As you might know, the anime adaptation of Tsugumomo just finished. And so, to those who watched and also to those who didn't, I am here to give you reasons to read the Tsugumomo manga.
THERE WILL BE SPOILERS links will be labelled with how spoiler-y they are(to people who've watched the anime, because pretty much everything will be a spoiler to those who didn't)
Tsugumomo is an action/battle manga that started way back in 2007. It releases monthly and is releasing its 100th chapter next week.
After discovering the manga through the anime, I quickly caught up with the manga. I was surprised that it had a relatively small following as it was quite a good read. Tsugumomo is truly a hidden gem, hidden beneath the dirt that is its first few volumes.
One of the things I really enjoyed about Tsugumomo was the action. The author is extremely talented at drawing such detailed fight scenes. To see what I mean, you just have to experience it for yourself. And so, here are some fight scenes from Volume 12(there are barely any spoilers so don't worry) : Why Kanayama is a God Kazuya fights a certain spiritual flute Why Kukuri is a God
Another enjoyable thing Tsugumomo has is its ecchi. No, they're not like the stupid fanservice scenes you'd see in something like To Love-Ru where the MC trips on a block of air and gets his face buried somewhere indecent. The ecchi in Tsugumomo is mostly used for comedy and is, in fact, very successful at that. The ecchi scenes are hilarious and just keep on improving as the manga progresses. Of course, this is due to the author being such an excellently talented --pervert-- artist. Here are a couple of examples(both are SERIOUSLY NSFW so be cautious): Bonus Chapter, no spoilers Chapter 79, minimal spoilers
The story is also extremely interesting. I would stay up late at night until I found answers to the questions in my head. The first ~3 volumes aren't that great story-wise but the same could definitely not be said about the succeeding volumes. One night, I barely had any sleep because MAJOR SPOILERS.
The weakest part of Tsugumomo is probably its characters. Don't get me wrong, the chracters are definitely well-written, its just that I can't accept that MAJOR SPOILERS. Manga spoilers
Kagami Kazuya I've seen some people say that Kazuya is a wimp but I really can't get where they're coming from since Kazuya was pretty much born just so he can become a badass and manga spoilers. He can even manga spoilers. And not only is he a badass, he's also a very loving badass. He always tries his best not to give in to temptation just because he likes the way his group of friends is now and doesn't want to ruin it. He gets angry when other people hurt his friends, like when a group of tsugumomo beat up Kokuyou. And of course his most important belief that tsugumomo should be treated as partners, not as tools. Whenever someone violates this, his murder face shows. His murder face is so scary that --even Speedwagon is afraid-- it's not even allowed to be shown explicitly in the manga. Here are a couple of examples(you can't really be spoiled since you won't have an idea of what's happening): 4 pages from chapter 95 and 2 pages from chapter 96.
That pretty much covers most of what I had in mind.
To those interested, I might finish a very low quality summary of the first 13.5 volumes in a few hours.
Disclaimer: I do not own any of the images used. I am unafilliated with any of the translators but maybe you can ask /u/rtwpsom2 or /u/animangolul about that.
Of course, if, after catching up, you liked the manga, feel free to be a part of /r/tsugumomo and support the author Hamada Yoshikadu by buying the books.
There is no official overseas license for Tsugumomo so the only way to support the author is to buy the books in japanese language.
Yoshikadu2011 is the author's official youtube channel and he often does livestreams of him drawing some pages of the current chapter he' working on. Needless to say, only watch the livestreams if you're okay with being spoiled.