Bowling King is a Taiwanese sports manhua by Ai Tong.
It is about a kid named Shautieh Ley and the humiliation he puts himself and his opponents through in bowling alleys.
This manhua has examples of:
- Abhorrent Admirer: Shautieh Ley has four chasing after him in Bowling King, Maya (everyone who meets her mistakes her for an alien initially) and the pint-sized, overweight, fanatical, Stalker with a Crush Maruko triplets.
- Dangerous Forbidden Technique: The "Demon Ball" technique. Its creator injured himself badly attempting to perfect it and was forced to retire from professional bowling.
- Game-Breaking Injury: It happened Shautieh Ley literally every time he played for most of the series; In his game with Edgar, he had contracted a fever and was running on several days without sleep. In his match with Jen Ni, his elbow was broken by some of Jen's thugs before the game. In the qualifying game for the God's Hand Cup, he accidentally drank some milk before the game and, being lactose intolerant, well... In the semifinals, he had twisted his ankle falling down some stairs. With the exception of the first one, he won every time.
- Lawyer-Friendly Cameo: A nefarious physician bears an eerie resemblance to the Black Jack's main character... and claims to have strived to be like Black Jack his entire life.
- Love at First Punch: The bratty, rich Handsome Lech Jen Ni falls for Tz'zun for real (having only been superficially attracted to her before) after she violently refused his advances. "I know, she's playing hard to get!" This, of course, is him being a moron; nobody else in the world would interpret a Groin Attack as anything but "no."
- Of Corpse He's Alive: A man dies of old age during the opening of a restaurant. The workers go to great efforts to hide his body so that they don't get bad press.
- On the Money: Shautieh Ley needs to get 3 million Taiwan dollars to pay off his love interest's debt... and it just so happens that the prize money for the big bowling tournament is 3 million Taiwan dollars. This is, however, ultimately subverted; the company sponsoring the God's Hand Cup goes bankrupt while the tournament is underway, and the competition is cancelled indefinitely just after the semifinals were finished. Meaning he didn't get the money.
- Real Men Wear Pink: Harsh gangster Suhnshyon Tzang is fierce, competitive, and intimidating. He also loves Britney Spears music and wears facial make-up often.
- Recurring Extra: The various helicopter pilots, particularly the French one and his extended family, who encounter Shautieh Ley's Rushmore Refacement everywhere they go.
- Rushmore Refacement: A one-time chapter opening page joke had all of the faces on Mount Rushmore replaced with Shautieh Ley's face.
- Serious Business: Bowling is a huge deal. Professional bowlers are all either incredibly badass or Bishōnen prettyboys. Oh, and then there's how Shautieh Ley's ultimate goal seems to involve taking over the world with bowling somehow; while this isn't explicitly stated, chapter opening pages tend to feature things like a Rushmore Refacement where all of the faces are Shautieh (and similar ones with the Sphinx, etc.) and Shautieh disrupting other sports events.
- Super-Deformed: Shautieh, much of the time (or arguably all the time), the reader may forget but he really isn't that short and his chin isn't round. There are times the reader will only see how Shatieh really looks like in Volume covers, this because he tends to spend an entire Volume in SD style.
- Training from Hell: Extremely harsh training is somehow necessary to be a successful bowler; Details aren't exactly forthcoming as to why (other than bowling being seriously Serious Business), but on his first day of training Shautieh is forced to run for over three hours straight as a warmup. Later, he's made to mime sitting down while playing mahjong with ugly women, with the stipulation that if he loses or falls down they get to kiss him.
- Trash Talk: Doufu Ma does this to Tz'how, stealing a reporter's microphone to tell him, over television, that the only reason he's in the God's Hand Cup tournament is to defeat him with his Eagle Dive. Normally, this would make him look tough, but his stammering just makes it creepy.
- Verbal Tic: Doufu Ma doesn't have a specific phrase he uses... but his constant stammering (which ruins his Bishōnen image) is definitely a verbal tic.
