My sincere thanks to LiA MVP Cris for commissioning this piece!<\/p>\n
Dogsred<\/em>. It\u2019s an interesting manga for many reasons, and one with a real story behind it. Anything written by Noda Satoru is noteworthy to begin with. As the man behind Golden Kamuy<\/em>, one of the most successful seinen manga in decades, he\u2019s a substantial figure in the manga and anime industry. Dogsred<\/em> is his follow-up to that series, but it\u2019s not quite that simple. In fact it\u2019s a repackaging of Noda\u2019s first serialization, Supinamarada!<\/em><\/a>, which premiered in Weekly Young Jump<\/em>. It was a commercial flop but managed six volumes before cancellation.<\/p>\n In effect, what\u2019s happened here is that Noda leveraged the success of GK<\/em> to force Shueishia to let him revive Supinamarada!<\/em>, albeit under a different name. That\u2019s something I\u2019m surprised more successful mangaka don\u2019t do, frankly \u2013 in effect this is a revenge serialization. The name has changed but for all intents and purposes Dogsred<\/em> is the same series. As to that name, turns out it\u2019s a Japanese mispronunciation of \u201cDogsled\u201d \u2013 which was always the most straightforward explanation but seemed too simple to actually be true.<\/p>\n Dogsred<\/em>, like Supinamarada!<\/em>, is a hockey manga. Hockey is very popular in Hokkaido (for obvious reasons it usually thrives in cold climates), and I assume it\u2019s something the highly-secretive Noda is passionate about. I grew up in Chicago and hockey is a pretty big deal there, but mostly in professional terms. The Blackhawks are a very popular franchise, but while some kids do play pond hockey in Chicagoland, it can\u2019t compare to someplace like Minnesota or northern Michigan, where schoolboy hockey is a way of life. And Canada of course, the birthplace of the game and forever the Mecca of the hockey religion.<\/p>\n My initial reaction to Dogsred<\/em>, honestly, was being somewhat put off by the character designs. Most of the main characters are 15-16 year-old boys \u2013 in fact in the first arc the protagonist and his twin sister are in middle school. But they look pretty much like the rogue doofuses of Golden Kamuy<\/em>, running rampant in old Hokkaido in buffed-out fashion. So yes, there is a suspension of disbelief (with one exception) required to buy that these kids are the age they\u2019re supposed to be. I got past that fairly quickly though, as Satoru\u2019s writing loses little of its unhinged charisma in the transition from GK<\/em> to modern-day sports manga. Modern is relative, by the way, in that the series so far takes place about 2011-12. I assume that\u2019s because it was when Noda was serializing Supinamarada!<\/em> and he didn\u2019t want to change it.<\/p>\n I\u2019m not sure Noda is capable of writing a \u201cnormal\u201d series \u2013 in fact, I\u2019m quite sure he isn\u2019t. I think by dint of the setting Dogsred<\/em> is a bit less surreal than Golden Kamuy<\/em>, but it\u2019s still pretty unhinged a lot of the time. It also revolves more around a central protagonist than GK<\/em> does. Sugimoto is certainly the main character and Aspira the deuteragonist. But GK<\/em> leaves their side for long stretches, and as I\u2019m fond of saying when covering it, it\u2019s a series where everyone behaves as if they\u2019re the protagonist of their own series. In Dogsred<\/em> there\u2019s no question this is Shirakawa Rou\u2019s story. He\u2019s not in every scene, but he\u2019s never away for long and it\u2019s through his eyes that we almost always experience the story.<\/p>\n The Shirakawa Rou<\/a> in question is a junior champion figure skater whose mother \u2013 exhausted from managing his career \u2013 dies in an accident with him in the passenger seat. Rou and his twin sister Haruna are both champion skaters, but their mother could only manage one of them given the time and money involved. Rou is chosen, despite Haruna\u2019s greater passion for the sport, because he\u2019s the greater natural talent. Guilt over this and his mother\u2019s death causes him to snap after the next All-Japan national championships, trashing the kiss-and-cry and earning himself the nickname \u201cRabid Prince\u201d. That, and a permanent ban from the sport.<\/p>\n Haruna and Rou are forced to move in with their grandfather \u2013 a former Olympic ice hockey player, though Rou isn\u2019t immediately aware of that \u2013 in Hokkaido. A chance encounter with a pair of skating brothers<\/a>\u00a0 \u2013 the younger of whom is a hotheaded idiot \u2013 leads to a challenge, and Rou\u2019s first exposure to the sport. A devotee of beauty above all else, he\u2019s naturally repulsed by it at first. But something about it gets under his skin, and it\u2019s obvious that this extremely talented boy is desperate for a new challenge. He winds up enrolling at Oinokami High School, the dominant force in Japanese high school hockey whose 20-year run of dominance at the inter-high ended the year before Rou\u2019s arrival.<\/p>\n The rest, as they say, is history. Structurally, Dogsred<\/em> is very much a traditional sports manga. Training arcs, practice games, fated rivals. But again, Noda really can\u2019t do anything in a conventional way. The cast is loaded with zany characters to be sure, though \u2013 again perhaps as a nod to the setting \u2013 they aren\u2019t larger-than-life in the way so many in Golden Kamuy<\/em> are. The supporting character who makes the biggest impression, probably, is ironically one who\u2019s also in Golden Kamuy<\/em>, Nihei Toshimitsu<\/a> \u2013 and he was in Golden Kamuy<\/em> because he was in Supinamarada!<\/em> (follow all that?).<\/p>\n Nihei will be familiar to GK<\/em> fans as the hunter and former Abashiri convict. He\u2019s a much bigger player in Dogsred<\/em>, as he\u2019s the head coach of Oinokami\u2019s hockey team. This is where \u201cseries review\u201d pieces on ongoing series \u2013 especially those which haven\u2019t yet had an anime adaptation \u2013 get tricky. I don\u2019t want to go down the spoiler path (like why the timeframe of the setting is important). But I will say that Nihei is a total bastard as far as I\u2019m concerned. Rou repeatedly notes that he\u2019s a relic from the Shouwa Era, and he does horrible macho stuff like refusing to let his players hydrate to \u201ctoughen them up\u201d. The thing is, Noda kinda plays this as if Nihei is in the right, which doesn\u2019t sit well with me.<\/p>\n There is an element of \u201clet Noda by Noda\u201d there, I suppose. What\u2019s defensible on the northern frontier at the turn of the last century is harder to stomach in modern-day society. There\u2019s a deeper divide over this sort of thing in schoolboy sports in Japan \u2013 Niehi\u2019s ways have led to the deaths of many young athletes, and the sort of mental abuse he heaps on his players is considered not just acceptable but desirable by those of a certain mindset. That Noda seems to agree is not a deal-breaker for me by any means, but it isn\u2019t my favorite element of Dogsred<\/em> either. YMMV.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n![\"Dogsred,](\"https:\/\/lostinanime.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/Dogsred-2thumb.jpg\")
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