Flame of Recca

-- [ Flame of Recca Manga - 33 volumes / 329 chapters ] -- One line: "Good art. Good story. Ok characters. What more to ask?" Flame of Recca (FoR) is one manga where you will see the evolution of a mangaka's style clearly. It has a good plot, interesting characters, and a good bit of ecchiness. It definitely makes a good read. - [ Art - 9/10 ] - In the first volumes, the art was no good. The eyes were exaggerated, as well as the various body parts. It was plain old-style manga drawings. However, as the volumes move on, you see the style of the mangakachanging. The drawings, toning, shading and everything else becomes better. The level of detail increases from almost nothing to extremely detailed scenes. Nobuyuki Anzai's style is now among my favs. Even at the end, it's still exaggerated (hairstyles!), but the drawings are just great, specially in detail-level. - [ Story - 8/10 ] - FoR has a good plot, and a good flow. The story is about a boy named Recca who has the ability to produce flame from his arm. He is a ninja in a modern world, and has sworn to protect Yanagi, his "hime" (princess). There is also Recca's friends and rivals in fights, Domon and Fuuko. At the other end, we have Kurei and his Uruha band of bad guys, led by Mori Kouran, the head of the bad-guys. As you might expect, there will be a clash between the two groups, centered around weapons named Madogou which have special powers each. Like there is a wind-controlling madogou. The flow is great, with almost no plot-holes. The details are conveniently explained to the reader, so there is not much mind-work to do. There are also some unexpected twists, and revelations that really make you like the characters and want you to read on and on. Some complaints now. Sometimes, we are not well told the reasons why the fights are actually taking place. Next, we are not told the backgrounds of some of the characters at all. This is understandable, considering the sheer number of characters, but just 1-2 bubbles would have been enough. Example? Fuuko's background is never mentioned. The story is divided in 2 parts: the ura butou satsujin tournament and the "Recca saves the world" part. The themes from one arc tends to get repeated in the other arc. Even in the world-saving arc, there is a semblence of a tournament going on. Definite deja-vu, earning story 8 from me, instead of 9. - [ Characters - 8/10 ] - The characters are definitely likeable, and really funny at times, even making you laugh. The character development is slowly, but well made. I did notice the lack of elaboration for some of the characters, specially the main ones. We readers could have used some more details, particularly about Domon, Fuko, Mikagami and even some of the bad guys. Unfortunately, it's not there. Not enough, at least. Each character has its own individuality and behavior, which makes discovering each of them interesting. From the muscular toughie to the cute tomboy, from the pretty boy to the anti-hero, they are all there. Also, each has a definite role to play over the course of the plot and the value of none of them is to be under-estimated. The Flame Dragons which appear later on are even more interesting, specially their back stories. Or even Kurei's story is impressively detailed. The problem is that the bad guys are a bit generic, and tend to get defeated by the same ways. It's a bit repetitive after a while. Also, the presence of recurrent minor characters is sometimes annoying. - [ Enjoyment - 9/10 ] - If I had to name one thing I enjoyed most, it was the exaggerated expressions, and the unexpected humour. In the middle of a fight, you might see some exaggerated expressions, like bulging eyes and jaw-dropping. BIG jaw-droppings. Or teeth pictured as very sharp. I liked that exaggeration, specially with Joker (character). The art in the later volumes is great too, and I enjoyed that. I tend to liked detailed scenes. Recca cannot beat Berserk's level of detail, but it's great nevertheless. The fights were well illustrated, but a bit too short sometimes. - [ Conclusions ] - FoR makes a good read, with well-made art and a good cast of characters. You might want to check it out if you want an adventure/epic/fighting genre. It's old, but still holds some value.

Flame of Recca is what I'd call a comfort food of shonen combat manga, with the closest comparison I can think of to be Yoshihiro Togashi's Yuuyu Hakusho. There's nothing particularly original in it, but it's still well-executed enough to potentially be really enjoyable. Every shonen combat manga needs a cool conceit, and for Recca it's ninja. The titular main character Recca Hanabishi is a ninja superfan to the extent that he's trying to live the ninja lifestyle in modern era, which in his mind necessitates looking for a master to serve. Said master ends up being Yanagi Sakoshita, a timid girl he bondedover their mutual secret power; Recca can conjure flame from his hand, and Yanagi can heal wounds. There's also an extinct ninja clan who played an important role in the backstory, but as a whole, don't really expect anything resembling authentic ninja experience from FoR. Instead of kunai, shuriken, and stealthing around, you'd be seeing a lot more of superpowered people, superpowered weapons (made by the aforementioned ninja clan), underground assassin group, underground tournament, genetic abominations, time travel shenanigan, etc. You know, the good ol' tropes that I and (presumably) you love. FoR pretty much nailed the characters. I like Nobuyuki Anzai's design, as he is equally capable in drawing appealing characters who are easy on the eyes, cute chibi-fied effect, AND things that literally looked like they just crawled out from Hell itself (the latter would be increasingly prominent toward the end of series, as Anzai's art gets darker and more detailed). Personality-wise, the main cast is based on types that you've probably seen before; Recca is the hot-blooded leader, Yanagi is the pure-hearted girl and designated damsel in distress, Tokiya is the icy rival, Fuuko is the tomboyish action girl, and Domon is the boneheaded brawler. Thing is, this group has a genuinely strong dynamics and even if their character arcs might be very predictable, they're well-fleshed enough to invoke some emotional investment whether they're struggling against an opponent, trying to master their weapon/skill, or simply bantering with each other. The same thing also applies to the antagonists and supporting characters, to the extent that even a high number of one-and-done mooks has decent amount of personality and backstory. Impressively, while the cast of allies, enemies, and enemies turned allies (if you enjoy this particular trope, you're definitely in for a treat) steadily grows, it never gets out of control and neither does the main spotlight stray too much from the core group of characters; something that other combat series with bloated cast often don't get to say (*coughbleachcough*). The plot structure is very straightforward: more or less, it consisted of an obligatory introduction arc, a tournament arc, and three dungeon arcs (one before the tournament, two afterward). By 'dungeon arc', I mostly refer to a particular set-up where our heroes have to advance through a series of one-on-one and occasional tag fights before they reached the big bad guy waiting at the end of a certain labyrinthine structure. Again, there's nothing imaginative or realistic about those (*you have to think the bad guys would've had way more success by just ganging up on our heroes from the start instead of going through all the trouble of setting up a video game-y set of challenges), but they're ultimately just an excuse to showcase the individual battles. It's a good thing then that Anzai's battle scenes are arguably where the series shined the most, as they're well-paced, easy to follow, and feature cool & varied abilities, weapons, and resolutions. The tournament arc (*an aspect most similar to Yuuyu Hakusho, due to the team-based nature), which takes up slightly more than one-third of the entire story, deserves particular mention for being one of the most exciting tournament arcs I've ever read. I may have nostalgic bias considering it is one of my favorites during my formative years, but I strongly recommend Flame of Recca to those looking for a fun, balanced combat series that doesn't take an eternity to finish. Consider the final grade to be more like an 8 if you're a genre fan who doesn't mind familiar character archetypes and plotting, or a 6 if you're not.

tl;dr: Very generic but solid old school battle shounen. Flame of Recca is a manga that ran from 1995 to 2002 that strongly embodies a lot of shounen tropes and structures that came into being during that era. It’s a very typical shounen, but it’s good shounen. The core of it is ancient objects known as Madogu that give their wielders supernatural powers, the vast majority of time these wielders using them to fight each other. There’s an overarching plot that involves ninjas, time travel, reincarnation, and an evil mega organization centered around making its head immortal, but for the most part it just felt likewindow dressing to provide some structure for the battles and character beats which were what really matters. As such, the manga is incredibly simplistic with very little in terms of major twists or variety to its plot threads, but that in and of itself makes it charming in a way. It’s a manga you can enjoy just going with the flow on without having to think about it at all. The introductory arc involves the protagonist, Recca, getting into smaller fights with the rest of the core fighters, beating them, and them all joining him when the first major conflict emerges. The main cast also includes a healer girl, Yanagi, who can’t fight and thus generally serves as a damsel in distress that the rest of the cast has to protect or rescue. The motivations of the cast are thus generally incredibly simplistic, they just want to save their friend. Each of the main cast has background beyond that and some semblance of character and relationship arcs, but they felt pretty weak. There’s not a lot of substance to them and thus the cast ends up coming out pretty flat. Still, most of them can be pretty amusing so it’s enough to get the reader at least somewhat invested in the cast so what are supposed to be heavy emotional beats can land at least somewhat well. There are a lot of side characters as well and though the vast majority have very little presence beyond the part, they’re relevant in, the manga does often briefly just throw them in again here and there for the hell of it. There’s very little substance but seeing the same characters repeatedly does make it easier to follow along and stay invested. The main exception to the lack of substance would be Kurei, who serves as the first major villain and then as a sort of side villain I guess but not really, and those who surround him. The actions of him and his group during the later portions of the manga don’t actually make a lot of sense, but he and his allies have a pretty strong presence centered around rule of cool so they’re pretty interesting nevertheless. Kurei also has the most depth of any character in the manga, though that still isn’t all that much. And this is a shounen battle manga full of karma houdinis from beginning to end so it’s pretty easy to ignore the villainry. And finally, the action is pretty great. The power set has a good variety to it and the match ups between the powers of the characters fighting results in some pretty great battles. And while the characters in a general sense don’t have a lot to them, the moment-to-moment interactions during battles were pretty strong as well which once again came down to good match ups. The plot sometimes has to get incredibly forced in order to produce those match ups, especially in the final arc where it felt like half the battles were completely pointless in the grand scheme of things. Still, the way each member of the main cast continued to grow battle to battle while showing off new abilities, the way battles flowed and were framed, the pretty fast but not too fast pacing, and the general sense of impact and weight to the hits made the battles pretty satisfying and fun nevertheless. The art I think was pretty good in terms of showing off the action, but was pretty lacking beyond that. The character designs were in general pretty dull I feel and outside of the action the framing and such wasn’t all that great either. The art quality was also pretty high for action related elements, but in general much lower for anything outside that. The cover art I also thought was mostly pretty bad.

I just wrote a comment on the last chapter, but I think it's more suitable for a review. Also this is my first time writing a review. I talk more about the things I didn't like because: 1. I want you to read the manga and find about why I like the good things I mentioned. 2. I don't want you to read the manga because of the annoyance of "the bad" ones. IMO it was a good manga for it's time. For the present it's 5/10. Won't rate it on MAL because I don't really want to lower the score for the future readers who are looking for a goodmanga. And I really want more people to get engaged with the three following characters. The things I liked: Kurei, Domon, Fuuko. I won't even explain why. They are all precious. Kurei: (10/10) Domon: (8.5/10) Fuuko: (8/10) (These characters are the reason I stayed till the end) Thank you, Nobuyuki-sensei! The things that I did not like: The storytelling. (4.5/10) I was not sure if I should lower my score here. On one hand the manga is old and is shounen(targeting younger audience), but on the other... There are a lot of old manga with better storytelling. The same goes for the shounen genre. What disgusted me: Rekka: First thing! Domon is waaaay better builded character then Rekka. Speaking of stupidity he can't even return to monkey, because he IS one. (1/10) Yanagi: The only good quality she has is the healing power. She is a plain character. Even after finishing the series I feel like she was not even in the cast. The whole "we fight for Yanagi, the vegetable" thing was a dumb reasoning for the plot. Yanagi: (-10/10) Healing power: (8/10) Mokuren: Tbh he is not that bad of a character, after I compare him to Rekka and Yanagi. (3.5/10) Lastly about the Art: It's (7.5/10) I'll say again the manga is old but even for today's standards the art is good.