Every once in a while you’ll find a manga based off a video game series that’s good to read. But it’s more likely you’ll read one of those and wonder just what’s going on around here, especially if you’re unfamiliar with the franchise.
The King of Fighters: A New Beginning will likely fall into that section for anyone not immersed in the lore of the fighting game franchise. But will SNK/KoF fans mind what’s going on in this manga? For now, I have my doubts.
The King of Fighters: A New Beginning is based on the most recent series release, KoF XIV. You wouldn’t figure that out from reading this manga — I had to search for that — and unless you’ve played any of the SNK games with these fighters, you’d be hard pressed to know what type of story is happening outside of what’s already explained: the first champion of The King of Fighters, Antonov, is the host of this year’s KoF tournament. The strongest warriors around the globe have gathered to take part in a 3-on-3 team battle. Whichever team wins the tournament and can defeat Antonov at the end will be considered the strongest warriors in the world.
I have played the origin series for a few of these games over the years (Samurai Shodown, King of Fighters), but Capcom vs SNK 2 is about the only real experience I can say I have with the franchise outside of just general knowledge (like knowing who Terry Bogard is) since I played that a ton growing up. And in general, most fighting games don’t have the strongest stories because the mechanics and visual aesthetics are a lot more important. You’ll have a character with a backstory as to why they’re taking part in the tournament, fight other fighters, face the boss, and backstory or arc resolved. Also likely that there’s some dark underbelly within the tournament that a certain few have to resolve.
In manga form, it’s a bit rough. For this first volume of KoF, all the characters are introduced to the crowd in the first chapter, and it’s boring. For those who don’t know these characters (there are only a few I didn’t know), I’m not sure it’s recommended to read all of it. This gets emphasized even more when the only match of this volume is Team Japan (Kyo, Benimaru, Goro) vs. Team Yagami (Iori, Vice, Mature). So with no true storyline or characters established, it’s hard to care about much in this manga.
About the only thing worth your time are the battles, which they should be since everything else is average so far. In this volume they don’t all take place in the same location and the rules (which were few) are already useless, which means fights take place in either normal locations like a ring or on top of a moving train where someone made sure to knock out the conductor because they’re evil. That’ll help diversify the fights, although it also helps that these characters have their own techniques they can use. For any fan of the series and these characters, seeing that (and a page that even has the input commands of their moves) is a nice touch.
Overall though, I can’t see anyone who’s not a fan of the franchise already to get attached to much in this first volume. For those who are a fan though, they may have some questions regarding the matches (why reveal just one match as an example), and whether the introductions could’ve been condensed or not. For me, there’s not enough of a hook and the general story is too vague to continue reading any more.