Ranked #992

Kenji (Manga)

I stumbled upon Kenji manga when looking for good manga to read one day and boy was I lucky. Kenji is not very popular, and is not for everyone, the manga goes through much history and plenty of detail on aspects of martial arts. All this information is intertwined with a great story, but if your not into an informative session this manga is probably not for you.

Kenji manga is a manga that revolves around the main character Kenji and his experiences. Ever since Kenji was little, he loved martial arts because of his grandfather who was a master and taught him. Kenji would often get into fights because of his mental state of mind as a child but becomes more mature and less rash as he grows older. His grandfather one day leaves to China in search of his fellow martial artist peers, and leaves Kenji to train with what he has taught him. Kenji than spends the rest of his life pursuing a life of martial arts and at the same time he searches for his grandfather who never came back from China.

I believe the story of Kenji is outstanding, a great thing about it as well is the fact that most of it is realistic with few exaggerations. The art is not the best, some may not like the drawing but to me the small strangeness in art does not distract from the story (strangeness because some of the people look like gorillas). A good part of the art however is how the movements of the martial arts are drawn, the author takes his time to show step by step the movement of techniques. The character's are great, each character introduced plays an important role in Kenji's life, some being rivals and others being friends. Every girl in the manga however seems to have some type of attraction towards him making the characters a little bit unrealistic but each is introduced thoroughly and doesn't generally just disappear.

Enjoyment of this manga I give a 10 because I look forward to all the chapters, every fight you want Kenji to destroy his opponent and that doesn't always happen, but the next time Kenji will never fail to surprise both the audience and his opponent. Overall I give this manga a rating of 9, mainly because the drawing isn't beautiful, and informative lessons may not be loved by all. To me its a 10, to you it may be a 7, but if you ask me its worth a try.

Last notes: this manga came out a while ago but no one took interest in making translations for it until recently, the manga is now being translated by few people and is contently coming out every other day. Currently the manga is just recently reaching volume 13 (on 5/25/10), and in a month it should be near volume 15, so if your going to read now would not be a bad time to catch on. read more

The character development is extremely slow and the story is bland. Basically, reading through this was as interesting as watching paint dry. If you like a slow story and reading the same thing every arc then I would highly recommend this.

For the rating I give it a 4/10 overall. Though this is along the lines of what I like to read, it is executed very poorly.