Real Bout High School

    (Tokyopop, 2000-2002)
™ and © Tokyopop
Read right to left.

Somebody get this manga over to UPN double-quick, because a live-action version of Real Bout High School would make for a perfect bridge between Buffy The Vampire Slayer and WWF: Smackdown. If you split the difference between Ranma ½ and Revolutionary Girl Utena, you’ll get an idea just how seriously you should take this jolly mix of youth soap opera and action.

The premise reads like the fighting game Tekken given the X-Men: Evolution treatment: The new Principal of Daimon High School decides to deal with the problem of school violence by institutionalizing it as the “K-Fight,” where students (and even teachers) have to settle their conflicts in the ring. Clearly, the star of the series is red-haired Ryoko, a sunny straight-shooter with good self-esteem (you go, Samurai Girl), who immediately finds herself on a collision course with the new student, uni-brow thug Shizuma, and caught up in romantic entanglements. Great characters, great art, lots of fighting. Bottom line: This one is a lot of fun.
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