YMMV / High School Exciting Story: Tough

• Accidental Nightmare Fuel: Kiichi's gummy grins, while intended be comedic, look less like a goofy facial expression and more like he's communicating the intention that he's going to bite somebody's throat out, due to the detail it's drawn with and the contrast between the semi-realistic art-style.
• Alternate Character Interpretation: Iron Kiba's abusive relationship with his wives. Is it simply an illustration of how much of a jerk and villain he is, or is it because he subconsciously internalized abusive relationships as being a normal thing, given that his relationships with both his biological and adoptive mothers were abusive and extremely unhealthy?
• Angst? What Angst?:
  • Kentarou Ozaki seemed pretty nonchalant about the fact that a master sniper essentially used him as bait.
  • Kichi doesn't stay depressed for very long.
• Anticlimax Boss: Kengo, who was knocked down after two punches by Kichi (after a whole month of preparing for the fight).
• Anvilicious: The simple fact that the series focuses on an assassination art makes any usage of Thou Shalt Not Kill this by default.
• Ass Pull: Split second revelation.
  • The Nadashinkageryu in general. The fact that it seems to have a technique for virtually any occasions a lot of Kiichi’s victories seem to be this, especially since he’s mastered and even become aware of a lot of those techniques the exact moment he needed them.
  • Kiryu being alive despite the fact that the massive amount of blood pooling under his body showed that the bullet hit dead on. The people who handled his body were most likely Don Josefinos men, making it highly unlikely that not only was he able to survive but escape without anyone noticing.
  • The fact that Kiichi turns out to be adopted, but can use skills that are supposed to be blood specific.
  • Son-o stating that the reason Kiryu lost to Phantom Joe was to learn and copy his Fist of Nothingness with his own body.
  • Even though it was shown that Weasel was able to dodge the strike he still showed the symptoms of being struck by the Kaishuken. Of course all this was done so that Son-o really didn’t lose.
• Broken Base:
  • Is the manga more realistic than most martial arts manga’s out there?
  • The overuse of Defeat Means Friendship. Despite the fact that many of the people Kichi has fought have been violent murderers/rapists yet they get beaten by Kiibo and BAM that person is a nice guy and wants to be friends with the MC.
  • The constant learning of new silly martial art moves when Kiichi’s own family style is obviously the superior in every way.
• Cry for the Devil: Kiba’s death really did effect Kichi.
• Damsel Scrappy: Kichi's mom only purpose in the story it to be saved and give birth to Kichi. The first time we see her Oton marries her after Kakugo abandons her and the second time is after she and Kakugo meet where she is instantly kidnapped by a sex slaver.
• Designated Hero: In-universe. Ted Austin is a hero in the USA, so against him, any other fighter will always have the role of the bad guy. He also notably threw a puppy into the river so he could get praise for rescuing it.
• Designated Love Interest: Takako was introduced as Kurudo’s girlfriend after his and Kichii’s fight she’s never seen again.
• Designated Villain: A truck driver accidentally ran over a dog at first the driver tried to explain that it was an accident but got angry when people started talking about calling the police. However Mitsuhidei Kuroda dismantling the man’s truck is seen as completely justified. Admittedly the trucker was being a huge jerkass about it, even if Kuroda probably got him fired.
  • While Garcia regularly cripples his opponents, they are usually vicious monsters. In fact the only reason the hero of the series Kichi wants to fight Garcia is because he’s stronger then him. Made even worse due to the fact that Kichi was disgusted when he found out that Garcia was a government assassin, despite assassination being the basis of his family art and he has used lethal techniques on numerous people.
  • In-universe, the general public blamed Oton for Kiba’s death since he didn’t step in to stop his fight against Garcia.
• Funny Moments: Oton crying after agreeing to give to charity only to realize that he only had a 10000 yen bill left. Then having to go back and ask the person collecting donations for bus fare.
  • While in a crowded train Kiryu attempted to nonchalantly touch a young woman’s ass but ended up touching an elderly old woman’s ass by mistake. She was not happy.
• Harsher in Hindsight: The Buddhist prayer becomes a huge source of Nightmare Fuel once we learn exactly what Gulhad’s praying for.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: Kiryu’s conversation with one of Jos goons about how money means nothing in the face of true strength.
• Jerkass Woobie: In spite of how much of a monster Kiryu is, when he was finally defeated by Phantom Joe, it's hard not to wince. At first it was more a case of Laser-Guided Karma, then Phantom Joe tried to give him his punishment...
  Narrator: That man threw away his affection for women and his love towards his brothers. His heartlessness made him so the extremes of martial arts. So that he would be claimed the strongest of Nadashinkageryu and become feared as the Devil. But now that devil has fallen, useless, unconscious and with his belly split open he lies on the ground.
  • However do to another Ass Pull used to explain the loss away as well as the fact that Phantom Joe tried to torture someone he defeated while Kiryu tried to torture someone, someone else defeated causes this to go into more Rooting for the Empire territory.
• Moral Event Horizon: The Wind crossed this due to how he defeated Miyagi Aika.
  Kichi: In combat taking one’s self-respect by force leaves only humility. After carelessly making that girl cry, I’d have thought you learned that.
  • Kiryu did it by revealing the secret of Kichi’s birth during the Hyper Battle just to get a rise out of him.
• Nightmare Fuel:
  • Kiibo temporarily dying after his fight with Enzou, due to how surprisingly realistic it is, Seiko breaking his stoic facade and genuinely panicking as he revives Kiibo while repeatedly begging for him to come back makes it even more horrifying, even if he does successfully revive Kiibo. It's also easily the single most horrifying and hard-to-read scene in the Manga if you're a parent.
  • The Dark Monkey from Tough is jarringly out of place for a martial arts manga villain, as he behaves more like a horror movie villain, and everything about him is unsettling and disturbing, from his introduction, which has him suddenly appearing, hanging upside down outside of a window while Rikimaru and Yanagiba talk about him, and then disappearing just as fast to the point where Rikimaru assumes he's seeing things from fear. The fact that Rikimaru is a ruthless Yakuza who manages to frighten himself just by talking about this assassin, and describes how witnessing the carnage left by him after he killed a bunch of gangsters was disturbing even to him. He's also heavily implied to be a rapist on top of being a Psychopathic Manchild, given how his den has toys lying about and a woman running away while screaming for help. There's also his eyes, which are like that of a chameleon's, down to having the distinctive shape of their eyelids.
• Rooting for the Empire: Shiyachi doesn’t fit the deconstruction of martial artist that the series usually gives. While he was vicious against Bull the fight itself was staged and Bull attacked him first. During the rematch he fought honorable with no Kick the Dog moments usually seen Bull just couldn’t catch up. Finally his troubling past wasn’t treated like a Freudian Excuse for his actions. All of this combined with the many Deus ex Machina, and Jerkass moments of Kichi its hard not to root for him.
  • As the series goes on start to become this due to how hypocritical they are. This is probably best seen in Oton’s match against Morozov in Tough. Even though the match was promoted as the fight against fathers Oton was fighting for a combination of three totally selfish reason’s Morozov was fighting for basically the same reason Kichi was fighting in underground tournaments at the beginning of the series, to pay for his wife’s hospital bills. To further add to the parallel’s Morozov’s wife had stage 4 cancer while Oton’s body was being ravished by the cancer like Kaishuken. While it’s not quite Designated Hero / villain it’s hard to root for Oton in this scenario, and it's made all the more sad due to the fact that Morozov’s wife died while Oton didn’t.
• Squick: In this series legs get broken, arms get snapped, and in the most extreme cases bones splinter causing them to pop through the skin not pretty.
  • During a fight a karateka broke his ring finger. The flesh over the finger has been ripped to the point of exposing the bone, but he still continued to strike with it. When the doctor decided to interrupt the fight, the finger was being held by a tiny piece of skin.
  • Wind using the Wind Strike to melt the all the fat in Hou. With all the distended flesh he ended up looking like an amoeba.
  • Udo choppin off a fighters nose.
  • Wakabashi knows of a good Chinese restaurant that disposes bodies as ingredients of noodle soup.
  • Mammoths bloated body washing up the Tokyo Bay, with his innards eaten by fish and crabs.
  • Yam's flashback of learning to gut and skin a sheep.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: The change from martial arts is a result of training from hell to gain Charles Atlas Superpower in Koukou to martial arts are a natural super power in Tough, making it seem like something out of Naruto with Miyazawa’s expy’s of the Uchiha.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: The politics between Nagashinkage and Nagashinsho was never stressed upon.
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic: Kiba’s Freudian Excuse is that he is the illegitimate son of a famous wrestler and an Ax-Crazy mother who tried to force him to commit suicide with her when said wrestler died. However given the sheer viciousness and even cowardly way he deals with people makes it hard to fell sorry for him once this is found out.
  • Kiba has been divorced 8 times his last marriage ended when he punched his wife hard enough to cause her to fly across the room crashing face first into a mirror for doing little more than being a career woman (which was the reason he fell in love with her). Even without that, all of his talk about being a good parent—despite the fact that he ended up leaving the whole of his estate to any random fighter who won a tournament—doesn't leave that much room for him to prove himself.
• What Do You Mean, It's Not Symbolic?: Kichi giving Waka Manji’s life ring after he defeated him looked a lot like a proposal.
• The Woobie:
  • Shintarou Kakumaru, due to just how traumatized he is over experincing the power of the Goetetsu style of Jiu-jitsu. The fact that he's visibly tearing up and describes how he can't even wipe his tears will make you want to hug him and tell him everything's going to be okay. Thankfully he manages to make a full recovery thanks to Seiko Miyazawa.