Tuesday, June 24, 2008

Yamato The White Fighter by Takahashi Yoshihiro Now Available!

Takahashi Yoshinori is famous in Japan as the creator of some of the most violent, and at the same time most appealing, manga stories to be published in Shonen Jump monthly comic for boys (but also read by quite a few girls).

In Takahashi Yoshinori's manga world it is very much a case of dog-eat-dog. He made his mark both in Japan and in Scandanavia with the publication of Ginga Nagareboshi Gin, a story about a Japanese Akita dog called Gin who goes in search of his father, Riki, deep in the Oku mountains of northern Honshu, where both humans and dogs are menaced by a sleuth of wild bears.

In the wake of that success, Takahashi created the Weed series, about the son of Gin. Then he brought out a prequel that describes the life and times of Gin's father, Riki, and his father, Shiro.

I just added Ginga Densetsu Riki to my site as these comic books, published in 2003 and 2007, are no longer so difficult to get on the secondary market.

Takahashi Yoshiro has also written a manga series called Shiroi Senshi Yamato, or Yamato the White Fighter. The story set in the world of Japanese Tosa fighting dogs. The fights depicted in the manga series are quite brutal, although the aim of Tosa dog fighting is not to fight to the death, but to fight until one dog loses spirit within a bout of up to thirty minutes.

If a dog loses the fight, but shows an undaunted spirit, then it stands a good chance of winning the competition on spirit alone.

The series is available in Ten volumes, and I have made every volume available as there seems to be a reasonable supply of them at the moment... although the secondary market fluctuates from week to week, as you will appreciate.

See: Japanese-Games-Shop.com/manga.html