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Dogsred (volume 1) (ongoing)
Dec. 21st, 2025 11:39 pmAfter Golden Kamuy, I would have been open to anything else Satoru Noda wrote anyway.
But finding out his new manga series is about a figure skater who goes into ice hockey? That sounds like the kind of fish-out-of-water story I love.
Dogsred (Dogsled) is actually a reboot of his first manga series Supinamarada! (Spinorama!), which was cancelled for not selling well enough. But after the wild success of Golden Kamuy, why not take this chance to revive it?
Rou Shirawaka is a 15-year-old figure skater, who loses his mother in a car accident right before a major competition. He still manages a brilliant performance and achieves the winning score, which should get him sponsorship and put him on track to the Olympics. Instead, he has a public meltdown and starts trashing the skating rink, which horrifies spectators and gets him banned from competition.
One news commentator says, "If he wants to be rowdy, he should take up ice hockey!"
Without means of support, Rou and his twin sister Haruna have to move to Hokkaido to live with their estranged grandfather. Hokkaido has bears, no cockroaches--and a lot of ice hockey.
I love that Rou is melodramatic as anything, but also has a strong sense of fairness, and is willing to stand up for other people. This leads him into an unfortunate encounter with one of the local ice hockey champions, who is probably going to be the main rival but is currently a huge jerk. It also gets him dragged into being a temporary member of an underdog team, which desperately needs minimum numbers to play their next match.
Rou can skate like a dream. But he has no idea how to wield a hockey stick, and no idea of any of the rules. It's kind of hilarious to see him learning them one by one, by inadvertently breaking them and getting sent to the penalty box over and over. (Which is a really good way to deliver a tutorial to the audience.)
But--Rou can skate like a dream, even though it's weird skating for ice hockey. And this underdog team cares so much, about getting to play and about each other--even though they've been losing all their matches--it starts to move Rou.
Interestingly, the manga is set in 2010, which is when its original version took place. I'm sure it makes things easier, since the reboot doesn't have to update the ice hockey rules or other relevant plot points.
Six volumes have been released so far.
(Crossover ideas: Since Dogsred is set in 2010 and Yuri!!! on Ice is set in 2016, this means that Rou would have overlapped with Yuuri during their high school competition years! This would normally make a perfect crossover request for upcoming exchanges, except I feel like I shouldn't if I've only read one volume. Oh well, maybe later.)
But finding out his new manga series is about a figure skater who goes into ice hockey? That sounds like the kind of fish-out-of-water story I love.
Dogsred (Dogsled) is actually a reboot of his first manga series Supinamarada! (Spinorama!), which was cancelled for not selling well enough. But after the wild success of Golden Kamuy, why not take this chance to revive it?
Rou Shirawaka is a 15-year-old figure skater, who loses his mother in a car accident right before a major competition. He still manages a brilliant performance and achieves the winning score, which should get him sponsorship and put him on track to the Olympics. Instead, he has a public meltdown and starts trashing the skating rink, which horrifies spectators and gets him banned from competition.
One news commentator says, "If he wants to be rowdy, he should take up ice hockey!"
Without means of support, Rou and his twin sister Haruna have to move to Hokkaido to live with their estranged grandfather. Hokkaido has bears, no cockroaches--and a lot of ice hockey.
I love that Rou is melodramatic as anything, but also has a strong sense of fairness, and is willing to stand up for other people. This leads him into an unfortunate encounter with one of the local ice hockey champions, who is probably going to be the main rival but is currently a huge jerk. It also gets him dragged into being a temporary member of an underdog team, which desperately needs minimum numbers to play their next match.
Rou can skate like a dream. But he has no idea how to wield a hockey stick, and no idea of any of the rules. It's kind of hilarious to see him learning them one by one, by inadvertently breaking them and getting sent to the penalty box over and over. (Which is a really good way to deliver a tutorial to the audience.)
But--Rou can skate like a dream, even though it's weird skating for ice hockey. And this underdog team cares so much, about getting to play and about each other--even though they've been losing all their matches--it starts to move Rou.
Interestingly, the manga is set in 2010, which is when its original version took place. I'm sure it makes things easier, since the reboot doesn't have to update the ice hockey rules or other relevant plot points.
Six volumes have been released so far.
(Crossover ideas: Since Dogsred is set in 2010 and Yuri!!! on Ice is set in 2016, this means that Rou would have overlapped with Yuuri during their high school competition years! This would normally make a perfect crossover request for upcoming exchanges, except I feel like I shouldn't if I've only read one volume. Oh well, maybe later.)
