The Spring 2022 Manga Guide

Doll-Kara

What's It About? 

Kazuyoshi Ishii, the founder of the martial arts organization K-1, had been sent to prison for tax evasion. After serving his sentence, he exits Shizuoka Prison only to be immediately killed by a speeding truck and reincarnated in the body of Kei Ichinose—a comatose high school girl?! Twenty years since the genesis of K-1, the MMA world's problem solver now inhabits the body of a schoolgirl and comes to grips with the karate he left behind in this story of youthful spirit and determination.

Doll-Kara is based on the original story by Kazuyoshi Ishii with scripting by Kei Ryuzoji, art by Hanamura, and English translation by David Evelyn. J-Novel Club will release its first volume digitally on June 1.

Is It Worth Reading?

Jean-Karlo Lemus

Rating:

Doll-Kara should probably be a rated a bit lower, but something about it sticks in my head. The concept is wacky and fun: a disgraced martial arts promoter is killed in an accident after serving time for tax evasion, and is reincarnated in the body of a teenager. Trapped within Kei Ichinose's body, Kazuyoshi Ishii finds himself inheriting the Ichinose family's karate dojo and all its associated debts. He now has three months to make three million yen, and he's got a plan that's shrewd enough to work. There are three problems, though: first, the real Kei Ichinose's soul is still floating around. Second, there's another martial artist who's out for Ichinose's dojo, and finally, there are some players very invested in buying out the Ichinose dojo...

Doll-Kara spends most of its time exploring Kazuyoshi's plans for the Ichinose dojo and how he plans from taking it from a failing traditional dojo to a “Starbucks” dojo aimed at promoting a lifestyle to women. It's disappointing we don't actually get to see any of Kazuyoshi's plans in action or even see if they're going to work out – all we get is other people reacting to how shrewd the plans are and how much they sound like they were made by an old man. And yet, Kazuyoshi's business acumen is interesting and well-thought-out, and it's fascinating to see this kind of inside baseball. I don't know if Doll- Kara can maintain this kind of hectic brilliance, but it would be very nice indeed if it could.

Rebecca Silverman

Rating:

Body-swap stories, especially those where gender is involved, can be difficult propositions. That may largely be because I was badly burned by the first one I ever read, Your and My Secret, which I found distasteful and unfunny, but when it became clear that Doll-Kara was about a middle-aged man whose soul is placed in the body of a seventeen-year-old girl, well, let's just say I was nervous. Luckily this book turns out to be something much more interesting than a mere body-swap tale – Ishii, just released from prison for tax evasion, doesn't want to die. Kei, saddled with her late father's debts, does. Her suicide and his traffic accident both cause them to cross paths with some sort of cat god, and the next thing either of them know, Ishii's in Kei's body and Kei is truly dead. Mostly this seems to be a “be careful what you wish for” situation; Kei truly did want to die (at least in the moment), so she did. Ishii wanted to live, so he got the available body. If they're unhappy with the situation now, well, that appears to be their problem.

And clearly, they have some bigger issues than a change of form. Now that Ishii is Kei, he's got to take over the enormous debt that her dad left her saddled with. Luckily he's actually a crack businessman as well as an MMA expert, so fixing up Kei's family dojo shouldn't take much more than hard work. But of course there are other complications, such as Mikuni, the turncoat instructor, and Shimizu, the down-on-his-luck fighter who desperately needs to make a comeback if he's going to eat. Most of the volume is devoted to Ishii beginning to outline his plan for saving the dojo (with the help of Kei's friends), so it really feels mostly like set up. Interesting set up, but not a volume with a lot of action nonetheless, which could be a problem if you're jumping into this expecting a lot of fights and not an explanation of the Starbucks business model and how it could work for an aging karate dojo. But there's enough of a hook here that this could turn out to be an engaging series, and the fact that it largely avoids Ishii being a perv about Kei's body is a major bonus. (It does happen, but it's brief.) This will be worth giving a second volume, because if nothing else I really want to know what that cat's endgame is.

MrAJCosplay

Rating:

A martial arts body swap manga that goes into excruciating detail about dojo business management? Sure, why not. I have to say, reading this volume was interesting since I felt like my expectations were changing with every passing chapter. At first the story is set up like some kind of isekai (right down to the car accident) but by the volume's end it has morphed into some kind of deep-rooted conspiracy full of double-crossing with characters that are forced to accept their weakness in life. The very nature of a story where an old man gets trapped in a young teenager's body does lend itself to the tired humor we've come to expect from other anime with similar premises, but it's surprisingly toned down here, and Doll-Kara plays a lot of things very seriously. Everyone has their own goals or angles behind their actions, and it's interesting to see how they all play out amongst each other, leaving me genuinely intrigued for what was going to happen next. The story of Doll-Kara has more potential than the cover might lead you to believe, so if you're into martial arts or just fancy a bit of action, this definitely has enough going for it to stand out right now.

Christopher Farris

Rating:

Before we get into the actual plot of Doll-Kara, you need to understand the absolute rabbit-hole of real-life intersections its existence actually entails. That is, the Kazuyoshi Ishii the 'original story' of this manga is credited to, as stated in the opening pages, is in fact a real karateka and founder of the K-1 tournament. So, it can be a little aggrandizing when you realize that this is possibly a case of Ishii commissioning a story where a fictionalized version of himself reincarnates into an opportunity to further demonstrate what an ace combatant and shrewd business-manager he is. But it does retroactively fit with the marketing mindset you recognize Ishii is possessed of. This is just one more way to get his story out to the masses and draw in an audience to his fight-centric business model – in this case bringing in the otaku kids with all the cute cat mascots and gender- swapping reincarnation plots modern manga can muster.

Right, so with that out of the way, did anybody here ever read Superior Spider-Man? The one where villain Doctor Octopus moved his brain into Peter Parker's body and took over as Spider-Man for a while? There's a whole side-story in that one about Ock using his scientific and technological brilliance to carve out a financially-successful life as an inventor-cum-businessman where ol' Peter had previously struggled. Doll-Kara eventually ends up in that same kind of setup: Martial-arts super-producer Kazuyoshi Ishii taking over for a high- school girl and saving her struggling karate dojo with his four decades of brilliant business sense. It…can take a while to get there, what with the layers of real-world reincarnation setup, to say nothing of the combative complications early where we watch Ishii take down a group of thugs threatening sexual violence on the high school girl he's now posessing, because of course. But once we do arrive at that actual plot, and we as readers acclimate to the idea that what we're getting here is less Teppu and more Spice & Wolf, things start to come together. Yes, Ishii's monologue-ing descriptions of his business plans can get long-winded, but they can be compelling if you've got an interest in this kind of insight, and Hanamura's art does a fun job of selling the central gag of a 17-year-old high schooler smirking and talking like a shrewd old businessman.

Apart from the effectiveness of that central hook, the rest of Doll-Kara is perhaps expectedly uneven, given its unusual genesis. The fight scenes seem strongly choreographed, with mind paid to things like the differing bodyweight of combatants. In particular, the technical karate demonstration of Ishii taking apart Kei's opponent in the last chapter appreciably serves to let us know the plot won't be entirely marketing-speak moving forward. And there's an effective poignance to the idea of this character's second lease on life being done in place of a girl who lost her own, compounded by the later revelation that the 'real' Kei isn't entirely dead after all. But there's also a propensity for fanservice that, while not unexpected for a body-swap comedy like this, still can come off a bit creepy, perhaps moreso once you realize the main character in this story is a straight-up self-insert of its creator! Along similar lines, there's a subplot regarding rival rough-houser Shimizu, whose descriptions of his financial struggles could be relatably real, except any sympathy for the guy is instantly torpedoed on account of his introduction being him trying to take sexual advantage of a teenage girl. There's messiness there, alongside some other portents about where this might be going. Still, Doll-Kara might prove to be worth a look, particularly if you find you're more interested in its actual focus (the business stuff) apart from the initially apparent combat sport or reincarnation-fantasy angles.