Ultimate Muscle. Kinnikuman Nisei. Whatever you want to call it. It's freakin' awesome. I remembered that today.

The not-so-fantastic English dub was only released on dvd up to episode 4 so that's all most people find on the internet in English. There's a few eps kicking around in Portuguese now, but with no subtitles so if you don't speak that language you have to make it up in your head. But apparently the American copyright license thingy ran out a while ago so any vid 'acquired' by other means really ought not to be taken down from Youtube. There's few from the later end of the series. Specifically the last one.

I watched it with this awful knowledge that my favourite character was going to lose and his character plot line left undeveloped. The anime never shows Robin's reaction to Kevin's loss. Which always pissed me off. I had also always known that Kevin wins in the manga but I'd never read it.

I've only ever seen UM manga for sale once in Aberdeen and I bought both volumes on the spot. Most major online manga sources have Kinnikuman and Kinnikuman Nisei but none are complete. Certainly, I hadn't been able to find Kevin vs Mantarou anywhere.

UNTIL TONIGHT!!!!!

[link] Here it is people!!!!!

Number 21 is Kevin vs Mantarou.

They are all in JAPANESE. So if you're of the opinion that it's English or nothing at all - and I've seen so many leaving comments of that nature of non-English UM vids - don't even bother. Or learn.

Personally I find it hard to believe that English speakers can be so arrogant as to demand everything be in English but hey, shoganai. Since I'm lucky enough to be of a linguistic nature, I've picked up a few katakana and hiragana: allowing me to read the characters' names and some words that usually aren't helpful to understanding the story. But I went through about 200 pages only understanding 'Kevin', 'Robin', 'Mantarou', 'nisei' and 'of' and it didn't matter one ounce. A picture is worth a thousand words. I could quite conceivably burst right now.

I haven't felt this excited about finding out how something happens since I first watched DBZ. It's good to have the feeling back.