is a manga written and illustrated by Tetsuya Chiba. It ran in ''

Weekly Shonen Magazine Weekly refers to a repeating event happening once a week Weekly, The Weekly, or variations, may also refer to: News media * ''Weekly'' (news magazine), an English-language national news magazine published in Mauritius *Weekly newspaper, any news ...

'' for nearly eight years and received an anime adaptation in 1977. The series received the Kodansha Cultural Children's Award (not to be confused with the

Kodansha Manga Award is one of Japan's major manga awards. The event is sponsored by publisher Kodansha. It has been awarded annually for serialized manga in its third iteration since 1977. Categories The award was originally called the until 1968. In 1970, it was ...

) in 1976.

Plot

Teppei lives in the forest with his father, who is a

treasure hunter Treasure hunting is the physical search for treasure. One of the most popular types of modern day treasure hunters are historic shipwreck salvors. These underwater treasure salvors try to find sunken shipwrecks and retrieve artifacts with both ...

. Teppei and his father are visited by an older boy named Nakajo from a school outside the forest, who demands that Teppei comes with him. After a brief skirmish, Nakajo kills one of Teppei's pet wild animals, enraging the younger boy. This results in Teppei blowing up part of the forest with

dynamite Dynamite is an explosive made of nitroglycerin, sorbents (such as powdered shells or clay), and Stabilizer (chemistry), stabilizers. It was invented by the Swedish people, Swedish chemist and engineer Alfred Nobel in Geesthacht, Northern German ...

and him and his father being arrested. Soon, Teppei's uncle finds him and brings him and his father to the city to reunite with his family. They are invited to live there from now on. Teppei joins a school, where we discover that he is

illiterate Literacy is the ability to read and write, while illiteracy refers to an inability to read and write. Some researchers suggest that the study of "literacy" as a concept can be divided into two periods: the period before 1950, when literacy was ...

. He sleeps through the majority of his lessons. After being forced to join a club, he settles on the

Kendo is a modern Japanese martial art, descended from kenjutsu (one of the old Japanese martial arts, swordsmanship), that uses bamboo swords ( shinai) as well as protective armor ( bōgu). It began as samurai warriors' customary swordsmanship ex ...

club where he impresses the members by running 50 laps around the school. He is allowed to join and soon begins to demand radical changes to the system. Eventually, he takes charge of the younger half of the club. When the club is taken to the mountains to train, the younger half beats the older one to qualify for the competition to duel with another school. Soon after this event, the younger half resign out of fear, leaving Teppei to compete alongside the older half against the other school, but after a close competition with the other school - Nakajo's school - they end up losing. Soon Teppei is expelled from his school due to bad grades. After being called to Nakajo's school by their Kendo club captain, Wakisaka, Teppei is determined to join their school, after being told that they drink and smoke there. Eventually, Teppei passes the test and joins the lowest class there. Teppei defeats Wakisaka, resulting in him becoming the school's new captain. Several months later, the schools go to compete in the national competition. Teppei encounters another student named Kikuchi, who is one of the greatest swordfighters of his age. Kikuchi beats him half to death in an informal duel, wounding his pride, but when Teppei's team encounters Kikuchi's, Teppei's team ends up winning via time difference. That night, Kikuchi goes home to learn a new technique from his grandfather - "Falling Yellow Leaf". The next day, during the solo competition, Kikuchi and Teppei both make it to the final. Kikuchi manages to use the technique on Teppei, but in the end Teppei wins.

Characters

Masako Nozawa is a Japanese actress. Beginning work as a child actress at the age of three, by the time she became an adult, voice acting had inadvertently become her main occupation. Throughout her career, Nozawa has been affiliated with Production Baobab ...

as Teppei Uesugi * Akiko Tsuboi as Azumi Uesugi * Masao Imanishi as Hiromi Uesugi * Tohru Furuya as Yoshiyuki * Makoto Kōsaka as Kanako * Shozo Iizuka as Yoshioka * Youko Matsuoka as Onigiri

References

External links

* {{Nippon Animation Anime series Anime series based on manga Fuji Television original programming Kendo in anime and manga Kodansha manga Nippon Animation Shōnen manga