Alchemy is a very interesting concept, but shonen isn't really an interesting genre. Add them together though, and you just might get a mildly entertaining action story. STORY: Buso Renkin is shonen story number 362445815-there's not really much else that can be summed up after that, if you're tired of the typical shonens, well this isn't the place where you should look. But for those wanting to give the shonen genre a look at, I could easily talk about others that stand out more like Naruto, Bleach, One Piece, or Dragonball, but I'm going to talk about the one that started my obsession with the shonen genre (Notsure I should say that out loud).
The story is about your typical highschool student, Kazuki Muto, who's kinda a space cadet, who is killed right off the bat in less than five pages by being skewered through his heart, but a page later he is seen waking up abruptly in his highschool dormitory room and goes apesh*t on his friends who happen to have amazing reactions to his apparently loud freak out, after what have seemed to be a dream.
Kazuki's friends consists of a guy with a pompadour, a weird guy who gives out informative and often useless information, and a gentle big guy. Oh and he also has a ditzy, bubbly younger sister.
After a day at high school, Kazuki is attacked by a monster created by alchemy called a homunculus, that was posing as a teacher. After being chased for a few pages he starts to have a flashback to when he was killed, which actually happened, and is shown after he was (Mistakenly) trying to rescue the main female protagonist Tokiko Tsumura, who is essentially a female Himura Kenshin but not as goofy.
Using the signature weapon of the series, a Kakugane, which transforms into a buso renkin, a weapon that manifests into a weapon matching the characters personality, Tokiko revives Kazuki by using the kakugane as a replacement heart.
After flash backing, Kazuki activates the kakugane and deals serious damage to the homunculus, then Tokiko appears and deals the finishing blow.
Eventually Tokiko and Kazuki start working together to defeat the homunculi, meeting other buso renkin users, fighting different kinds of homunculi (That can also use buso renkin), and even fighting other (Human) buso renkin users.
Truthfully, you're not going to see anything mind blowing or genre changing, it's almost the epitome of what your standard shonen manga is like, though it does has an faster pace in it's story than most shonens do, you're never feel totally bored of reading through the story, and it does have very unique stand out characters such as the anti hero Papillon, and some what mentor to the main character, Caption Bravo.
If I have to speak of the story, it's basically battle after battle over battle, with story arcs passing by as fast as these battles, in between the parts is normally the comedy situations. Humor of buso renkin is mostly having the characters react to odd things (With Papillon having the most outrageous moments) that other characters do, yet (almost) never crossing over to complete randomness, however the majority of the jokes miss the mark entirely (Like in one scene one character explains a kendo move and some characters freak out from the random bit of information), not even getting a chuckle out of the reader. There's also some romantic comedy, but that and the romance stuff often feels crowbarred in.
The parts before the manga reaches the middle of the series is easily the best the manga has to offer, however towards the ending (That comes across too soon), it ends up with little explained details, a lack of proper character development for several characters (A good bit of them are there in name alone), and well the ending is, very well the lowest point of buso renkin.
The real shame about it is that the weapons in buso renkins are very unique, with abilities most likely to never up in other manga (coughbleachcough), though the concept of how these weapons operate is quite similar to a certain famous ongoing shonen manga (Actually I could name dozens of similarities other than the weapons).
The manga isn't bad, though it would be ludicrous to call it a great one, but typical or average would be best suited.
ART: The artwork at first was very basic, which was disappointing coming from the creator of the famous manga Rurouni Kenshin, Nobuhiro Watsuki, who just didn't seem very enthusiastic judging by the early artwork, but instantly (By instantly I mean 10 or so more chapters later) becomes quite good, however some battles are drawn questionably (The choreography of some battles are not even at the genre's level of manga battles), but some have a very unique style (I mean two or three battles are drawn that way, it looks like it was drawn with charcoal pencils).
The character designs are easily the best of artwork, and the buso renkin weapons look absolutely cool (Like out of a good looking video game).
OVERALL:
The Good:
+ A good pace of story telling.
+ Good character designs and overall very good artwork.
+ The main weapons are very unique.
+ Unique and likable characters.
The Bad:
- Lack of character development for a lot of the characters that appear in the second half of the story.
- Humor is pretty much hit and miss.
- Abrupt ending.
- Doesn't stand out, pretty typical.
At the least, it's generic, but at it's best, it's a fun light hearted shonen romp that hardly gets boring or too serious for it's own good. However, don't go into this expecting another shonen at the level of Rurourni Kenshin though, it's not up to that par.
