I have already spoken about Masashi Kishimoto a few times during these months, I spoke about Naruto and how little by little the history of that great manga was deteriorating and then about Samurai 8, Kishimoto's last great project which was destined to fail because with this new history he began with the same mistakes he made in the last sagas of Naruto, so Samurai 8 was destined to fail. These last two works of Kishimoto were of the genre shonen, that is to say, the genre of action and fights, to say it in a simple way, it is the most common genre that you can find in the manga/anime and therefore, it is the most popular genre and although for many years, this genre has been maintained with its main characteristics very similar, During the last few years new mangas have appeared that have completely changed the formula of the shonen genre, giving somehow a fresh air to the manga/anime industry, but that's a topic for another day, today I want to focus a little on Masashi Kishimoto and his One-shot focused on the Seinen genre, a genre that is characterized by touching a little more adult themes and its arguments always tend to be more serious.
In 2013, when there was less than a year left for the end of Naruto, Masashi Kishimoto surprised us all by publishing a One-Shot which was not focused on the already classic Shonen genre, but was a manga that touched on a theme that was a little more serious, besides the way Kishimoto captured this story in this one-chapter manga, It was quite interesting, because although it doesn't have a very deep story and argument, being quite sincere, Mario's argument is quite simple, due to the way Kishimoto managed to capture the themes of the mafia, criminality, abuse of power and murder in this One-Shot is quite interesting.
The One-shot "Mario", tells us the story of, precisely, Mario, a murderer who works for the mafia, which is considered one of the best in its class, so they always look for him to perform this type of work, Mario is a person who only cares about money and would do anything to get it, we know he lost his mother at a young age and that thought is always in his mind. But one day things change when, once again, he is assigned to kill a person, however, he has to do the job with someone else, so the mafia hires a woman, who like Mario, is an expert killer, you could even say she is better than him. Saori, is a girl with a dark past, a past which due to the attempted rape of her stepfather, at an early age, she had to kill him, and from that moment on her trauma was so great that she did not want to talk to any other man in her life. However, when she met Mario things changed and although the relationship between these two characters was not entirely good, things were beginning to improve, although as one would expect in a story centered on the Mafia, the situation would become dark at any moment.
To Mario, Saori reminds him of his mother, that is why despite his early attitudes, he still wants to work with her, he even gave her his mother's earrings as a sign of trust and love for her image.
The One Shot Mario, as I said, has a quite simple argument, simple, but that is good thinking, it was rare to see a story of Kishimoto with such a serious theme and that it was not the typical story of fights, after the publication of this One Shot, many of us thought that maybe Kishimoto would continue expanding the story of Mario or that in his next projects he would focus on a little more serious themes, however, things were not like that. The style of drawing in this One-shot is still impeccable, and just by looking at them we know that it is a manga drawn by Kishimoto, since even though we are used to seeing his drawing in Naruto, seeing this mangaka's style in other styles is something that is gratifying. I hope that one day Kishimoto will bring us a new story, a new manga which can prove that he can once again create a story which, like Naruto, can change the anime and manga industry.
