I actually have a themed title this time and everything so without further ado let me regale you with my impressions of the Busou Renkin 武総錬金 shounen (boys) manga (japanese comics) series.
The series ended about a couple of years ago after barely 10 volumes (the 10th volume had the final chapter, an unrelated but similar one shot manga and a final bonus story) is by the creator of the popular Rurouni Kenshin series Watsuki Nobuhiro (family name first from here on in). For the most part the series is about the male protagonist Mutou Kazuki and the female protagonist Tsumura Tokiko using the “alchemical armaments” (busou renkin) which manifest from the alchemically created alloy known as “kakugane” to fight against the “alchemical creatures” known as “homunculus”. In other words it’s a whole lot of nonsense. To me the emphasis on hidden alchemy in a world otherwise contemporary to ours (as opposed to open usage of alchemy in an alternate world like Full Metal Alchemist) and the way the story plays out is ridiculously similar to Le Cirque de Karakuri/karakuri circus (からくりサーカス) and Kazuki looks too much like Sagara Sousuke from Full Metal Panic while Tokiko with a big scar across her face from a blade is reminiscent of the titular character from Rurouni Kenshin. Well supposedly the sources for all such things (aside from Tokiko) are different and it is of course true that I am familiar with many incidental works. But those are just some of the many things that stuck out to me (probably because I like full metal panic and Karakuri Circus).
That said, even though I have a pile of criticisms for the series I actually rather like it. The main reason for this is Tokiko. The only times you see such idealized strong and capable female characters is in works by males. I suppose this is a similar reason as to why I liked Shakugan no Shana (the first anime series of it that is) even though it had a pathetic male lead. And as it turned out for the first time in a long time I was satisfied by the ending. There is a moderately long final bonus(I’m assuming it wasn’t serialized) chapter in the 10th volume of the manga (there’s also a “one-shot” work that’s a bit amusing which has apparently now been turned into a new series) which I found highly amusing and was a good note to end the series on after it had frankly otherwise ended mostly by sweeping all kinds of things under the rug. So just take my recommendation for the series if you can stomach a shounen fighting manga. As to why I read shounen fighting manga even though I always lambast such things it’s because that’s about all I can read properly with my level of japanese and at my age I’d rather read a vaguely occult fighting series than a school girl’s romance story (which is possibly even something I could translate if I tried hard) even though both are tedious.
That said, I get the impression that rather than being planned for the length that the series ended out at it was a little bit closer to it being canceled. Certainly I did not anticipate the series ending when it did. But at about the halfway point of the series the final objective was introduced and then things were kind of pushed along from there. Arguably with the extremely vague premise from my summary which is the hallmark of shounen manga so that it can be serialized for as long as it’s popular it could have gone on forever like One Piece is poised to do (the author of One Piece, Oda Eiichiro is a former assistant of Watsuki). And perhaps it would have done so if things went differently, but there was definitely some reason for it ending other than trying to keep the story a respectable length rather than having it constantly repeating itself (One Piece repeats the exact same pattern(s) over and over again). My guess was that it ultimately wasn’t that popular in comparison to the likes of the big 4 of Jump (prince of tennis (did that ever end?), bleach (may or may not be winding down… in a year or three), one piece (I doubt it will end), and naruto (probably will not end for a while due to popularity but is poised to end at any time) since it wasn’t particularly original. I could say the same thing about Anzai Nobuyuki’s work MAR which other than the setting was almost exactly the same as his previous work “flame of Rekka” (烈火の炎 rekka no honoo that’s all the different kanji used for “fire” right there). hmm well honestly the whole world is in kind of a slump right now so that’s inevitable right?
This may or may not be the time and place to muse on the subject since I probably could have gotten another post out of it, but I think that it’s a lot tougher to stay fresh as a deadline restricted established artist than it is to come up with something that stands out when you yourself stand out. There’s a lot of pressure for a successful artist (writer, creator, director, illustrator, sculptor, painter, whatever) to have the same or greater success with subsequent works. So even when the artist in question does actually improve, it might not be enough to meet expectations. For example, almost all aspects of Busou Renkin are superior to Rurouni Kenshin, starting with art. Originality is actually an issue with both series but having alchemy as a theme in manga is by and far less common than having “samurai and ninjas” as a theme in manga so there is that. But the timing was better for Kenshin, a lot better, and so, in my opinion, the weakness of Watsuki as a story teller was more exposed in busou renkin since the timing for it was frankly terrible (the same could be said of watsuki’s other failed work “gun blaze west” but honestly that one just kind of sucked anyway).
Hmm that timing thing is something else I could probably turn into its own entry but I can’t remember things that well from the last millennium (ah what a great feeling it is to say “last millennium”) and as it’s not like I was in japan and it was harder to get ahold of anime and manga then than now I may not have been really that aware of the situation. But let’s see, as far as anime anyway in the 80s I think of mecha series, in the 90s I think of crappy love comedy series, in the 00s I think of works that are just repeating everything that came before them with recently an emphasis being placed on somewhat “aimed at otaku” series. Hmm yeah even now I don’t really have a good sense of what’s that popular in manga although it seems like action series are still pretty popular for shounen manga and in shoujo manga the most popular series include one female character surrounded by lots of male characters. Which is amusingly the inverse of the succesful 90s “harem anime” formula (Tenchi Muyo always being cited in the west as an originator of this) where you had one guy surrounded by a lot of girls who liked him for some reason. Typically there are slightly better reasons in these shoujo series I’m thinking of, and also there are usually only 2 or 3 characters actively pursuing the lead rather than 6 or 10, and the emphasis is generally social drama rather than action, observational comedy rather than slapstick, and so on but really…
By the way you might notice that I’m saying that the types of series that are popular now are like busou renkin, hell some of them are even by people with a relation to the guy responsible for it, but the more popular a type of story is the harder it is to gain distinction for that type of story. And so the ones with the most exposure typically are the ones to flourish. Ah now we might be moving into business models rather than creative trends so I’ll drop off here.
Exactly what “business acumen” a parasite rambling blogger has I’ll leave to your imagination.
