Benkei in New York

The title page reads: Diabolical Hard-boiled Story. With this goal in mind, we follow the life of Benkei. Drawing heavily from the Noir genre, this story is chock-full of murder, mystery and mafia. The story has as much development as you can get in 7 chapters from a combination of hits and Benkei’s personal life. Where the story falls short is the personal side. While that could be a stylistic choice, several developments happen behind curtains and later are just evident from the new state of affairs. 7/10 Story The art is nothing special either way. It is stronger during the assassination parts, but falters during moregeneric scenes and shots. 5/10 Art The characters are the strongest point of this manga. While several follow classic murder-story archetypes, this fits the overall style well. Benkei is the cold-blooded paid avenger he is advertised as, but he shows his depth outside of murdering. He shows not only a job-oriented pragmatism, but also his ability to deal with the people he associates with in his line of work. 8/10 Characters I personally enjoyed this manga quite a bit, although I was disappointed there wasn’t more. I liked the majority of the story as well, although it occasionally played too much to its tropes, with a foolish upstart Mafioso and the old, emotional Don, served by cutthroat second-in-commands. It was enjoyable seeing how Benkei handled all of these characters. 9/10 Enjoyment I would recommend this manga to anyone who likes noir-style stories. In this case, the synopsis is a pretty good indicator of how much enjoyment you’ll draw from it, I believe. 8/10 Overall