Buso Renkin

One morning, high-school student Kazuki Muto wakes up gasping from a nightmare in which he saved a girl from a monster, which turned and skewered him through the heart. But he almost immediately learns that it wasn't a dream. He did see alchemist-warrior Tokiko Tsumura about to get attacked by a semi-mechanical creature called a homunculus, and when he got in the way, it killed him. Impressed with his bravery, Tokiko saved his life by replacing his destroyed heart with a kakugane, a physical manifestation of alchemy that responds to the user's fighting spirit. Tokiko suggests Kazuki should just go back to his ordinary life, but instead, he begins manifesting a giant fighting lance--a kakugane-formed soul weapon called a Buso Renkin--and using it to take his place as an alchemist-warrior in his own right.

This draws him into a secret battle between a warrior society and the homunculi, which eat humans. At the moment, one homunculus master is hiding at his school, creating new homunculi by inserting mechanical embryo-like devices into plants and animals, giving them sentience and monstrous powers. Tokiko and Kazuki work their way through the minions toward the briefly glimpsed master, whom Kazuki and Tokiko refer to as "Papillon," or "the man in the butterfly mask," but along the way, Tokiko gets infected with a homunculus embryo, which threatens to destroy her mind and take over her body in a week if she doesn't get an antidote directly from the embryo's uncooperative creator.

That plotline resolves halfway through the 13 episodes of the first Buso Renkin box set, but once the mystery of Papillon is revealed, another, far larger threat immediately manifests, leading to another series of conflicts, and the series' first-half box set concludes on a cliffhanger, with a massive showdown at Kazuki's school. As Tokiko's master arrives to take control of the situation, Kazuki works to master his Buso Renkin, in spite of the passive interference from his sweet, dim-witted sister Mahiro and his dorky friends, who are sure he keeps skipping school because he and Tokiko are off somewhere making out.

Infinite diversity in infinite monsters

Buso Renkin is the brainchild of manga writer-artist Nobuhiro Watsuki, creator of the Rurouni Kenshin series, and he brings a lot of creativity to it, mostly manifesting in the many varied forms of the homunculi (a giant frog creature, an evil flower-woman, a man with a moon for a head, etc.) and the Buso Renkin, which are different for each user. (Tokiko's is the "Valkyrie skirt," four "execution scythes" on robotic arms emanating from clasps around her thighs. Very weird.)

Still, coming from him, the series is a disappointment; where Kenshin was groundbreaking and heartbreaking, this is a fairly average monster-of-the-week series. True, it does diffuse the monster-per-episode pattern by introducing longer plot arcs, and by emphasizing character development over time, particularly in the Tokiko/Kazuki relationship. From the start, he's appealingly serious and devoted, a warrior wannabe who never quails, no matter how much punishment he sucks up, and his perseverance slowly brings Tokiko around. The problem is, he wants to protect her, and she doesn't want to be protected and doesn't think he's ready to be a warrior, so the dynamic gets exhaustingly wordy, Dragonball Z style, as every battle is preceded by a lengthy argument about Kazuki's physical capacity to win the battles he refuses to turn from. Instead of Kenshin's dynamic animated flash, Buso Renkin offers up battles that are half conversations, with long mid-combat speeches from both sides. Add in the awkwardly integrated comedy interludes, where Mahiro burbles admirably about her brother and his friends freak out and flail about his "girlfriend," and the plot rarely seems to be moving forward at sufficient speed.

One exception comes after the first plot arc wraps up, as a pair of siblings with a tragic history befriend Kazuki and Tokiko and then are set against them; the shifting dynamics of friendship and enmity are neatly handled, and the issues are complicated enough to provide several large, emotional twists of a type familiar to Kenshin fans. Buso Renkin could use more such surprises to enliven all the endless chatter; without them, it's a solid, entertaining series, albeit one that would probably be more enjoyable in digest form.