Real vol. 13

“Tragedy?  Or one last moment of triumph?”

That’s what I wrote last year when the previous volume left off with wrestler “Scorpion” Shiratori preparing to head back into the ring.  Never mind the fact that his rehabilitation unfinished, the man is unable to even stand up without assistance.  How the hell is someone like that supposed to wrestle his longtime friend and rival in front of a packed auditorium?  By doing exactly what professional wrestlers are best at:  faking it.

Before he injured his spine, before he was the heel wrestler known as “Scorpion,” Shiratori was a tag-team partner of “Mamba” Matsuzaka and they wrestled as the “Rising Suns.”  While they gained a bit of fame together, the head of their outfit decided that they could go further if one of them became the bad guy.  Night will never come with two suns, so they’ll have that whole light/dark dichotomy going for them.  Shiratori got picked to be the heel, and he was so good at playing the bad guy that he even started to hate himself in real life.  It ruined his marriage and made him an outcast, but it’s the thing he’s best at in this world and the crowd loves to hate him for it.

So what happens when fate threatens to take all that away?  If you’re the “Scorpion,” then the answer is to jump back into the ring for one final bit of brilliantly manufactured performance art.  Even if he can’t walk and has to rely on holding onto the ropes of the ring in order to keep standing, Shiratori knows how to troll the audience for maximum effectiveness.  He’s carried into the ring dressed in black on a palanquin carried by lackey wrestlers, stands outside the ring and taunts the audience by saying that he doesn’t have to do anything, he’s already been paid!  Then, when the time comes to make a move, he tags in with his partner, smacks Matsuzaka, and tags back out.  It’s an impeccably managed facade.

Of course, it could all fall apart in an instant, as Takahashi keeps thinking as he watches from the sidelines in utter fear.  “He’s disabled like me?”  “What will his fans think when they find out?”  These are some of the thoughts that one of the title’s three protagonists keeps thinking as he watches “Scorpion” perform for the masses.  His fears are perfectly understandable as he makes a great stand-in for the reader’s (or at least my) concerns about what will happen when the facade starts to crack.

There are plenty of moments when it looks like things are all about to fall apart, and they’re just as thrilling as the actual brutality of the match itself.  More than anything else, the action in the ring drives home the fact that guys like Shiratori and Matsuzaka are professionals at what they do.  Yes, Shiratori’s injury may seem like an insurmountable obstacle to overcome, but the cleverness everyone in the ring displays to overcome it is downright admirable.  By the end of the match, Shiratori’s moment in the spotlight really does feel earned.

All of the action in the ring is truly fantastic and easily one of the title’s high points.  Which is good because there’s some stuff around the edges that doesn’t quite work in the same fashion.  While the many flashbacks to Shiratori’s rise in wrestling are utterly necessary to the story being told here, some parts could’ve used a little more focus.  The wrestler’s bitterness at the role he was forced into is understandable, but the toll it takes on his personal life and his marriage in particular could’ve been developed more.  Also, the revelation of who his biggest and most enduring fan turns out to be an unnecessary bit of sentimentality.

These issues are ultimately minor quibbles in the face of the volume’s overall quality and its main transformative achievement.  You see, through watching Shiratori’s performance the barriers in Takahashi’s mind slowly start to break down.  All this time he’s been living with the limitations imposed by his disability and fearful of actually moving forward and trying to actually do something with his life.  The way this is rendered in the context of the manga itself is something to see, even if the metaphor is a bit on the nose.  Not only does he wind up identifying with Shiratori’s struggles, Takahashi’s own passion is finally reawakened.

So at the very end of the volume, we finally (FINALLY) see two of the main story threads in “Real” coming together.  Longtime readers can probably guess which ones they are.  Everyone else will just have to go and read it for themselves.  No half-measures here:  GO READ THIS NOW!  It’s really that good.

(Now if we can just get back to Nomiya’s efforts to play professional basketball in the next volume all really will be right with the world.)