country for this) in order to settle some political argument.

It was very good, and wasn't without reminding me of early Baki tournament from before things went the overpowered way, this tourney in Cestus was set with believable techniques and grappling .
And the art was really great there.
The most unsatisfying tough was what happened after the tournament was ended and the political things settled behind the scene leading to the big fight between what was obviously the roman version of Yujiro (the captain of the german guard) and the captain of the immortals.

The fight started and oh boy this was going to be great , because the characters had charisma .
Then after the start, the story goes elswhere , and we learn the outcome of what happened, basically what was set as one of the best fight of the whole thing was done ... off panel.

Couldn't believed it.
Anyways, the interest of this arc is that knowledge of whatever happened in the manga isn't required, as there's no need to know who is who and the main character isn't even in the picture

I hope next Tokugawa will have a change of heart and instead of wasting the next Baki book with his sumo guy will instead go with bringing back that Demitorius guy from the Cestus book
A Demitorius vs Yujiro grappling match is sure to destroy half of the planet

[jettatore]

The scanlation has finished translating the series and editing the last chapter. They have already started working on the sequel