Saint Muscle: Unedited Audio and Recording Notes

Manga Details

• Tsutomu Miyazaki: writer
  • Other works
    • Tsutomu Miyazaki was a fairly accomplished novelist, with some 20+ works under his belt, mostly science fiction in genre, and was actually involved in the first ever science-fiction doujin. His manga works include:
      • A manga adaptation of the failed tokusatsu pilot Hyo-Man/Jaguar-Man (1967-1968, Weekly Shonen Magazine) with art by Kenji Nanba
      • 7 chapters of Golgo 13 (author Takao Saito would often work with other writers on storylines)
      • Biographical manga based on the lives of
        • Sanada Yukimura (with art by Masamichi Yokoyama)
        • Uesugi Kenshin (1969, with art by Taku Horie)
        • Oda Nobunaga (1970, with art by Shunji Obata)
        • Toyotomi Hideyoshi (1970, with art by Taku Horie)
    • (Due to the niche nature of Miyazaki’s manga work and the time passed since initial publication, a lot of information on the author is incomplete, hence the truncated nature of these notes)
• Masami Fukushima: artist
  • Notable people they were an assistant for
    • Mori Masaki
      • (director of Barefoot Gen’s film version. Also made like 40 or so manga series)
  • Notable people they had as assistants
    • Kosaku Onakubo (Pokémon Pocket Monsters, the one with a loud Clefairy in it)
    • Saori Satou (Pet Robot Lilly)
    • Peramo Agagaya (Vulgar Bingo)
  • Other works (highlights, due to time)
    • Gladiators, Stars of Rome (1976-1977, 3 volumes, Weekly Shonen Champion) with writer Ikki Kajiwara of Ashita no Joe/Tiger Mask fame.
    • Prince Shotoku (1977-1978, 17 chapters, Manga Sunday) written by Kai Takizawa
  • A note on the author:
    • Fukushima is notable in two things. One is his influence over creators like Tetsuo Hara, Hirohiko Araki, and Keisuke Itagaki, all enamored with the insane musculature and mythology of FLESHBOMB (more on that later). The other is him packing up his tools a good few times, quitting Prince Shotoku in 1978, quitting again in 1980 for a decade, quitting AGAIN in 1990 for seven years, before sticking around to give more sexual violence and buff monster men to the masses.
• Publishing
  • Run Dates:
    • (Roughly) July 1976 to December 1976
• Series that replaced it
  • Football Hawk by Noboru Kawasaki (1977-1979, 10 vols, minor hit)
    • Yes, American football.
• Chapters/Volumes:
  • 6 chapters (Originally published as 22 weekly chapters)/4 volumes (republished as 3 volumes, and also republished as 1 volume)

About the Manga

• Plot
  • A ripped naked dude with no dick wakes up with amnesia, not knowing who he is he goes off in search of other human beings. Wandering through the desert, he arrives at a castle filled with “sculptures” of human heads and meets a huge grotesque king who feeds him. The king shows the naked dude a statue that he already had of him. He then demands that his servant, the only other human in the place, become a human carving just like all the other heads. The servant refuses and is killed. The king then ties naked dude (actually everyone in this manga has been naked so far) to the statue, saying that he is going to steal his beauty since the king himself is so dang ugly. Naked dude breaks free, defeats the king, and tears down the statue which brings the whole castle down. Naked dude then leaves to wander the desert some more when he sees a bunch more naked people running for their lives. Apparently it’s a marathon to cull the population of the nearby city, with the old and young competing to see who gets a drink from the spring of life and everyone who fails dying. Naked dude infiltrates the city to find that the spring of life is the nation’s prime export, granting eternal rejuvenation. However he rips the cloaks off the higher ups to reveal that they’re old and gross, and that the spring of life doesn’t give you long life it just restores your strength. Naked dude destroys the spring which submerges the castle, and the people, glad they don’t have to do the death marathons anymore, decide to move on and rebuild somewhere else.
  • 
    
  • Naked dude wanders the desert for a little longer before winding up in the kingdom of the giant king where he meets the giant king who is both giant and a king. They become close friends and work on building up the Tower of Babel (c. 1563, Pieter Bruegel, oil on wood panel, 45in x 61 in), until suddenly some rebels appear to depose the king, calling him a dictator which he definitely is. It’s revealed that the leader of the rebellion is his sister who is accidentally killed, ending the fighting. The Giant King however decides to execute the defeated rebels which horrifies the naked dude, who demands he stop. Giant King says that he’s gotta fight him to the death first! Naked dude wins but can’t bring himself to kill him so Giant King fights back but can’t bring himself to kill the naked dude so he surrenders and lets the rebels go. The people call the naked dude Saint Muscle titledrop and he’s exiled. Saint Muscle wanders in the frozen tundra which is so cold he has to wear clothes. He’s attacked by a bear but is saved by an old man with one arm who takes him home where two betrothed teenagers cuddle naked with him to raise his body temperature.
  • 
    
  • The old man goes Captain Ahab on a monstrous sperm whale who killed all his friends  and dies, so Saint Muscle takes over and finishes the job before wandering again. Next Saint Muscle winds up at a slave encampment where slaves are being brutally executed for the crime of falling in love with each other. Two slaves declare their love for each other and are sentenced to the “doll execution” where they’re dressed as a sheep and a pig and dragged through the dirt until they die. Saint Muscle fights and defeats the executioner to free them but the director refuses, holding the lovers hostage. However the girl throws her neck onto the director’s sword, starting a slave revolt which kills him. Oh no! A giant army has appeared to seemingly take them back but PHEW it’s actually the giant king! Saint Muscle and Giant King reunite briefly as Giant King’s horse rushes to lick Saint Muscle like a dog. Giant King says the dark king is coming to take over the land and Saint Muscle leaves. He climbs a mountain but the horse wants to follow him so Saint Muscle picks up the horse and climbs.
• Characters
  • MC, man with no name, I will call him John Protagonist
    • Fighting bears n shit
    • Honors a mans duel
    • Manly tears
    • Typical lawful good protagonist
    • SAINT MUSCLE
    • NAKED
  • GIANT KING
    • GIANT
    • KING
    • Murders a lot of people :(

Why it Failed

• This art is paced very slowly and so much detail makes it hard to read
• This plot is slow as fuck, I don’t know what the point of everything is
• The MCs face is just like weird
• So much ass
• This plot makes no fucking sense
• It feels super cool at first but I feel it kinda loses its way as the material gets kind of old
• Everyone is so blatantly good or evil
• The plotlines feel really similar, a ruler the MC has to deal with, brutal fight, slavery is usually involved in some capacity
• 
  

What it Did Well

• This art fuck yeah
• This violence is brutal but in such a fun way
• It really does have a “they don’t make em like they used to”
• Every landscape/background shot is gorgeous
• Times I went fuck yeah
  • MEAT MANSION
  • GIANT NAKED GOBLIN GUY
  • KICKING BULLS N SHIT
  • BEAR HANDSHAKE
  • PUSHING THAT IRON
  • FIGHTING ARMIES GIANT KING
  • JOHN PROTAG VS THE GIANT KING FIST TO FISTS
  • FLEXED SO HARD THE WHOLE CROWD LOVES HIM
  • A MAN'S FIGHT VS THE WHALE RULES OF NATURE
  • KNOCKING BACK SPIKES MAKING A DUDE EXPLODE
  • CARRYING A FUCKING HORSE

Where it Could Have Gone

• Actually establish well anything, I get it’s a man with no name thing but this doesn’t work so well for a multi year series
• Needed way more connective tissue, like the giant king hearing about him was great but almost everything is in its own world, a supporting cast lmao
• Establish some sort of system to the fighting like what is his muscle power?
• How drastically changed would this have to be to run in WSJ?
• 
  

Misc Thoughts

• Such an interesting time capsule into manga 50 years ago
• Whale fight RULES OF NATURE
• The cornerstone pyramid thing feels so fucking araki
• This really feels like it’s framed like a movie, you can see the establishing shots, transitions, etc
• Fucking ears
• This kinda reminds me of Takeki Ryuusei
• This is the anti agravity boys
• Maxy Bee thoughts:
  • “Yes, it’s true. This man has no dick” - Peter Venkman, Ghostbusters (1984)
  • If you want to learn more about Masami Fukushima’s work, it is covered in Takeo Udagawa’s Manga Zombie, translated by John Gallagher and partially available to read on the Comipress website.
  • Nikudan, OR FLESHBOMB, was an artistic movement born in the 70s inspired by western superhero physiques and used as a way to push the limits (and base depths) gekiga could be pushed to. Obscene musculature, sexual depravity, and an obsessive level of detail are all trademarks of this oft-forgotten movement.
  • Saint Muscle was promoted heavily ahead of its release in Weekly Shonen Magazine, including an infamous double-page spread of our hero’s bare ass, presented directly to the reader.
• This effort was for nothing, as despite the aggressive marketing teen boys simply did not want a massive dickless man roaming from mythos to mythos every week in their magazine, and it died some 22 weeks later.
• Despite running as weekly chapters, most manga grouped chapters into larger arcs when collected in volumes at the time, which is why this looks like 6 chapters. For another example, football classic Captain Tsubasa ran for 356 chapters in its Weekly Shonen Jump run, but was collected as 114 merged stories in its volume release.
• The editor of cult parody instructional series Even A Monkey Can Draw Manga, Osamu Satou, is often depicted in-series as the Giant King from Saint Muscle, and even has business cards as such. The only difference is him having one braid to the Giant King’s two.

Final Verdict

• Six Word summary
  • Community
    • Tucker: Bah Gawd, look at that vascularity!
    • Maxybee: MEATY MEN SLAPPING MEAT TIMES INFINITY
    • 090Z: GAR taken to its logical extreme
    • AuraPaladin: A fascinatingly grotesque work of art
    • Chickenwarlord: Breaking Anatomical Boundaries Is Biggest Flex
    • duderocks the earthchild stan: Protag quite literally has no balls
    • GreyPotter 👑 King of Questions: Even the dog must have MASCLES | Is this…. Hentai? Terrible muscle hentai?
    • Isekai Sensei-Sama 🎙: Mutant muscle men make me manic
    • LassOfTheRedRose: A buff incomprehensible waste of time
    • LordAnubis, #1RedHoodFan/Mourner: They have muscles on their muscles
    • Portal man: Praise the patron saint of muscles
    • Redblade: Naked Muscle Messiah Defeats Ugly Bastards
    • Resident Warhammer Nerd: Sorry, got distracted by the muscles
    • Riley: The MUSCULAR shall inherit the Earth
    • Sbubby: Better one: This is your brain on protein | Okay, imagine Jojo but even gayer
    • Spike: Call em cake, lookin like SNACKS
    • Spook (Sir Skelington): Deez nutz, wait where are they?? | Most mussley mussle manga to flex
    • The Wolf The Wood The Trafalgar: Nobody's heads match their naked bodies
    • Watchtower: Fisting of the North Star Saints
  • David: Really knows how to spread em
  • Jordan: big powerful beautiful muscles of god
  • Guest: big muscular man goes to church
• Flop or not
  • David: Dude I don’t know, people just read this to experience it