I recently read All Rounder Meguru which was a manga about MMA fighting and I wanted to read more sports manga so I had to finally pick up Karate Heat and I must say it was one of the best I have read in all my life with the exception of Haikyuu because I love my volleyball boys.

It's a fun and relatively quick read in the vein of other sports manga I've enjoyed. I found the characters to be interesting and the overall story to be entertaining.

Two boys meet by accident when Takumi, out for a run, saves Shinya from being hit on the head by a falling plant. They strike up a friendship and Shinya soon learns that Takumi is one of the best martial artists of their age group and they start training together. But when Shinya passesd out from over-exercising, Takumi decides to move to Shinya's Junior High so they can continue to train together and so he can help make Takumi stronger. Appealing to both fans of slice of life and martial arts manga, this one combines great art with lovable characters and a lot of kicking and punching.

Sort of like Hikaru no Go or Yowamushi Pedal but with karate, I think? It's actually quite cute and well-drawn for a sports manga. The two main characters (a cheerful naïf who's never done karate before but seems to have a natural talent and a lonely wunderkind who is excited to have a potential companion in his heretofore solitary sport) have a supportive rather than competitive relationship, which I enjoyed. So far there's a good balance of character development with information about karate. Recommend to fans of sports manga and shonen in general.

A fun read. When two kids learn of a shared love of karate their lives quickly become intertwined. Well written.

Karate Heat...

has a great title that is as fun and vivid as the text you will find. This is a polished book and an energetic read. I would gladly share it with any fellow graphic novel fan and would use it as part of a graphic novels course. Recommended for readers of this medium and those who want to give it a try for the first time. Fun, fun stuff.

I thought this would be interesting in the beginning but I quickly lost passion in this book and felt that it would be better for a different reader.

I enjoyed Karate Heat, though it is a very typical shonen series. Honestly, it reads a lot like Haikyu!! to me. I wish it were available in print and not just as an ebook or I would absolutely purchase it for my library's children's graphic novel collection.

I wanted to try something new and I figured I should give graphic novels a try. I did not know exactly what to read, but I wanted to start off with something easy and Karate Heat seemed like the best option to be the first one I would read. When I first got the copy of Karate Heat, I was thinking I was getting a graphic novel. However, I believe that this is is more classified as Manga. It took me a notice to realize that the order I was reading in didn’t make sense. I then remembered how to correctly read a manga.

Once I started reading the right way, I found that reading this manga was actually enjoyable and easy read. One of the main things that captured my attention was karate. I really don’t know karate, but I always thought it was something cool to do. The manga kept the topic of karate, journey, and even friendship strong enough to keep my attention and keep it interesting. I always liked it when Shinya Kinoshita told himself he needs to be stronger to be better. He has shown he has an interest in karate and has the ability to self-motivate to get whats he want.

The art in the story is great for the story line. I had no issue with it and I thought it fit with the theme very well. I always thought drawing karate scenes and poses would be the hardest thing to do as well, but the art was made to look really good. It was so good, even I thought I could draw it myself (probably not, but you get the point).

For trying something new, Karate Heat was the perfect graphic novel to try. It was fun, easy to read, and just about everything that I was looking for. I even thought I would continue the next volumes when the new translations would be released. I would very much like to see how this journey continues. This has also made me willing to try more graphic novels as well. This is definitely something to get into and try more of.

Karate Heat is a classic-style middle grade manga adventure. It brought me warm memories of reading Shonen Jump magazine as a middle-schooler myself. The ethics portrayed are positive and the content is appropriate for the age level. More positive in many ways than comparable American comics becausethe characters are less sexualized and racist.

Middle grade students should read and re-read this new manga series. The characters are introduced and two are highlighted in this volume.. Karate Heat also shares instructional Karate moves and vocabulary. Students must remember to read right to left which can be confusing.

This is a sports/martial arts shonen manga, and while it's pretty low key for a first volume, it does have appeal. Isolated karate genius discovers a karate prodigy and they become friends, end up at the same middle school and decide to flip the rankings of their school karate club upside down. The upperclassmen are weirdly offended at first but then start liking the concept of mentorship. It's cute (so far) and I'd like to see where the story goes.

4.5

Thank you NetGalley, Kodansha Comics (one of my favorite manga publishers), and Eiichi Kitano for he opportunity to read this book in exchange for an honest review.

I never expected to adore a karate book so much! Karate Heat features two boys: Shinya, a boy who knows nothing about karate, and Takumi, a boy who is a young karate national champion who has adored the sport since childhood. On a chance meeting, Takumi finds that Shinya might just have what it take to match up to his own special strength and stamina...one day. Together, the boys enter junior high and join a karate club where they strive to be the best. As long as Shinya has a set goal, he can accomplish anything he sets his mind to.

This is an excellent middle-grade novel that's not only about karate, but friendship and self-determination as well. The art is excellent and the story is very engaging and fast-paced. The characters are interesting and likable, and I want to root for Shinya as he begins to move from the basics of karate in his own unique way as the series moves forward. Recommended for middle-grade, sports lovers, and manga lovers of all ages!

This was such a cute opening volume! The plot is a little simple and the dialogue lacking at times, but the characters are likable from the first page and their progression is enjoyable. The art style, too, is clean and fluid, and it's easy to see that this isn't Eiichi Kitano's first manga series. I know this volume has only just been released, but I'll happily read the next when it comes out!

Karate Heat is about a young boy named Shinya, with no experience in karate, who meets another young boy named Takumi, who happens to be the karate champion for his grade level. Shinya quickly learns that he is a natural at karate and goes on to join his schools club were he becomes determined to learn as much as he can.

The story itself was very typical for a sports manga. I haven't read a lot of sports manga, but the ones I have I always liked. Classics like "Prince of Tennis" and "Kuroko no Basket" were always interesting, but it has been a while since I've delved into the world of sports manga. The story seems to have a main focus on themes of friendship, hard work, and reaching one's goals, which is very typical for manga in this genre. The story shows a lot of promise, with interesting and unique characters and a story that can built upon in future volumes. Although I can probably predict what might happen in future volumes, I would be interested in seeing how the characters grow as people throughout.

Overall, this was an good first volume, and I would be interested to see where it goes from here.

I like shonen. I also like sports manga. Well, to be honest, I like just about all manga. This week I started a new series titled Karate Heat by Eiichi Kitano. This is a shonen manga about karate, hard work, and friendship.

Karate Heat Vol 1 is about Shinya Kinoshita, a boy who will soon be entering high school. A chance encounter during the summer leads to a friendship with Takumi Yanagiya, a boy who happens to be the 6-time elementary school national champion in karate. With a newfound ambition and friendship, Shinya is determined to learn the martial art, and Takumi is determined to teach him.

This is a lovely manga about two boys between middle school and junior high school. The main character is a likeable boy who just happens to have good posture, leading to a natural affinity for karate. His friend has done karate for years and has won many competitions. This has set him apart from other his own age, however. Takumi trains alone. He is very much a loner, though not necessarily by choice.

These two boys are very different, and work towards rather different goals. One the one hand we have Shinya who knows nothing about karate but is intrigued and willing to learn more. On the other there is Takumi, a boy who’s worked hard and in complete isolation who suddenly changes his training drastically all to be with a friend and teach him the sport.

The first half of the manga focuses almost exclusively on Shinya and Takumi. It tells of their meeting, their growing friendship, and learning some of the basics of karate. A number of new characters are added in the second half of the volume where we are introduced to the karate club at the boys’ new school. All are memorable characters with a lot of personality. Even so, we don’t know a lot about them yet. More characterization and background to them is sure to come, however, as this is only the first volume in the series.

The art is very enjoyable. Shinya is an adorable main character you can’t but root for. Other characters have unique, easily identifiable designs as well. Some of the one and two page spreads were very pretty, in particular the ones before the beginning of chapter one.

Karate Heat Vol 1 is a sweet story about a young man who works very hard to achieve his goals and grows closer with a new friend. Now, this volume does end in the middle of a sparring match which is sure to tick off some readers. Having grown up in the era when a single fight in a shonen anime would take four or five episodes to finish, this doesn’t personally affect my enjoyment of the volume. If I come across another volume of this series in the future I will most likely be picking it up.

Perhaps I have become a bit jaded with sports manga over the years because this felt like every other book in the genre: energetic happy kid with good heart has a natural affinity for a sport but has some impediments - starts to get serious and then begins to 'level up' against various opponents, eventually leading to bigger and bigger tournaments. This does skew a bit young - definitely middle school rather than high school. For that reason, I think younger kids will enjoy this story about our plucky hero Shinya and his Karate ace new friend Takumi. But for me, I was bored pretty fast with the lack of originality.

Shinya is a boy with great posture and who does athletics often. Visiting a new city, he is petting a cat when a pot almost falls on him. The pot is miraculously kicked away by another boy - Takumi. Takumi is impressed that Shinya would take a pot to the head in order to instinctively protect the cat and Shinya is impressed that Takumi could move so fast and annihilate the pot before it brained him. It turns out that Takumi is a karate champion and he finds an eager and promising student to mentor in Shinya. Enter a middle school Karate Club team and their quirky characters who add to Shinya's adventures.

So yes, the illustrations are about what we would expect from this type of manga - kind of generic much like the storyline. Perhaps the appeal here is more in the sport itself - a Japanese Karate Kid but less about bullying and more about how cool the discipline can be, especially for a physically oriented kid like Shinya.

There plenty of challenges and level ups as well as action in this first volume. Younger kids will likely devour it while those a bit older will likely want something a bit more original and nuanced. Reviewed from an advance reader copy provided by the publisher.

What a positive surprise Karate Heat was! I do love sports manga and karate is a good one and something I don't know enough about, so the manga was surely interesting. It's about this karate prodigy Takumi Yanagiya who runs into a weird kid, Shinya Kinoshita. Takumi, a champion, starts to teach Shinya and notices that the boy has an amazing posture. The boys end up in the same school and karate club and begin their practicing there. The series is only three books long, so I have hard time seeing how Kitano could develop this slowly as it should. Karate Heat could actually work as well as Haikyuu!! and Kuroko's Basketball, but three books aren't enough! The best part is the shipping potential though. Takumi and Shinya's bromance is awesome and their characters are interesting. I so wish this could be a longer series, even though I haven't read the rest yet, but still.

The art is wonderful, boyish and round. It works so well with the story line and it's cute even. Kitano's line art is precise and airy at the same time. The movement is quite well depicted, even though karate isn't the easiest one to try to draw and make the movement smooth. The facial expressions are lively and the humor works nicely, so all in all Karate Heat is great and interesting to boot! I have to read the rest surely.

'Karate Heat Vol. 1' by Eiichi Kitano is about a young boy's journey into the world of karate.

Shinya is going in to middle school, and he's never been in to sports. He meets another boy named Takumi and they become friends. What Shinya doesn't know is that Takumi is a 6-time school national champion. Takumi is supposed to only be training himself, but he sees natural style in Shinya, and Shinya brings the fun of karate back to Takumi. They find themselves in a karate school and Shinya is determined to learn and become better.

I really liked this sports story with a nice friendship at it's heart. The art is fun. There are notes throughout to introduce concepts to western readers. This was a fun read, and I think young readers who like sports stories would enjoy this quite a bit.

I received a review copy of this manga from Kondansha Comics and NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. Thank you for allowing me to review this manga.