Fighting Beauty Wulong

Fighting Beauty Wulong (Japanese: 格闘美神 武龍, Hepburn: Kakutō Bishin Ūron) is a Japanese manga series written and illustrated by Yūgo Ishikawa. It was serialized in Shogakukan's seinen manga magazine Weekly Young Sunday from August 2002 to May 2007, with its chapters collected in 18 tankōbon volumes and additional prequel gaiden volume. The series was adapted into a two-season of 25 episodes each, animated by TMS Entertainment and broadcast on TV Tokyo from October 2005 to October 2006.

Fighting Beauty Wulong
First tankōbon volume cover
格闘美神 武龍
(Kakutō Bishin Ūron)
Manga
Written byYūgo Ishikawa
Published byShogakukan
MagazineWeekly Young Sunday
DemographicSeinen
Original runAugust 1, 2002 – May 10, 2007
Volumes18 + 1 gaiden volume
Anime television series
Directed byYoshio Suzuki
Music byDaisuke Ikeda
StudioTMS Entertainment
Original networkTV Tokyo
Original run October 2, 2005 – March 26, 2006
Episodes25
Anime television series
Fighting Beauty Wulong Rebirth
Directed byYoshio Suzuki
Music byDaisuke Ikeda
StudioTMS Entertainment
Original networkTV Tokyo
Original run April 2, 2006 – October 1, 2006
Episodes25

Story

Mao Lan, a person of Chinese origin born and raised in Japan, has been trained in the secret martial art of her family by her drunken lecherous grandfather Master Mao Hung. Her grandfather has promised her that he'll tell her what happened to her parents to encourage her to train and fight. Without her knowledge, her grandfather signs her up to participate in a televised martial arts competition between female martial artists known as "Prime Mat". During the course of the manga and anime it is revealed that Lan's mother married Cao Da Hen and gave birth to Lan's step-sister Ling-Shen.

Characters
Mao Lan (Chinese: 毛蘭; pinyin: Máo Lán)
Voiced by: Wakana Yamazaki
Mao tries to act a typical teenage girl with little results. She has been trained since she could walk in Mao's family style called Mao Family Juhe Fist (毛家居合拳). The form takes characteristics from sword techniques and incorporates them into an empty-handed fighting style. From the start of both the manga and anime, Mao Lan demonstrates almost complete mastery of this form. Through flashbacks it is shown that she develops skills and abilities that only a master should be capable of.
Mao Hun (Chinese: 毛混; pinyin: Máo Hùn)
Voiced by: Takeshi Aono
Grandfather to Mao Lan and grandmaster and creator of Mao Family Juhe Fist. After moving from China with his friend and rival Cao Fusheng. He develops a style of Kenpo based on the fighting style of the samurai sword techniques. He teaches Mao Lan to fight using various odd and sometimes dangerous tests like fighting a bear or fighting a gang of thugs.
Masao Oba (大場 政夫, Ōba Masao)
Voiced by: Shūhei Sakaguchi
Bullied by boys who are stronger than him, he sees Mao Lan defeat a group of bullies and wishes to become her student. He learns to use some of the basic techniques and can defend himself from normal fighters.
Cao Fusheng (Chinese: 曹福生; pinyin: Cáo fú shēng)
Voiced by: Eiji Maruyama
Fu Shen is the true master of Cao Family Bajiquan (曹家八極拳), the rival of Mao Family Juhe Fist. In both the manga and anime he is extremely ill. He is also upset that his son Cao Da-Hen has taken the family-style kenpo and turned it into a product for money. At the start of the series, he asks Mao Hun to have Mao Lan stop his granddaughter Cao Chunyang by killing her (actually by the end you realize it is not a literal death, but by Chun Yan's defeat his style will die with him.)
Cao Da-Hen (Chinese: 曹德興; pinyin: Cáo Dé xīng; Jyutping: Cou4 Dak1 Hing1)
Voiced by: Unshou Ishizuka
Father of Chunyang and Ling-Shen. Uses his family's martial arts style for profit. Creates the Prime Mat competition to showcase Chun Yan's fighting skills to prove his family is the strongest.
Cao Ling-Shen (Chinese: 曹鈴音; pinyin: Cáo Líng yīn)
Voiced by: Risa Hayamizu
Actually Mao Lan's younger sister whose step-sister Chun Yan uses her as a sparring dummy. Rin Shen runs away from the Xao temple to learn Mao Juhe style under Lan in hopes of defeating her step sister Chun Yan one day.
Cao Chunyang (Chinese: 曹春揚; pinyin: Cáo Chūn yáng)
Voiced by: Junko Minagawa
Lan's strongest opponent. She is extremely vain and arrogant. She hates her younger step-sister to the point of almost killing her by using her as a sparring dummy. Chun Yan is secretly trained in Mao style by Gangli who was a former student of Mao Hun, so she can counter Lan's Fajing technique. She is beaten by Lan at the end of the first series, then at a train station she's talking to Lan saying she has a lot more to learn and hopes to have a rematch sometime in the future.
Yagi Megumi (八木 めぐみ, Megumi Yagi)
Voiced by: Wasabi Mizuta. Megumi is a member of the Naniwa Women's Wrestling she helps train Mao Lan in the beginning. Her fighting style combines elements of judo and professional wrestling, but later implements some of Mao's basic fighting techniques into her own style. She is then chosen to compete in the Prime Mat competition and is beaten twice once by Mao Lan then by Cao Rin Shen.
Lucky Shimoda (ラッキー 下田, Rakkī Shimoda)
Shimoda, like Megumi, is a member of the Naniwa wrestling team and is considered as their most skilled pro-wrestler, specializing in grapples and throws. When fighting in the ring, she is a flamboyant attention-seeker who has a strong tendency for humiliating her opponents during matches.

Media

Manga
Main article: List of Fighting Beauty Wulong chapters

Written and illustrated by Yūgo Ishikawa, Fighting Beauty Wulong was serialized in Shogakukan's seinen manga magazine Weekly Young Sunday from August 1, 2002,[1] to May 10, 2007.[lower-alpha 1] Shogakukan collected its chapters in 18 tankōbon volumes, with an additional prequel gaiden volume numbered 0, from December 26, 2002, to June 5, 2007.[4]

Anime

A 25-episode anime television series adaptation by TMS Entertainment was broadcast on TV Tokyo from October 2, 2005, to March 26, 2006.[5] A second 25-episode season, titled Fighting Beauty Wulong Rebirth, was broadcast from April 2 to October 1, 2006.[6]

Video game

A PlayStation 2 fighting game, developed by DreamFactory and published by Bandai, was released on June 22, 2006.[7]

Notes
  1. Finished in the magazine's 23rd issue of 2007,[2] released on May 10 of that same year.[3]

References
  1. ヤングサンデー　２００２年３５号 (in Japanese). Shogakukan. Archived from the original on August 30, 2002. Retrieved January 10, 2022.
  2. 格闘美神 武龍. Mangapedia (in Japanese). Voyage Group. Archived from the original on October 31, 2020. Retrieved January 10, 2022. 「週刊ヤングサンデー」2002年35号から2007年23号にかけて連載された作品。
  3. 2007年05月10日のアーカイブ. manganohi.jp (in Japanese). May 10, 2007. Archived from the original on May 16, 2008. Retrieved January 10, 2022. 【 ヤングサンデー】 ヤングサンデー23号 発売
  4. 格闘美神　武龍 19件中1～19件. s-book.com (in Japanese). Shogakukan. Archived from the original on September 21, 2008. Retrieved January 10, 2022.
  5. 格闘美神 武龍［ウーロン］. Media Arts Database (in Japanese). Agency for Cultural Affairs. Archived from the original on January 10, 2022. Retrieved January 10, 2022.
  6. 格闘美神 武龍[ウーロン] REBIRTH. Media Arts Database (in Japanese). Agency for Cultural Affairs. Archived from the original on January 10, 2022. Retrieved January 10, 2022.
  7. 武龍ガール・松山まみさんも登場！『格闘美神武龍』ファンイベント. Dengeki Online (in Japanese). Kadokawa Game Linkage. June 21, 2006. Archived from the original on January 10, 2022. Retrieved January 10, 2022.
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