Note: In 2017 she became the first female British judoka to be ranked number one in the world, which she accomplished by winning a gold medal at the Abu Dhabi judo Grand Slam 2017. She came 7th in 2020 Summer Olympics.
Judomaster and his young sidekick Tiger were the first superheroes in Western comics to have abilities derived from Asian Martial Arts, and are therefore historically significant. Despite being ahead of their time by a full half-decade, Judomaster seldom gets mentioned in the list of great comics martial artists, despite being the first. In fact, I’ve yet to see a list of great comics martial artists that includes him.
Judomaster was created by real-life Judo and karate expert Frank McLaughlin, who as editor of the Connecticut-based Charlton Comics, introduced martial arts instruction into the pages of the earlier strip, Sarge Steel, so kids could perform some elementary Judo holds.
Saeid Mollaei was forced by Iranian authorities to lose the world championship semifinals in 2018, in order to avoid a final against an Israeli judoka.
He fled the country and became a Mongolian citizen, and today he wins a silver medal for Mongolia. What a story.
So I was enjoying some older AidaIro artwork, and happened upon this:
It's from one of their old Twitter gif games!
Anyways, while I won't translate the whole thing, one part caught my attention:
とくぎ: 背負い投げ
This would translate to "special skill: shoulder throw", which is a type of Judo technique. I then decided to google it for some examples...
And... hm, how familiar...
Wow!! What expert precision and form!!
I think this was a very fun detail to include, especially for those of us who are not familiar with Judo techniques! And this might mean that Akane has taken Judo classes in the past, or that he might be in some sort of Judo club.
Judo means "the gentle way", but that sure looks like it hurts...