Bloody Roar: The Fang is an obscure manga series adapted from the Bloody Roar video game series drawn by Maruyama Tomowo, and was originally published in Monthly Shonen Jump from 2001 to 2002. The manga series featured a whole new cast of characters (a lot of them being lookalikes of characters from the games), and a setting fairly distant from the games, but the core elements remain the same: There exist humans who are able to turn into beasts, who are known as zoanthropes, and the Tylon corporation is out to exploit their powers. In this setting: Mashiro Toba goes with a supernatural investigator, "Fang", to prevent any disasters relating to zoanthropes from occurring, including any further experiments by her professor, Hashiba, who had experimented on her in the first chapter. The plot gets more elaborate as the story goes on. There are two volumes available, with six chapters each.
While the story never directly crossed with the continuity of its source material, it did have a bonus chapter that was featured in the promotional Bloody Roar Extreme V-Jump book, featuring Fang and Mashiro in the setting of Bloody Roar Extreme (or Primal Fury) and even teaming up with Yugo and eventually taking on Ganesha.
The series was never released outside of Japan, nor was it ever localized. The wiki pages themselves don't have a whole lot of information available as of this writing. However, SCXCR, the man behind the Bloody Roar Retrospective had taken it upon himself to do his best to summarize the story as he went, discussing the characters, plot details, and even got into the few quirky moments that transpired. If you've got one hour to spare, you may watch his review and summary of the story here.
For those who are going to seek out the series, there are two different versions. The two individual volumes that have six chapters each, and the 400+ page compilation book that contains all the chapters. The former contains extra pages at the back of of each chapter where the creator discusses the manga, whereas the latter featured the previously mentioned bonus chapter.
Bloody Roar: The Fang provides examples of:
- All Just a Dream: Mashiro dreams about being a rabbit and witnessing murders taking place. Then she wakes up with blood on her feet...
- Author Avatar: The end of each individual chapters in the individual volumes features the author in a form of a talking frog.
- Back-to-Back Badasses: Yugo and Fang team up in the Extreme V-Jump book. They even literally go back to back.
- Canon Immigrant: Fang and Mashiro cross over in Bloody Roar Extreme, with Fang fighting Ganesha along with Yugo, and even knows of Yugo's accomplishment of taking down Tylon.
- Crossover: The promotional Bloody Roar Extreme V-Jump book, and the bonus chapter of the compilation book features Fang and Mashiro in the same setting as Bloody Roar Extreme/Primal Fury, and teaming up with Yugo.
- Logically, Fang makes an appearance in Bloody Roar Extreme (Gamecube in Japan, and Xbox in the US and Europe) as a hidden character, who plays a lot like Yugo in the first Bloody Roar game with some new moves.
- Evil All Along: Hashiba is a professor who teaches at Mashiro's school. He also happens to be a scientist for the Tylon Corporation who had been conducting experiments on her fellow classmates.
- Shirakumo reveals he's on Hashiba's side, despite running a nursery school.
- Expy: A handful to list, mostly in terms of appearance.
- Fang the wolf is one to Yugo Ogami. His real name is even similar, "Yuuga". Unlike Yugo in later games, he retains his brawler fighting style.
- Mashiro is similar to Alice, in which she can transform into a rabbit. The similarities become more obvious with the extra pages after chapter 2 where she is in a nurse's outfit, mirroring Alice's occupation after the first game.
- Akino is similar to Uriko in which she has a half-beast form. Unlike Uriko, she starts off with an actual cat form.
- Shirakumo(?) looks just like Long, and has a tiger form.
- Lion-Head is similar to Gado, with some shades of Stun in that he always appears in his lion form.
- There are also a pair of insect Zoanthropes in the last chapter who look heavily similar to Stun.
- Face–Heel Turn: Akino end up leaving Mashiro for Hashiba due to her being protective of Fang.
- Fan Disservice: Yato's beast mode has her as a dragon with visible (although covered by speech bubbles) breasts.
- God of Evil: The God of destruction: Oagito No Magami. Lion-Head warns Fang and Mashiro about him and charges them with a quest to collect the four pieces of Oagito before Hashiba does. Lion-Head even happens to have two on him.
- Killed Offscreen: Hashiba killed one of the keepers of a piece of the Oagito, not even giving him/her a debut chapter.
- Laser-Guided Amnesia: Akino and Mashiro are unable to remember what happened in chapter 1 when they are in their beast modes. This is no longer a problem past that point.
- MacGuffin: The five parts of the Oagito No Magami. When combined, he is summoned, and since he's a God of destruction...
- Ms Fan Service: One of the first things you notice early in the first chapter is Mashiro laying on her side, mostly nude.
- Official Couple: Fang and Mashiro.
- Painting the Medium: One chapter has Fang and Akino fighting each other in a game of Bloody Roar. Fang and Akino even control their video game counterparts (Yugo and Uriko).
- Punch! Punch! Punch! Uh Oh...: Fang attempted to fight a Turtle Zoanthrope by punching the shell. It works as well as you'd expect. Thankfully, Lion-Head came prepared. See Sword of Plot Advancement below.
- He does the same thing to Oagito. Even with the Wolf Gang Silver, it's not enough to take him out.
- Roaring Rampage of Revenge: The premise behind Chapter 2: The Minotaur´s Labyrinth
- Spoiler Title: The names of about half of the chapters tend to give away what happens.
- Sword of Plot Advancement: Lion-Head provides Fang a pair of Wolf-Gang Silver gloves that allow him to knock any zoanthrope out of beast-form with a well-placed punch. Conveniently, he receives these when facing an unflinching zoanthrope.
- You Are Not Alone: Fang later insists on taking on Hashiba and his gang alone after failing to protect the pieces he collected. Mashiro beats the crap out of him, helps him realize his potential to pull off a Beast Drive, and decided to hug it out.
