Kengan Omega

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Like Kengan Ashura? You'll love Omega!

Easy review aside, KO is the sequel to the hit martial arts manga and takes place 2 years after the Kengan Annihilation tournament and follows two new protagonists, Kogu Naroshima and Ryuki Gaoh, a hot headed street fighter, and a mysterious, calm, yet secluded from reality warrior from the "Inside", the same as our previous protagonist, Tokita Ohma, and their journey into the Kengan matches and a mysterious organization destroying it from the inside called, "The Worm."

Kengan's fights and art are as good as ever, impactful action, detailed artwork and martial arts explanations, and the fighting banter is as ... good as ever. Omega is as strong as it's predecessor and may easily well go beyond it as well.

Kengan Omega, the sequel with so much potential. Mostly wasted potential.

Kengan Omega is the sequel to one of my absolute favourite series of all time, and it does not hold the torch to its predecessor. Omega takes place two years after the final events of Ashura and follows a new protagonist duo in the form of Gaoh Ryuki and Koga Narushima. They act as Kengans Gon and Killua.

The main premise of Omega is following the journey of Koga and his desire to become a stronger fighter. Ryuki serves as his partner in his journey and provides a hint of mystery and intrigue. We aren't ... told a lot about Ryuki, but what we are told is very important and will raise the eyebrows of everyone who read Ashura.

Slightly further into the plot the main villains of the series begin to develop. A secretive organization pulling strings in the underworld. We also learn of Omegas version of the KAT. The Kengan vs Purgatory Tournament. A high stakes tournament pinning our Ashura favourites against interesting new characters in a team based format. This is where the story begins to fall apart. Slight spoiler warning.

When it's time for the tournament to roll around, the MC gets completely sidelined. We lose the protagonist of the series in favour of old characters. All the progress and evolution we see the MC go through is all wasted for the large majority of what is published right now. All the new characters we see in the KvP are largely irrelevant. Many of the opponents we see are cool characters, but that doesn't matter when they're largely just fodder for team Kengan. The fights are all over the place. Some fights are total garbage with "who thought this was a good idea" writing behind it. Some are intense, intriguing and extremely enjoyable fights to witness. But overall the new opponents, which are hyped up to be fighters which could easily compete in the KAT just end up as pathetic punching bags for team Kengan that can only achieve a win by cheesing the fight. This series has a serious issue with consequences. This applies to the main villains of the series as well, not just the tournament opponents. It feels like this series exists as a way to power scale old characters to obscene heights, and not to tell a new story.

The art also is pretty incredible. Much love to Daro.

Despite all my issues, I like Kengan Omega, but this series cannot share the spotlight with Kengan Ashura.

TLDR: This series has so much potential that it completely wastes in favour of telling a story with little to no real consequences that would rather scale up old characters than develop new ones.

This review contains very slight spoilers. Shoutouts to lewando321 for proof reading.
EDIT2. Lowered score to 3 due reasons I will mention down below.

I stumbled upon Kengan Ashura on Netflix back in 2020, I binged it, then I binged the manga. I absolutely loved every page of it, every single panel, once I've heard there was a sequel I knew that once again I would be hooked. Did it met my expectations? It exceeded the expectations with flying colors, the characters had great chemistry going between them, the art was amazing as always and overall the manga was promising.

So why would I give it a ... 5? What happened?

Well... Imagine creating a likeable protagonist with a very good character development, who wishes to catch up to the rest of the cast, giving him a training arc to show his improvement and development as a member of the crew. What would you do with him as a writer? Continue his adventure? Expand on his character and his past or whatever? Well.. In what would appear to be absolute genius of Sandrovich, he decided to bench him and show him from time to time for two or three panels. I wouldn't have much problem with it if it wasn't an ongoing issue for more than half of the manga's run.

The fights are incredibly predictable and there's little space given for character development outside of few flashbacks and backstories for every character introduced. With KA you had room to breath in between the fights, to see how the characters develop and what's going on behind the scenes.

But those two things aren't the worst offenses, the worst offense is how author had this beautiful conclusion to the story in KA but decided to completely crossed it out with two chapters in KO. I won't be going into details because I don't want to spoil it but it's just terrible. Not AOT kind of terrible, just terrible on it's own right.

As of now I see the light of hope for the series because recent chapters were good, surprisingly really good compared to what I would call a "festival of "mediocreness"".

Know that I absolutely adored KA (and still do) as if it was the best thing in the world. It kickstarted my interest in reading mangas and in martial arts. I am saying this so that you know that everything I wrote in here came from a very emotional place and that Kengan has influenced my life.

Don't let my review stop you from reading KA or KO, both of them are absolutely worth reading even if KO is of questionable quality as of now (Though as I said, it seems we are finally heading back into the right direction with recent chapters).

I kept some issues and explanations of them out of this review because I would need to spoil huge parts of KA and KO.

I might change the review as the series goes on or delete it altogether if the series actually steers into the right direction and my points won't be valid anymore.

EDIT. Hey, the points here are still valid, the recent arc has been completed and it's been... underwhelming. Between few good chapters here and there, nothing changed in my opinion on Omega. While the art is still incredible, the story is still lacking with nowhere near as much impact as Ashura did.

EDIT2 cont. Sandrovich plays far too safe in many situations resulting in the fights either being predictable or absurd. I reckon he is being regulated by the editors or the publisher because he didn't do something like this in Ashura.