The Spring 2020 Manga Guide

The King of Fighters: A New Beginning

What's It About? 

Fifteen teams of strong fighters have gathered at an arena to answer one question: who is strong enough to be crowned the King of Fighters? Pulled from the ranks of the best fighters using a variety of martial art styles – including a few that seem to be outright magic – the teams, made up of three fighters each, will compete round by round until all but one is eliminated. That team will then fight the tournament's organizer to determine the true strongest fighter. But when the first two teams are selected, something goes sideways – why have only two people entered the ring? It quickly becomes apparent that the members of Team Yagami are willing to do anything to defeat Team Japan…even if that means fighting in some unsanctioned and unorthodox places.

The King of Fighters: A New Beginning is based on a video game franchise. It was released in March by Seven Seas and is available in both hard copy ($12.99) and digitally ($9.99).

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Is It Worth Reading?

Faye Hopper

Rating:

I'm wary of manga that exist solely as fanservice of an existing property. Oftentimes, this goes hand in hand with refusing to adapt to a new medium or putting in the effort to make these pre- established characters fit in a new, dynamic context. Sadly, this is entirely the case with The King of Fighters: A New Beginning (an adaptation of the 2016 video game The King of Fighters XIV), a manga that exists for fans and fans alone, and will leave anyone who does not understand the already-established character dynamics of KoF at once confused and without any reason to care.

But I want to also say that these execution issues do not just hurt unfamiliar reader's ability to connect with the material. The much greater issue is that this coasting on fan investment in lieu of the fundamentals of storytelling makes for bland, unentertaining manga. A lot of the problems here are ones that would be egregious if the story were not part of an existing brand. For instance: it takes 90 pages to introduce each of the fighters. 90 pages. In that insane amount of time, a few characters (like Joe Higashi loudly proclaiming his imminent victory, or Kim Kaphwan valiantly upholding the moral integrity of the tournament to a team of violent ex-cons) get a good, solid introduction that establishes who they are as a person. Most do not. They are instead empty cyphers who players of the games are to project their previous knowledge and attachment onto (Terry and Mai get the worst of this). This is an absurd amount of wasted space, and bad storytelling to boot. I am sympathetic to how large a roster KoF XIV has, and how difficult it is to cram meaningful characterization for that many characters into a 200 page volume. But spending that many pages to say almost nothing about why these characters fight is not a good solution.

I had a call after finishing this first volume with a friend who is a massive SNK fan. What he told me about this world sounded like so, so much fun. Geese Howard murdered Terry and Andy's father. Kim Kaphwan once mentored two of the ex-cons in order to put them on the path of righteousness and failed. Andy and Mai are married. These dynamics are rich and could form the basis for a solid tournament manga. But effort must be put in to show the reader that these conflicts underpin the entire tournament and drive our characters to clash. Otherwise, the story will not matter, and the reader will not have any fun at all. And considering that KoF features a humanoid dinosaur and a prisoner styled after Freddy Krueger, it not being fun is a crying shame.

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Is It Worth Reading?

Rebecca Silverman

Rating:

Do you like stories with more characters than anyone could comfortably shake a stick at? Well, do I have the series for you! King of Fighters: A New Beginning's introductory volume spends the first seventy-five pages just introducing all of the characters who will be participating in the tournament – and then in the start of the second chapter they introduce one more, just for good measure. It's a truly staggering number of players, very likely stemming from the fact that the fighting game franchise the manga is based on began in 1994 and is still ongoing. A manga project like this one, which appears aimed at uniting the potentially disparate corners of the franchise, would of necessity have an insanely large cast so as not to alienate any fans who might pick it up.

Unfortunately, it does have the side effect of making a fairly large barrier to entry for the novice reader. While it isn't difficult to figure out the basics of what's going on and where the in-world rivalries lie, it's overwhelming to be presented with such a huge group right off the bat, and it would be easy to be turned off by the fact that we don't even get any fighting until the middle of the second chapter, which is a bit of an issue with the word “fighter” right there in the title. Once the action starts, it's fun in that over-the-top way video games are, with the fighters of Teams Japan and Yagami whipping out one overpowered attack with a goofy name after the other. The ladies of Team Yagami are particularly fun in this regard, and their sheer ruthlessness makes them terrific villains. Fortunately you don't have to be familiar with them to enjoy this aspect; nothing says “I'm evil” like involving innocent civilians, particularly by sabotaging their train and then using its roof as an arena. It's almost a shame to see them go, because right now they're far more interesting than the good guys they're up against, although a man who can stop a speeding train by pulling on it is perhaps no one to write off just yet.

The artwork makes any KOF characters you may have seen before easily recognizable, which is important, and there are some interesting layouts. There isn't a great sense of weight or movement, though which is an issue in a fighting series, although on the plus side the artist does have a semi-decent grasp of anatomy and can't really be blamed for the character designs – let's just say that a few of the women look painful. All in all this isn't a terrific book, but it has some potential, and I could see it appealing at least a little to fans of the franchise.