Buso Renkin, Vol. 1 (1) Paperback – Illustrated, August 1, 2006

Buso Renkin. A series with characters weapons and attacks similar to that of Rurouni Kenshin. Written and created by the same person, Nobuhiro Watsuki. I thoroughly enjoyed the read. However it is not the same as kenshin, it should belong in its own category, however it is most definitely for action fans

It was drawn in details, it attracted most of Watsuki fans, for its reminder of Rurouni Kenshin in some themes.

I enjoyed this book in paperback, but I would like this available on Comixology

Just finished reading it for the first time and am really happy with it. I have seen the first episode of the anime (sub) so the starting events in chapter one weren't a complete surprise but I did like it. The rest of the book was good: action, a bit of humor to break it up and so far I like the side characters.I try not to give spoilers and the description of the volume is on the page and in some of the reviews here, so I'll just say that based on the first volume I'd have to recommend it for reading.I haven't read any of the author's other works although 'Rurouni Kenshin' is on my library list in a week or to. Reading this has made me more interested in it than I was from just hearing it was a classic :-)

Not having read Watsuki's more famous work, Rurouni Kenshin, I came into this first book with a clean slate. And I have to admit, I was fairly underwhelmed. The story fails to find any new ground: a bog standard 'shounen' type of power up story but without the worldbuilding that made series such as Bleach so enjoyable. The villain is kind of silly and Watsuki himself admits in the first chapter that he was going for a more 'fun' type of series with more humor. Unfortunately, the 'humor' here feels forced and there's not many laughs to be found around a vapid airhead main character and some really silly 'weapons'.Story: Kazuki is your standard happy go lucky kind of school kid who, when he sees a girl in a strange school uniform in trouble, rushes to her aid. He dies, wakes up the next day, and soon discovers that his heart has been replaced by that girl with a buso renkin - a weapon he can manifest. The girl, it turns out, is fighting those who use the technology for evil (they turn a person into man-eating monsters). They will team up to find papillon mask - a fellow student at Kazuki's high school who is changing people who were mean to him.Although this sounds like a horror manga, there really is very little about death or murders in here, despite the premise being about destroying creatures who are killing people. This first volume pretty much deals with 'monster of the week' as Kazuki has to learn his weapon (a spear) with the help of Tokiko - the mysterious girl who saved his life and gave him the buso renkin. Power ups ensue.The cast is supposed to be quirky but unfortunately most feel like they were put there to set up an awkward or amusing situation to generate humor. I didn't find any of it funny and it was hard to get into the story with so many 2-dimensional cliche types of characters running around.I'd have to say that this skews pretty young. We're used to much more sophisticated storytelling and much wilder world building than we're given with Buso Renkin. As such, it just never captured my attention or made me want to read more.

Buso Renkin is a manga, and later anime, from the creator of the Rurouni Kenshin series, Nobuhiro Watsuki. The story is a simple one. The alchemy that was abandoned in Europe centuries ago, the stuff of Nicholas Flammel and the search for immortality, secretly did produce results. There were two types of alchemical discoveries, the homunculus and the Buso Renkin.The homunculus is a plant and animal hybrid type of organism that takes control of a victim and eventually kills them, coming to life in their brain and nervous system, thus taking over their bodies. The Buso Renkin, on the other hand, is a weapon used to defeat such creatures. The homunculus eats different things, but mostly eats people, and so you can see where this is going.To say that the above premise has some elements in common with modern vampire myths would be an understatement. All you need to do is replace "homunculus" with "vampire" and "blood" with "entire body", and you have the same concept. And then you have the vampire hunters....Anyways, our story begins when our young hero, Kazuki, stumbles across a girl about to be eaten by a monster, and tries to save her, getting brutally killed for his trouble. Unbeknownst to Kazuki, and the monster for that matter, the girl was an "alchemic warrior", a holder of a Buso Renkin. She was luring the monster out so she could kill it and save the local human populace from being eaten.The girl, feeling both sorry and touched by Kazuki's unnecessary, but noble, death, brings him back to life with a Buso Renkin. Upon discovering what happened to him, Kazuki vows to join the girl, named Tokiko, in battling the monsters of his city.Buso Renkin is a very different comic than Rurouni Kenshin. While Kenshin had it's share of fantastical stories, to be sure, it was grounded in a thoroughly non-fantasy world. Everything was shonen, or kick-ass and manly man, but it was still within the bounds of a non-fantastical setting. This is a thoroughly magical, fantastical story.The only part I didn't like was that the tale has none of the moral components that Watsuki put in the Kenshin stories. Instead, it was a typical fantasy story, at least until the second volume which I am currently reading, but this is a review of the first volume so that is irrelevant for now.All in all, I enjoy the second volume more than this first volume being here reviewed, but it was still a fun story, though not as good, in my opinion, as Rurouni Kenshin.

Es el primero de diez mangas en el que conocemos a Kazuki, que después de querer ayudar a una chica (Tokiko) en una situación peliaguda es herido mortalmente, por que para salvarlo le dan el Kokugane que le ayudara a curar las heridas recibidas y unirse en la batalla contra los homúnculos.Es una lectura ligera y agradable, pero no es Rurouni Kenshin, y se nota esa debilidad en la obra a la cual, si se le hubiera dado más tiempo al autor, nos hubiera dado sorpresas que ya no veremos.