Mar 29, 2021
Story - 8/10
Kengan Omega takes place 2 years after the events of Kengan Ashura and follows 2 new MC's on their journey to become stronger; Narushima Koga and Gaoh Ryuki. Yamashita Kazuo (one of the Ashura MC's) is the leader of his own company which is known as Yamashita Trading Co. The Kengan Association is facing a major threat; a secret organization known as the Worm. To deal with this, they plan on performing a merger with another underground Organization known as Purgatory. A tournament is held where the winning organization absorbs the former, allowing them to have enough collective power to deal with
...
the enemy. The story has tied up several loose ends that have been left unclear in Kengan Ashura. From chapter 1 to 50, the story was much better than Ashura ever was. There was a clear focus for our weaker MC (Koga) and it showed his growth and development very well, as well as his budding friendship with Ryuki. The story is currently in the tournament arc, which has been a little bit disappointing, but more on that later.
Art - 9/10
Daro's art does not disappoint. He is excellent at drawing people and has continued to illustrate the series wonderfully. The fights look fluid and crisp and you can visualize the fights incredibly well with his artwork. The only criticism I have is that there are sometimes certain inconsistencies with certain characters' heights and/or proportions (i.e. Julius) and sometimes certain limbs get mixed up when attacks are drawn (i.e. A character attacks with a right leg but a left leg is shown in the next panel for the attacking foot). Compared to most other manga that I'm invested in, Kengan's art blows them out of the water.
Character - 8/10
In Ashura, one of the highlights of the series was that you got to know a bit about each and every character in detail and they were all wonderfully developed. Several of these characters have made recurring appearances in Omega, which was refreshing to see. Yamashita Kazuo's development is wonderful, and he shown almost none of the fearful and timid attitude that was prevalent in his character at the beginning of Ashura. Koga started off being a slightly unlikeable character but definitely grew onto me. His humility and hard work ethic remind me of many shonen protags, but he more enjoyable than most MC's (I can't exactly place a reason behind it tbh). As for our other protagonist, Ryuki, he is an enigma. He is a "blank slate" and has a very limited moral compass. He is neither bad nor good, and would become a product of the environment around him. Ryuki's development has been quite interesting. It will certainly be interesting to see how he develops after the current arc is complete. As for the new characters (Purgatory Gladiators), they have been somewhat lackluster so far. Memes aside, Carlos was a pretty neat character. Falcon was pretty interesting too, with his views on rationality shaping his life. Toa, Yumigahama, Lu Tian, and Alan were all incredibly boring one dimensional characters. Naidan was simply used as a plot device. Jurota was pretty cool though. For the Worm characters, Xia seems like an irredeemably evil (albeit pitiful) character but he is somewhat interesting and entertaining as well. Eddie is one of my favourite characters introduced simply because he radiates chad energy but that might just be me.
Enjoyment - 8/10
I really enjoyed this manga and would have given this a 9 or 10/10 right up until about the 4th match of the tournament. It was interesting to see how our new MC Koga was developing and it was enjoyable to see his little interactions with Ryuki. Most of the early plot was a totally different route compared to Ashura but it was certainly an enjoyable route. The main reason for my enjoyment of the Ashura series was for the fight scenes, but I feel like Kengan Omega has not delivered very well with the fight scenes. All the fights pre-tournament were not bad at all but they could not compare to the quality of fights found in the KAT. If I were to compare it to fights in Ashura, it would be the equivalent of the fights Ohma had before the KAT. Now, onto the major fights. The Kengan vs. Purgatory tournament has definitely been lackluster as far as fights go. Round 1 was ok at best. Round 2 was excellent and reminiscent of the high quality fights found in Kengan Ashura. Round 3 was also not bad. However, from Round 4 up until where I have currently read to (Round 8), the fights haven't been nearly as good. I've been disappointed with the quality of the fights but there are still a few left to go in the tournament so hopefully they do not disappoint.
Overall - 8/10
Would I recommend it? For anyone that has read the Kengan Ashura series, absolutely. If you haven't read Ashura, I'd suggest reading that first. This series is still ongoing so I'll update my review every once in a while, but so far, this manga is definitely worth reading.
Reviewer’s Rating: 8
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