Riki-Oh is a young kid with great intelligence and an ungodly amount of strength who finds himself in a max security prison serving out his 3 year sentence for assault. unbeknownst to the reader, this prison will be a very large hint into finding out the true secrets about his long lost biological family. Thats about as much story i can really give without spoiling too much because any other hints gives away the greatness. Its a classic shounen manga from the 90s so the story is a little generic and repetitive as Riki-Oh goes through the same process of endless searching and hardship to find each family member. It looses points on the creative aspect of things but the very end is definitely worth it because it ends up taking a left turn into some pretty meta topics about religion and spiritualism and why humans act the way they do. (the quote about really give you an idea about how hardcore this manga it)
the art is definitely appealing but most panels are nothing to write home about. The very large scenery panels are gorgeous and the fighting scenes are pretty rad and can get REALLY gorey and heavily detailed which kinda reminded me of Berserk at some moments (which is AWESOME for those really into that kind of stuff).
The characters were definitely unique. The "good" characters were kinda bland and were usually never seen of again. Theres a point where this one semi-major bad guy's daughter falls in love with Riki-Oh and she was literally in maybe two chapters and was never mentioned or seen of again. Riki-Oh's material arts teacher was a stereotypical character that is kinda important to progress Riki-Oh's story but he also was barely in the manga at all and only had one lame fight scene. The villains are a totally different story! Every single "mini boss" Riki-Oh meets are all interconnected in non obvious ways which is good because being able to guess the plot correctly takes the fun out of reading. These mini bosses are also cleverly woven into the plot and they are all really different and they all have individual backstories that all give hints to Riki-Oh's heritage and the fate of his family. The "main bosses" he encounters are WILD! the fight scenes are also a pleasure to read and theres always so much drama involved
be warned though, Riki-Oh is still a manga geared towards a younger male audience so the beginning will come off as really brash and appealing to the lowest denominator, but thats only to make sure that the target audience is hooked. As the story progressed and the mysteries are turning up more questions than answers is when things really reach a whole new level. The story as always had some root in religion and spiritualism (spoiler: if you havent noticed that theres a star of david on his hand). the beginning introduces it but keeps it vague, however as the plot thickens, that star begins to represent more than just the power Riki-Oh possesses. Without giving too much away, the story goes into jewish refugee settlements into china during WWII, figuring out the meaning of life and why humans do what they do, it touches on the extremist views of judo-christian religions as well as the nazi agenda and so on. It does reach a point where there are literal bible scriptures and stories played out.
All i can say, to rap things up as short and sweet as humanly possible: the beginning starts of slow but hold out because it is SO worth the ending. some people might think that the ending was mellow-dramatic but i personally didnt. I feel very satisfied with it and would recommend to anyone who is in the mood to have some mindless fun while also psychoanalyzing nazis and wondering about how the world was created
