RAID OF THE FIGHTING DOGS / 闘犬なぐりこむ - IKEUCHI SEIICHI (1972)

(Disclaimer: I do not support dog fighting. I'm solely interested in preserving old manga.)

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This one-shot was first published in the 44th issue of Shonen King in 1972. (October 16th, 1972) - Almost 52 years old in 2024!

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When I found this one-shot, I was actually just trying to confirm that another manga I was collecting actually did conclude in the volume before this one - Information can be sparse and the cover of a magazine very often, won't list all of the magazine's contents. When I received the magazine, I was surprised a new one-shot dog manga had begun in its place. Raid of the fighting Dogs, a 48 page one-shot by Ikeuchi Seiichi, who is one of my favourite artists. A lovely surprise when I wasn't expecting anything at all, and a very undocumented one at that.

I immediately tried to Google the name of this manga to see if it had any existing translations before adding it to my project list, only to find it had no results at all - Not even in Japanese. Three years later it's translated, thoroughly cleaned and uploaded in English, and at the time of writing there are still no google results for the Japanese title - Only the English title we ended up giving it.

Why is this, though? This magazine really isn't a rare one. It can be purchased right now from several sites for around a thousand yen. (Just under $7 USD as of September, 2024.) Why is it so obscure and unknown...?

I imagine one factor is that listings generally simply don't mention that this one-shot is inside the magazine at all. I think it boils down to how this manga is presented on the Mokuji / Table of contents.

It's pushed down in such a manner that disconnects it from the rest of the listed manga. Other reading material (Non manga - Articles, for example) would sometimes be presented in this way. It almost comes off as a separate bonus publication (Furoku) that got lost, when it's right in the magazine among the pages. It's a shame because I think the ultimate goal of this placement was to better feature the story, especially since it's the only one in the mokuji that has some nice art there.

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In 2021, I ran a poll asking what people would prefer I work on next as a fan translation. To my surprise, this one-shot won the poll. I really thought people would pick something else. So I got to work debinding my old, tattered copy of the Shonen King issue and scanned in the pages. The more I scanned, the more dread sort of began to wash over me... The print job is just dreadful. My typical go-to until then had been better reprints in books that only needed light cleaning - There's none of these for this manga. This is the only place it was ever published, and the print work and paper quality are terrible. If you've read a few of my other entries, I'm certain you've seen me venting about poor quality printing and the amount of one-shots that are stuck in this terrible quality forever.

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Check out how bad the source was in some spots. The ink is struggling to stick to the paper texture so badly:

 

Pretty bad. Not as bad as some stuff I have from the 60s and 70s, but still pretty dreadful and something I wanted to fix better for a fan translation. Since I really love Ikeuchi Seiichi's work also, I wanted to do his dog art some justice and fix some of the badly printed lines.

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I contacted a friend who helped me use Topaz and Photoshop to clean these pages up. I finished my initial translation, and prepared to clean the pages for typesetting. "This won't take long." I think as I boot up the first page in Photoshop.

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I didn't complete it for over three years!

It was horribly intimidating. Every time I got some progress done in my free time, I learned how to clean the lines just a little better. So, by the time I'd made it to 10/48 pages, I had to start all over again with my newly learned quality standards, and boy did they change a lot as I restored the lines. I probably started over about five times.

After a bit of this on repeat, I was thoroughly put off and began to work on other things. I ended up releasing other works from that poll before this one because it just took so much time to make the pages look decent. So on and off for three years until it was finally complete, I'd do a little work here and there. While I got help with a couple of the pages, I think even by myself this would have gone much quicker had I not been so disheartened by the process. Hopefully in the future some others will want to help restore this obscure stuff, because I sure have a lot of old dog manga on the backburner with no better print.

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The process went as follows. You may see better details by opening the images in a new tab:

 1 - The raw was scanned in.

2 - A custom script with Topaz in it, was applied to the page. This works wonders, but it's still so messy.

3 - I fixed much of the lines and solid black ink. This is the cleaning and redrawing layer only. I also want to note, this was an earlier example and my standards for the cleaning changed a lot since this, so later pages have a lot more on these layers.

4 - Final page, ready for text.

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Each page probably took a minimum of an hour and I probably did one a day at the height of my focus on this project. If you're interested, here's a video of this page getting cleaned. It's sped up a considerable amount, so you don't have to suffer in real time.

In short, the process was a huge pain, but if it got some eyes on the forgotten work of an author that has already passed on, it's always worth it to me. Ikeuchi draws some incredible Tosa faces and action sequences.

Now I've described the process I'll move on to talking about the story.
If you'd like to read Raid of the Fighting Dogs before proceeding, you can read the English release on MangaDex.

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The story follows Takeshi and his adoptive family. It's pretty typical of your 70's animal-centric one-shot. Takeshi is an orphan who has been adopted by a couple that run a ramen shop. His parents were involved in illegal dog fighting when he was a youth and as a teen, he is now displaying some interest in dog fighting too.

This deeply disturbs Takeshi's adoptive father, who responds in a way very typical of this era of manga.

(I swear, I've seen this too many times to count now.)

Dad, seemingly having... clarity after slapping his son across the face for not telling him he wanted a Tosa dog, suddenly proclaims he will do the best thing by his son and buy him the BEST Tosa dog. His dad is unbalanced to say the least. They make their way to Tosa in Shikoku to buy a puppy, with the sole condition Takeshi does not use it for fighting.

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They visit five breeders before finding a puppy that Takeshi likes - A runt that he names Ryuo. The runt is being bullied by its older sibling, a darker coloured Tosa dog that was born first.

These panels are meant to be brutal with the older puppy bullying the younger one, but they all just look like Spot the dog to me, and it humours me. I think it's the chubby cheek lines and silly little eyes.

 

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The family lives happily together until Ryuo is a little older, when the family is attacked and mugged by some Yakuza thugs. Even sweet, gentle runt Ryuo is attacked by another dog.

This causes Ryuo to awaken as a fighting dog, and he breaks out of his kennel in the night to sharpen his fangs on a tree. The father takes his one condition back - Takeshi can now train Ryuo to fight.

Takeshi wants to get stronger too. This situation seems to wake up something in all three of them. Around this time, Ryuo also gains a white star on his forehead. It's not stated if this is a marking, or a scar - I imagine a scar myself, since it appeared after the attack, but it marks the change in Ryuo.

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The training is not all harsh tough n' rough though, and I appreciate that:

We also get a little slice of life about how much the bond means between these two. Two with sad backgrounds becoming each other's family. Takeshi and Ryuo, at the encouragement of Takeshi's father, go training in the ocean since swimming is great for building muscle. Takeshi loses an oar from his boat, and begins slowly drifting out to sea.

Ryuo swims out after him, simply following. He does not try to get on the boat - I imagine because he wants Takeshi to remain safe and not potentially capsize the boat. The setting sun in the panel tells me they were probably lost at sea for about a day or so, but who knows... Regardless, I  found this panel quite heartwarming. I love that Ryuo's internal dialog is included - This is so often omitted in one-shots around dogs and they're typically not given a voice.

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A year after this, Ryuo makes his debut and swiftly moves up the ranks until the top dog (Yokozuna) retires and surrenders the title to him. Ryuo is not a weakling any more. He's ready to do anything for Takeshi and that involves being the very best fighting dog.

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I love the sheer terror in some of the expressions Ikeuchi draws:

What this dog is seeing too, and how fearful it is to them, is so well depicted in this panel:

I feel like the etched edges of Ryuo's markings and his sharp eyes do a great job of coming off as terrifying.

We learn that there are two kinds of dog fighting. The type that competes for titles only - Ozeki, Yokozuna, etc - The legal dog fighting world where it's considered a little more honourable. There is also the underground world of dog fighting that competes only for money - Illegal betting, where the dogs that lose are always outright killed. This illegal underground fighting scene makes millions of yen change hands.

Tosa fighting in modern Japan has apparently lost a lot of its popularity, but was it actually like this in the 80s? Was there an 'underground' scene and an 'honourable, public' scene? I have no idea. One thing I found difficult personally was some of the terminology. All of the underground fighting dogs are referred to directly as "Bet dogs". I changed this to "Underground fighting" in general since I thought it captured the English meaning a lot easier than "Bet dogs" but that's the word that was used for the illegal stuff in this one-shot.

Surprise - The king of the underground dog fighting scene is Ryuo's brother, who is named Kokuryu. He's the terrifying beast that bullied Ryuo when he was just a little puppy. Kokuryu has a secret, though - He got strong by being forced to fight a Kendo master, and after six months he killed this human. People speak about this rumour, but his owner never confirms it.

It's still tremendously sad. Kokuryu could have been a good dog in the right hands and many animals are used by humans in similar ways. I'm glad that the manga makes a point of not glorifying the violence of dog fighting, despite it being the main subject matter. It states several times that it is honourless.

Ryuo and Kokuryu, despite being from different worlds, by some unexplained method, are finally brought together in the same ring to see who is the strongest, and there is no messing around.

Ryuo hasn't thought about his brother since he started his happy life with Takeshi.

Ryuo wastes no time. He kills without pause. Kokuryu is no match for him. I think this panel is incredible. All those thick brush strokes, the contrast of pure vitriol and terror combined is so powerful, and the use of white for blood. I just love it. Such a cool piece of art by a very talented artist.

Takeshi is shocked at Ryuo's sheer violence. After this, Ryuo is retired and never fights again. There is no need for fighting any more. Everybody is stronger, everybody is at peace.

I felt this panel was awfully powerful. Just Takeshi and Ryuo and their bond through all the hard stuff. No need to go through any more hard stuff. Time to enjoy life.

And there it ends - Ryuo becomes the mascot of the ramen shop, and he sits by it to guard it. He doesn't fight any more, nor does Takeshi. Life is seemingly back to simple slice of life.

(And, the main animal character doesn't die in the end... How rare that is, for an older dog one shot...)

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Before I wrap up though, I must share a few panels that I found so interesting. Ikeuchi draws incredible Tosa dogs. You can really tell he's referenced their shapes and movements, and certainly referenced the breed heavily.

(And, just because it made me laugh, this angry puppy Kokuryu panel)

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I'm fairly certain there is nothing in the way of fanart, merchandise, or anything else surrounding this one, but if I'm wrong there - Please do let me know!

PARCHED MEDITATION / 乾いた瞑想 - HARUMI SATO (1979)

 

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Harumi Sato is an incredible author and artist that remains relatively unknown, despite her large amount of works, unique storytelling and a sharp, recognizable style that retains a distinct balance between western animation and eastern comics. Browsing old manga magazines one evening, I was happy to catch a glimpse of this style for the first time. I assumed it might be an author without much other manga out there (Some one-shot artists will submit a few things to publications before promptly falling off the face of the earth - Or more realistically, seemingly realizing that the manga field was not for them) but to my surprise, Harumi Sato has a large number of works, many of them involving canids or other animals. (Obviously, right up my alley.)

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The glimpse of Harumi Sato's style I saw was in the 1979 October issue of Manga Shonen, so I promptly bought it:

October 1979 Manga Shonen cover.

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When I received it, I was so disappointed to see this one-shot fell into the unlucky and very dense pool of 'gorgeous one-shots printed on the worst quality paper imaginable.'

 

It was so disheartening to hold such pretty art in my hands and not be able to appreciate the delicate line art because it's just bleeding all over the place, and through every speck of the paper surface. Thousands of works fell to these insanely bad print jobs prior to the mid 80s. The print houses carefully gauge which works in each magazine are going to be popular based on initial feedback in their research, and condemn the less received works to what is essentially toilet paper.

For many, many one-shots, they meet their end here. They never get a nice reprint in a published book. The one-shot is never released on better paper. They go skipped in the magazines themselves because the print job has already signaled to the 1970s reader, "This is not the best our magazine has to offer. There's better content on the colour pages, and on the higher quality pages." It's been sentenced to boring status before most have offered it any semblance of a chance.

The best you can do in this scenario, if you want a nicer copy, is hope that you can snag a copy of the magazine with slightly less bleed, which is a huge gamble - Especially if the magazine the one-shot appears in is an expensive, rare one.

Some further examples of just how bad the bleed is, and how bad the quality of this paper is. If there's an atom of ink on the opposite side of the paper, it'll aggressively peer through at you. My phone camera is a bit forgiving with the bleed, but trust me, it looks ten times worse in person. A nightmare for anybody wanting to restore these for readers.

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The first time I received this magazine, I tried to read it but got disheartened quickly by how little of the art I could absorb. I googled further, unwilling to accept that this author's gorgeous artwork was limited to this terrible print job. Fortunately, I was happy to see that Harumi Sato has a few one-shot compilation books out there! One-shot compilation books are typically made with high quality paper, so I swiftly ordered that version instead.

The one-shot compilation book that Parched Meditation was reprinted in - This collection - "Winged Memories" - was published in 1981 and is relatively easy to find.

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Onto the story itself.

If you want to read Parched Meditation before progressing, you can read it in English on MangaDex.

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Sadly, the cover page is not in colour, though it still has gorgeous ink details. Animal one-shots with a few pages in colour were very rare around this time. They weren't a very popular genre, so manga magazines often saved these colour pages for premier series anticipated to be popular, or long-running series with an already proven fanbase. Luckily, thanks to the reprint, we can get all the pages in a very nice quality.

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The story begins with a painted dog that is struggling to hunt. Throughout the entire one-shot, it's left ambiguous as to whether this painted dog is male or female, and the character remains pretty androgynous throughout. I'm not sure if Harumi Sato's style is naturally androgynous or if it's an intentional part of her style, but I love that it's almost up to the reader to decide.

The painted dog is promptly kicked out of the pack, presumably for failing to help secure the prey. With just a few lines on the panel, the distance is poignant and painfully visible.

The painted dog begins to reflect on life in the pack. I adore the use of the other characters being plain outlines here, while our main character retains the artist's gorgeous detail lines. It really convinces you they're an alien among their own species that simply cannot fit in.

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The danger of the painted dog's situation becomes further apparent as pure, blistering heat is depicted on the following pages with amazing scope and painful, wavy lines that look like they might be a hundred degrees to the touch.

The imagery of this scolding heat is amplified by large, dead areas of pure black ink. The contrast is amazing on the above panel. Even if you're not in the middle of the Savannah, you can feel the pure misery the character is feeling from it.

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The painted dog wanders a bit, and ends up in a field of bones and skulls.

The shock in the initial page feels palpable. The bones are all wonderfully detailed, with some skulls being damaged and even missing teeth. Harumi Sato draws such incredible eyes on a shocked character, too. The detail in this fictional graveyard really sucks you in.

One of the skulls begins to speak to the main character, filling them with doubt regarding their ability to maintain a pack status, but also their ability to remain alive.

The skull goes a few layers deeper by trying to convince the painted dog to curl up and die.

The skull reveals itself to be that of a lion, and the other skulls in the mass grave join in on convincing the main character to give up on the burden that is their mortal life.

I love this panel. The painted dog still displays defiance, despite being surrounded by hundreds of spirits telling them to give up and submit to the easiness of death.

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The souls strengthen their presence and call louder and louder for the painted dog to give up and die. The detail here is incredible. So many creepy faces, so much amazing manual texturing, and scary looking sound effects litter the page with an aggressive font alluding to a terrifying noise the character is being flooded with.

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Prompted by the skulls, the painted dog begins to reflect on their past. The other pack members are still merely outlines in comparison - Still alien to the character. However, they are still memories and past that hold significant weight, regardless of whether or not their experiences were pleasant. It was still a learning experience and a part of the character's life.

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On the brink of death, an antelope runs into the path of the dying painted dog, offering them a life-saving kill and the faith that their time may not be up yet.

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Surprised, the skull of the lion tries to downplay the significance of this kill greatly - He wants the painted dog dead, to become as lost as miserable as he is, forever sitting in the pit of death where his remains now lay. The painted dog realizes the lion's trap and confronts him in this amazing panel. I love how half of the painted dog's face is straight black ink, as if they're realizing they can pull themselves free of the dark energy that is so desperately trying to catch and detain.

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The painted dog and the skull have another exchange, and the lion makes a last ditch attempt to persuade the painted dog to stay. However, the scent of rain soon comes, renewing hope for survival. I love how Harumi Sato depicted the rest of the Savannah here. Even with just a little bit of tone, it looks so vast and scary to cross when you're already a dehydrated wild animal.

The cross hatching used around the painted dog's face is such a cool technique too in comparison to how many mangaka will just slap tones on top for darker markings. While I have nothing against usage of tones, sometimes NOT using them can look so much more fantastic. It shows love of penwork and the dedication to getting down very specific details.

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The painted dog runs into the unknown, fueled by faith that a full stomach and the scent of rain has invoked. What happens from here? We'll never know, but it's an enjoyable open ending for a one-shot.

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When I first released the translation of this one-shot in English, I was really surprised by the positive reception. There were quite a few comments and threads on it at the time, discussing the philosophical values behind this one-shot. We'd done a few other more well known works - One by Tezuka, Sun Dog Zero, and a Hachiko manga in addition, and this one got more in the way of interest than all of those combined. It was unexpected, but still nice to see. I really enjoy the message, too. Don't let other people bring you down. Keep living for yourself, and don't throw in the towel until it's truly game over. Better things may be just around the bend, and you may never fully detect these positive changes until they're right upon you.

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There's virtually nothing to go with this manga and it's a shame because it's such a fun read. No additional promotional images, no colour pages, no merchandise, and somehow - No fanart at all that I could find. Usually even very obscure one-shots will have at least a little fanart out there. I'm not sure how this one has garnered seemingly none whatsoever.

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The only additional thing I could find at all, was a tiny little illustration in the mokuji (Contents page) of the 1979 manga magazine it was originally published in.

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Sadly, that's it for this one. It was vastly enjoyable and I hope to release some English translations of Harumi Sato's other one-shots. Her style is incredible and her storytelling reminds me of Aesop's fables in that they, so far, seem to have a deep lesson within each one.