However, as much as I love this manga there are three criticisms that I just have to address.
MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD, STOP HERE.
Scroll if you finished the series or are just interested in what I have to say. I really recommend reading the whole series first, but hey, I'm not you.
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Every companion not named Bat, Lin, and Mamiya just dies. Rei's death was touching and a fitting way to end his character. But after that every new companion's storyline becomes painfully obvious. Kenshiro meets a character, the character tries to hurt him but doesn't actually want to kill him. Kenshiro doesn't kill him, the character becomes a key companion during the arc, and the character dies at a fitting time. With a couple of variations, this happens a lot. It doesn't mean that these characters aren't good, but its so cut and dry that I knew what was going to happen to Ein the second I saw him. The only companions (outside the 3 that I said before) that this doesn't happen to is Ryu, Toki, and maybe someone else I am missing. The sadness of Kenshiro's losses is what helps him be so strong but its so copy and paste that it irks me.
The "there can be one successor but the parent/someone does not want to kill the child/children so it becomes a conflict later on" cliche is used more than enough in this manga. I don't have too much to say about this except it's just annoying that it's used more than once.
A lot of the Hokuto abilities are insane, but some are just used once and just for convenience. Most pressure points are explained and balanced and there even is the weird arc where Amiba pretends to be Toki and thinks he understands how to accurately and correctly press points and create his own point techniques, which backfires and explodes his hands. But some of the points just are there to progress the plot. Oh Bat is dead? Well Kenshiro pressed some points and now he is alive again. Airi poured poison in her eyes to blind herself but Kenshiro is able to cure it with pressure points. Maybe I missed something but this is just "well Kenshiro and Hokuto Shinken are that powerful" to the point where if he wants to do something, Kenshiro will just do it.
These are just my criticisms as my praises of the series would be 10 times the length of this review. I do not regret reading this in the slightest and despite my criticisms I have been recommending this to anyone that will listen.
