You shall become a Tiger! - Is pretty much the battle cry for arguably the best anime based off the exciting sports entertainment spectable that is pro-wrestling or puroresu. I've been watching this anime closely. I am aware that this is apparentely a sequel to a really old anime about a wrestler with a tiger mask (which is based off a real gimmick).
So here's a brief rundown of the series, Naoto, a young ambitious pro-wrestler dons the legendary Tiger Mask in order to fight back against the promotion that put his mentor in the hospital after a match got way too violent. While his partner joined up with said wrestling promotion, GWM (Global Wrestling Monopoly) in order to train hard, Naoto is a freelance wrestler rising to the top in order to fight against the man who hurt his mentor.
Interesting to note here that in this anime's universe, wrestling is basically a shoot, aka portrayed as real. GWM are portrayed as bad guys, because, first of all, they have some sort of underground secret training dojo called Tiger's Den where wrestlers go through inhumanely harsh training, which makes them into strong, but also violent. GWM's big plan is to snatch up all the local talent by force and they loathe anyone in particular who dons the original Tiger Mask gimmick, because a long time ago, a defector of Tiger's Den had that very same mask. So many of these episodes are Naoto dealing in his Tiger Mask outfit figthing against the wrestlers sent by Miss X, the ridiculously voluptuous CEO of the GWM promotion. The series also features a ton of wrestlers inspired by real life NJPW wrestlers as well as a few international stars.
It's kinda funny to think that GWM wrestlers hurt other talent with more violent moves since for the most part, I'm sure piledrivers, german suplexes and other puroresu strong style moves are painful as f*** when used IRL. The show ocassionally finds some self-awareness in the fact that even though they want to get rid of Tiger Mask, attendence is low when he's not in the card.
