Dragons Rioting is a battle ecchi harem series that strikes the right balance between fan service, comedy, action and wholesome moments. To describe it in a sentence, this is Dragon Ball Z except it's also a high school ecchi manga.
Speaking of Dragon Ball this manga is rife with Japanese pop culture references from other manga, anime, video games, broader Japanese culture and occasionally Hollywood and even real-world history. You really get the sense that the author Tsuyoshi Watanabe is a major pop culture enthusiast and that this work is a labor of love written by a manga/anime nerd for manga/anime nerds. The references at times can start to pile on but instead of getting to the point where it might come across as annoying you just start to recognize and accept this as a quirk of this series. The English Yen Press release also does a good job collecting all of the references at the end of each volume in case there were any you missed or didn't understand.
The story takes place almost entirely at the Nangokuren all-girls school. Well, "school" in the sense that this is one of those high schools in manga where no one ever does any studying, ever goes to any classes and where there seems to be no structure at all to student life whatsoever other than rival gangs of menacing, busty girls accosting one another in physical showdowns to determine who can exert dominance over the other. It more resembles a prison in that sense with the school functioning as little more than an excuse to gather the characters together in one place and to provide them with both a gladiatorial arena and a turf to fight over.
Now, with any harem series the weak link can be and often is the MC. Usually these characters are either so bland or so unlikeable that they either have no presence or impact on the story at all or they wear thin the patience of the reader who'll either check out entirely or begrudgingly read on in spite of the MC. This is not the case at all with this series. The single best part of Dragons Rioting is without a doubt Rintaro Tachibana and that is saying a lot in a manga chock-full of badass, ass-kicking alpha females who look like they can break necks with one quick twist of their thighs.
Unlike most harem MCs Rintaro is surprisingly and refreshingly quite likeable. He's a good-hearted guy without being an insufferable goody two-shoes, he's a sheer badass in his own right and admittedly fairly OP but without it coming across as undeserved and above all he is funny and entertaining. Not only is Rintaro not a scumbag, which is something most ecchi or harem MCs at least occasionally flirt the line with, he's also an honest person who genuinely cares for others in a way that feels authentic. You really can't ask for much more from an MC in a manga like this.
Rintaro is given a contrived but novel reason for being fiercely avoidant of women and lewdness - a congenital disease that predisposes him to what could be a fatal heart attack if he ever became too aroused. As ridiculous as this obviously sounds it works on three distinct levels: (1) as a plot device to establish a need for years of intense training with his father the martial arts master, (2) as the main underlying comedic fabric and formula for much of the humor throughout the series, and (3) as a meta level satirical jab and subversion of the ecchi and harem genres.
Aside from the titanic martial arts clashes, absurd humor, and the panty shots another thing that stands out in this manga are the underlying themes of friendship and comradery. This manga has some soul and the message it constantly returns to is learning from people you care about and as a result growing to be a stronger person, both physically and socially. While this might appear to be an invocation of the cliché "power of friendship" trope, Dragons Rioting genuinely anchors friendships as a consistent theme central to the story and the journey of the characters and in the end comes across fairly wholesome and warm especially for a series where school uniform policy is adhered to only in the loosest possible sense.
While the art is at times very good there is something left to be desired in the way of consistency throughout the series. Most of the character designs are top-notch and fairly memorable. Despite the fact that the series quickly gets crowded in short order with what feels like rows upon rows of beefy amazons, they are all fairly distinct in both their physique and outfits that you never really lose track of who is who. The author demonstrates a wide range in styles, from hilariously misshapen comedic caricatures (usually of Rintaro) to downright graceful and majestic double page spreads featuring epic special techniques or particularly badass poses during some of the more serious face-offs. But these panels are fewer in number than one might hope for and so overall I would put the art quality roughly in the B-tier on aggregate. By no means bad and in some places surprisingly good but just not consistent enough to truly stand out.
Above all this manga is genuinely funny. The myriad of absurd special techniques and martial arts styles employed by Rintaro, usually in efforts to avoid looking at or colliding with the female form, never really wears out its welcome. I lost track of how many times I had to close the book and laugh out loud at the unbelievable stupidity of his special techniques both due to the cheesy animal-inspired naming conventions, that goes something like "Way of the Sneaking Shrew - Burrowing under Busts", as well as the absurdity of the physical movements involved or the sometimes unrecognizable shapes Rintaro has to take on.
Beyond that recurring joke the series is full of ridiculous scenarios and conversations that often make you want to strangle multiple characters at a time. One particularly memorable episode was where both Rintaro's pupil and his stalker follow him home on summer vacation - his pupil motivated to seek his guidance on training and the stalker to presumably find a way to make him her boyfriend. Before long Rintaro's eccentric muscle-bound father appears suddenly, and without asking imposes a strict training regimen on the girls, resulting in the stalker girl in the end spending more time being trained by Rintaro's insane dad in grueling martial arts trials and never actually getting to spend any time alone with Rintaro. If you get a kick out of scenarios like this you'll enjoy this manga.
It's unfortunate that this series never got an anime as I feel everything here would lend itself well to a 12 or even 24-episode adaptation. While Dragons Rioting isn't breaking any new ground, it does a lot of things right and delivers entertaining battles and laughs in a consistent way and wraps up with an appropriate conclusion before it ever starts to grow stale.
(-115)
