Ultimate Muscle vol. 25 continues from the last battle for Mantaro's (Kid Muscle) friend Meat's dismembered body parts (Less gory than it sounds, honest). Barrierfreeman sacrificed himself to save Meat's leg, and now a tag team of Kevin Mask and Mars are ready to take on the next two members of the Demon Seeds. If the heroic team of ex-villains, the Army of Idols fails, the evil General Terror will be revived in Meat's body…yikes.

 

Highlights

Once again, I'm entertained by Ultimate Muscle's choice of wrestling arenas. This time it's the ancient island of Ganryu, where the legendary swordsman Musashi battled Kojiro. There's also another story about how the devil superhumans once used it as a dark arena; Yudetamago doesn't skimp on the presentation.  Kevin Mask is probably one of the coolest wrestlers so far, with his cool as heck mask and trenchcoat (although amusingly undercut a bit in a flashback that reveals he's always wearing the helmet, even at inopportune times).
 

I was glad to see Kid Muscle was in the volume a bit more; sure, he didn't get to fight but he did boldly swim across the ocean to watch it in person this time. The fight was a bit more serious than usual this volume, consisting of more body slams and pile drives and the like than wild moves, however, so the comedy from him and his little entourage was welcome. What does he drag Jaqueline and the others around for anyway? Maybe they fought in one of the other volumes, but it's certainly better than forgetting some of your own characters exist. Yudematago even brings back a couple old favorites from his last Muscle series!  Sunshine is a favorite of mine, so his appearance was nice, even as just a cheering section for the villains.
 

Overall

This past week I had the chance to watch some real pro-wrestling (oxymoron) and, as a result, Ultimate Muscle shines all the more. The manga really captures the spirit of the pro-wrestling scene. It has crazy looking guys that trash talk each other and take a severe beating. I was able to notice trademark wrestling moves, some real terminology and this volume gave us a surprise guest wrestler. All of these things mirror real pro-wrestling, except with an over the top superhero twist. Considering actual pro-wrestling is already over the top, I wouldn't be lying to say that Ultimate Muscle is sometimes as crazy as something like Bobobo or Dragonball.  One big difference is that Ultimate Muscle is pretty nearly all tournaments; two (or more) wrestlings going at it in wild battles basically every volume.
 

While the fights are usually quite wild (Boltman has a number of electricity based attacks, including creating a giant lightbulb and plugging it into himself) as I stated before, this one has a lot more moves which are just real wrestling moves exaggerated. Mars, however, does have a killer spiked tail.  When the surprise wrestler unveils however, things crank up a good couple of notches. It's more exciting than last volume, but not quite as funny. The secret opponent our brave tag team "face" has multiple faces himself. Tip; beware of the angry face!
 

On the extras end of thing, the costumes designed by readers on the title pages are neat, although it would be nice to see some of them actually in use. They do use character designs from readers, anyway (such as Boltman this volume). It probably made it a lot more fun in initial serialization, but since it's a little (read: very) late to participate in that, it's actually kind of disappointing.
 

I'm still enjoying Ultimate Muscle, and Mantaro himself is easily the funniest, most amusing character. It's going to be a good thing when he takes center stage again next volume, because as enjoyable as the other matches are, I've been dying to see him back in action again.

ComicsOnline gives Ultimate Muscle vol 25, 3.5 out of 5 faces of evil.