Fist of Firenze comic review

By Ninja Jupi

Back on Free Comic Book Day (May 4), Mark and I came across an artist who had a table set up. It was an up-and-coming author and artist known as 24x4! She is a local artist in the area who is trying to break into the manga industry. I was interested in the work so Mark got it for me. 

This particular work was entered into Japan's semi-annual Tezuka Competition, which is open to manga artists from across the globe. The grand prize is 2 million yen, your work published in Weekly Shounen Jump, and a trip to Tokyo to accept your award. I am not certain if this is still ongoing, though given the pandemic situation. I believe that her work was submitted for 2020 or 2021. The judges of the competition consist of famous manga-ka of Japan such as Akira Toriyama Akira (RIP, Dragon Ball fame), Inoue Takehiko (Slam Dunk fame), Hokikoshi Kohei (My Hero Academia fame), etc. Now, let's get into this work, which centers around a young, bishie Leonardo da Vinci!

This story takes place in the city of Firenze, Italy.  For us English speakers, we refer to it as Florence.  Also, there are historical people in this work, but they are not meant to be taken as fact. It's just a fun story involving these historical figures.  Going back to the story, as we see, not only is Leonardo smart and such, which is what he is known for, but he's also trained in martial arts. This is a shounen series after all, so we have to get the action/fighting aspect there. ^_^  

When introduced, he's in the middle of training until he is visited by Lorenzo de' Medici, who was known (historically) to send Leonardo to Milan to help spread Florentine-style art and culture in Italy.  In this story, Lorenzo and Leonardo seem to be friends. He compliments Leonardo on his artwork being "genius", but Leonardo doesn't seem to fully think so.  As the saying goes, you are your own worst critic.  

During this time, his master approaches, wondering what was bothering Leonardo. This is Fantina Polo. The reason for Leonardo's distraction is due to issues going on involving members of the Roman Academy whose arrests were ordered by Pope Paul II. He relayed to Lorenzo, that he felt connected to these men as he viewed them as fellow artists...not in the sense of those who paint, but more so like innovators. Fantina gave Leonardo his blessing to go save the men being held captured, as she (as well as Lorenzo), knew that's how he was feeling. She also playfully told Leonardo to remember to "focus and center" or he'll never see her again.

Leonardo sneaks into Vatican City and to the location where the men were being held captive. Leonardo fights his way past the guards and came to a door. He cracked it, to see one of the men being tortured, shocked at the sight! Leonardo goes in to take on the torturer, who was a Cardinal of the church. 

A fight ensues and he finishes it off using his "La Sezion e Aurea" attack, which defeats the torturer!  Leonardo unshackles the man, who was a poet from the academy, and explains how he was there to rescue them, but the captive man tells the young Leonardo regretfully that the others had been killed.

After getting away to the outskirts of Roma (Rome), Leonardo offered him a place to stay, the country home of his friend (Lorenzo). Leonardo pointed out how a man of his wisdom and knowledge would do well in places like Venezia, Napoli, or Budapest, away from Roma. The man was grateful for the rescue but didn't want to go along with Leonardo and opted to head back into Rome and just be more careful with his attempts to take down the Pope. He had no intention of returning to the academy. This disheartened Leonardo as he admired this man and his works.  This caused the young artist to stand up to his hero, refusing to let him return. 

This leads to the two fighting. The poet explained his position, but Leonardo tried his best to get through to him with his words. Unfortunately, it didn't fully work. The fight continued, but Leonardo got the upperhand, and used a special move on him called, "Divine Hand". Leonardo wants him to write poetry again and share his works and follow the path of Pope Pius II who believed that the church and the world were one and that the pope was a "man with burdens like any other". 

Next, we see Leonardo and Lorenzo discussing the former's adventure and encounter. He explained that after knocking out the poet, he took him to Poland. Lorenzo was pointing out how confused he would be once waking up in such a place and got on Leonardo for taking a trip in the first place. Leonardo pointed out it was a good excuse to get some sketching done. The other thing Lorenzo was wondering, was how a "Vatican Poet" know how to use the Polo fighting techniques that Leonardo knew.  Leonardo assumes that since this particular person was acquainted with the Polo techniques, then maybe other "artists, clergy, and nobles" did as well.  

At the end of this story, we see that poet was Filippo Buonaccorsi and he lived out rest of his life in Poland. writing and teaching the royal children. He also focused on writing about Vatican corruption and a big component for Christian Reformation.  In real life, Buonaccorsi was a writer and he was part of an attempted assassination of Pope Paul II. He fled to Poland, though, due to this. This story just gives us a more fun version of the tale.

That aside, this story was actually pretty entertaining throughout and there's even some bonus material after of Leonardo training with a young Michelangelo. The characters of this story  were all intriguing to me and I like this take on historical figures. Hey, if we can have Abraham Lincoln slaying vampires, we can have Leonardo da Vinci using cool martial arts moves! :-P  Something else I liked was how 24x4 incorporated references to the real Leonardo da Vinci. When rescuing Buonaccorsi, he used his parachute. Leonardo did have a sketch for a parachute if you look into his works.

The artwork of this manga was really good! It had that bishounen style with the male characters and the action sequences weren't too difficult for me to follow. I usually have trouble with action scenes in comics or manga sometimes, but this worked out okay. I feel that the only real criticism I have is the text. For me, the text was too small, so I had to either hold it up to the light or hold it very close to my face to read it better. I'm not sure if this is just a me thing since I do wear glasses, but maybe for you all out there, you won't have to. 

So, for those of you that like history, like I do, or a story that's taking place during the Renaissance and, I do recommend this work. It's fun seeing a shounen take on a famous historical figure.  I hope we get other adventures involving history's most famous Renaissance artists and innovators.

For more on this artist/author, here is the information so you can check it out yourself...

24x4 (Open to commissions most of the time)

email: bobaelee4@gmail.com

IG: @24242424art

Mark's thoughts- 

It was a fun read. I like the idea of adding historic figures and having them fight with a mixture of martial arts and anime-style special techniques. I mean... we've all heard of a certain mutant named Leonardo using martial arts... but not Da Vinci himself. We even got Michelangelo as well, while we're at it. The art is pretty cool and I like the character designs, especially Leonardo himself. The story and action scenes are easy to follow, which is always a plus. If you like to mix history with fun martial arts, definitely give Fist of Firenze a read!!