Teppu — A Women’s MMA Manga

Spoiler-free review:

The artstyle can be a turn off for quite a few people. Didn't expect this manga to make me cry, but I almost did in the last chapter. So really hats off for that.

The action is drawn well, there are parts where you'd find it difficult to follow along the action, but those occurrences decrease the deeper you get into the manga. The artstyle also improved in the final chapters.

The plot is basically the story of a really tall girl who’s so talented that she can pick up on anything she’s taught real fast and get better than most at it. And that causes an issue, nothing’s entertaining for her. Nothing feels fun to her, and she has a bad personality to boot. Things take an interesting turn though when she decides to pick up learning MMA. Expect a lot of interesting characters, some real good internal conflict and a fun course on MMA fighting techniques. The exposition is handled very well, so don’t worry.

Mini-spoilers ahead:
I can't share too much about the manga and will have to be vague as it's just 33 chapters, but those 33 chapters are really worth it. Infact I'm thinking of reading more short manga to find more gems like this one.

What I really loved about this manga is how it executed flashbacks, atleast in the tournament all the flashbacks were very short yet good enough to add more emotion to the fight or to raise its stakes.

One thing that must be learnt from this story is how to hype an event.

The internal conflict was a thing of beauty. I've always wanted to figure out how to write an extremely OP character well. And although Natsuo can't be called OP, but she's extremely talented. And I can't usually sympathize with those type of people. But this story pulled it off— it made me sympathize with her and feel for her, it made me cry in the end when I saw her crying.

Another thing I loved about her is that she was what I like to call, a "Deku" character. She observes MMA moves and analyzes very well. And to add to that, she can copy some after just seeing or experiencing them once. Only difference from a standard Deku character is that she doesn't introspect on them much. Her natural talent makes up for that. She's a really interesting character.