About the Mangaka

Watsuki Nobuhiro has become famous with the Kenshin series, which had a long running (95 episode anime series, 3 OVA’s and a movie) anime, as well as several other spin off and alternate universe manga. However he’s also the mangaka behind Buso Renkin, which has an equally popular following, though only ran for 10 volumes.

About the Manga

Sadly, this volume doesn’t get any better from the first. If anything it gets worse.

The over size is a huge problem, three volumes in one is to much, price aside it’s cumbersome and hard, not to mention damned uncomfortable to hold.

Watsuki’s story is truly a work of art, and if Viz had done even a half decent job with it, it would of been an awesome read. The saving grace of this volume are the colour pages, and the extra story, which is where we get to see Hiten Mitsurugi at it’s best, in the hands of a true master

The good point with the over size, as I said last time, is that the art is allowed to breath more, and the gutter problem is none existent. For some reason, despite all this extra space, Viz still manage to cut off words.

They also seem to have this fixation with treating their readers as imbeciles with their stupid “<<READ THIS WAY” at the top of every other bleeding page. I mean, even a total noob to manga will get the hint fairly quickly over which is the back and which is the front!!

On the plus side are two elements that make up a bit of lost ground, white paper and a decent font.

Sadly however those alone aren’t enough to save this release. While the font may be a good, heavy, easily read one, the translation and editing sucks. The translation for the most part doesn’t seem to bad, the problem however comes in the re-writes the script clearly went through.

I’ve no idea why Viz do re-writes, but in this one there’s even less reason for it than normal. Usually, I get the impression they do the re-writes to tame things down, so they can make the series fit for a wider audience, thus increasing sales. This time however Kenshin is given the Older Teen rating (16+) so I don’t see the need to dumb it down.

Also the times they have done the re-writes it’s so blatantly obvious. It’s clear the person doing the writing hadn’t read the volumes, and knows nothing of the story, because the new words are so out of character and flaky it’s unbelievable.

Then we have my old argument of SFX, Viz translated them all and replaced them with english variants. I’ve never liked this to be honest, I’m for keeping things a pure as possible (one of the reasons I’m struggling to learn Japanese hehe). Most publishers leave the SFX and put the english translation some where close by, I wish Viz had done this. The english SFX have a habit of interfering with the art, and frankly, they just look yucky.

Then we have the honorifics again, it’s great that they leave names un-westernised, but the sporadic use of the honorifics makes me wish they’d left them out. If your going to do it Viz, do it right!!!

It’s a shame Viz still haven’t learnt the lessons other publisher *cough Ten Press and Del Rey *cough* have.

Sadly, because of this, and the problems from the previous volume, I’m relegating this series to my Junk Pile. That’s the list of titles you should avoid like a plague, and not waste your cash buying!!

I’ve already ordered volume three, so I’ll do a review of that when it arrives, but that will be the last of this series, I’m officially dropping it.

Where to Buy

Head on over to the Book Depository, though to be honest I recommend you save your cash and buy something else, such as the Vampire hunter D novels!!