Genkai Toppa Wrestling is a webcomic by Gouda Dunn. It follows the story of Bengus Stratovarious, a lizard person born looking like a human, who dreams of becoming champion of the titular Genkai Toppa Wrestling league.
Not to be confused with Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann.
All completed chapters can be found here
and here with pages of ongoing chapters being posted to the author's twitter.
This comic contains explicit nudity every other page, so it should be considered Not Safe for Work.
Genkai Toppa Wrestling provides examples of:
- Abusive Parents:
- Bengus’ mother Madam Stratovarious was a staunch traditionalist who was obsessed with old-fashioned shyaru-jin values that promote a Might Makes Right philosophy and saw wrestling as just a way of showing that strength. She constantly belittled and demeaned Bengus for being weak and favored her brother Allegro. When Bengus finally beat Allegro she practically disowned both of them.
- While the specifics haven’t been made clear yet, Akamano’s mother Kinu Bhird forced her and her sibling to learn how to fight from a young age. This treatment was apparently bad enough to cause Akamano to become disillusioned with the entire G.T.W. system and has vowed to destroy it.
- Animal Battle Aura: They show up whenever a character gets serious about using their kayfabe.
- Opera's is a massive feathered dragon.
- Bengus' is her if she actually looked like a shyaru-jin
- Akamano's is a monstrous bird woman.
- Ikeno's is a horrific vaguely humanoid monster with two faces and mouths all over its body.
- Ass Kicks You: D’eltas signature attack is this.
- Broken Pedestal: Opera becomes this for the Mad Dragon gang after they see how much of a Bad Boss she is and witness her Villainous Breakdown as she’s losing to Bengus.
- Clothing Damage: A guaranteed part of nearly any fight in this story.
- Determinator: One of Bengus' defining traits is that she never gives up and every defeat she suffers causing her to bounce back even stronger than before.
- Foil:
- Bengus and Opera. Like Bengus, she is a skilled fighter who suffered a crushing defeat at Allegros hands. However Bengus lost to Allegro multiple times over the course of her life and managed to bounce back from each defeat more determined than before. Opera turned out to be a Sore Loser who totally lost it after being beaten by him once.
- Bengus and Akimano. Both are strong, determined fighters whose desire to join Genkai Toppa Wrestling stems from a desire to prove a point their abusive families, in particular their mothers, and they even have similar fighting styles. Multiple characters, including Bengus, have noted the similarities between them. However while Bengus is a Wide-Eyed Idealist who was inspired to leave the shadow of her family by G.T.W, Akimano is a grump whose mother is a pro G.T.W which has left disillusioned with the system.
- Forced Prize Fight: The Mad Dragon gang captures human women and puts them into these.
- Genki Girl: D’leta is a cheerful cat girl who sees wrestling as a way to make friends.
- Heroic BSoD: Bengus briefly goes into one after her loss to Akimano and the Breaking Speech she received from her. She makes D'leta, Miller, and Anzai promise to hit her if she ever gets like that again.
- Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Allegro has a rarely seen softer side to him. He agreed to train Anzai after the latter proved his resolved and seems proud of his student’s progress. He also tries to break Bengus out of her Heroic BSoD in his own Jerkass way.
- Ki Manipulation: Wrestlers is this setting use a specific brand they call “Kayfabe”.
- Power Copying: Bengus figures out how to do this with her Kayfabe during her second bout with Akimano.
- Power of Love:
- Subverted with Rumiko and Miller. As it turns out Rumiko always wanted to have her own hero and while she genuinely needed Miller when they first met, she came to enjoy watching him fight for her sake and began playing the part of a Deliberately Distressed Damsel. After seeing Miller lose to Opera twice, she realizes that her unhealthy relationship with him has been holding him back.
- Played straight with Anzai. His entire motivation for becoming a wrestler is to catch up to Bengus, who promised to marry him if he was able to truly catch up to her. His resolve to reach this goal was able to impress Allegro enough that he was willing to train him and managed to become a decent fighter with just two weeks of intense training. He even manages to learn how to use Kayfabe when Bengus reveals she wasn’t kidding when she made the promise.
- Pro Wrestling Is Real: In this setting it is. It used to be fake, until the discovery of Ki Manipulation that is.
- Shout-Out: There are dozens of points where the artstyle briefly changes to something reminiscent of JoJo's Bizarre Adventure.
- Theme Naming: All the named shyaru-jin we’ve been introduced to so far have names based on musical conventions.
- Yakuza: The Mad Dragons have this aesthetic.
- You Are Better Than You Think You Are:
- When we first meet Miller, he’s plagued with self doubt over his inability to save his girlfriend Rumiko from the Mad Dragon gang and his crushing defeat at the hands of their leader, Opera. After Bengus beats Opera, Miller receives a note from Rumiko that explains while she initially cared about him, she eventually came to enjoy seeing him fight for her sake and began throwing herself into dangerous situations to see Miller come to her rescue. After seeing him lose to Opera a second time, she realizes that this one-sided relationship is what has been holding him back. She leaves for his sake, while ending the letter by telling him that he’s the strongest man she knows.
- Helen gives one to Bengus to snap her out of her Heroic BSoD.
- A wordless one occurs between Bengus and Anzai. When Anzai is dejected over how he is falling behind the other fighters, he asks Bengus if she was serious about her promise to marry him if he caught up to her. She responds by kissing him on the cheek.
