Rekka no Honoo

May 15, 2008

VK11

Recommended

The 1990's saw the rise of many of the kind of anime that people classify as your "tournament" shounen anime. Where you have your ragtag group of fighters - usually kids still in their mid-teens - that acquire supernatural powers and must enter a tournament to essentially save a precious friend, destory a certain evil, or just simply to save humanity. This style of anime, if you would choose to call it that, was prominently owned by the Dragon Ball series, and to a lesser extent, Yu Yu Hakusho. There were several "under the radar" animes that followed this style of presentation, ... but fizzled out in the popularity department. Enter Flame of Recca. Although not as popular as the aforementioned series, one could arguably categorize it into a second tier as far as what people will instantly think of when they hear the tournament-style anime in the '90s. Although Flame of Recca did have its own few wrinkles to add to the mix, ultimately, what is seen in the final product is your standard shounen anime where your high school kids gain the powers to defeat the evil, but is still highly enjoyable to read.

The story of Recca actually had a lot of originality for the time (first published in 1995). However, it was lacking complexity. The storyline could simply be broken up into two separate arcs. The first arc with your tournament and the second arc containing your save the world theme. Backtracking a bit, Flame of Recca is a story about a kid named Recca, whose dream is to become a ninja. He quickly saves Sakoshita Yanagi, who he ends up swearing his allegiance to and throughout the story, refers to as hime, meaning princess.

However, little did Recca know that he is actually from a ninja clan that existed some 400 years ago and because of his ties to this clan, it starts a chain of events that will test his mettle against many kinds of enemies - most prominently Kurei (main enemy of the first arc) and Kurei's adoptive father (the main enemy of the second arc). Generally, the plot can be summed into the following: Kurei's adoptive father wants to attain immortality and Yanagi - our princess who happens to have healing powers - is the object of his insane dream and he will stop at nothing to kidnap her and assimilate her powers.

The art in Flame of Recca is good. There is a good amount of detail given to all of the fights, environments, characters, etc. For the most part, it is easy to follow, with the exception being some of the later fights in the second arc, which get a little crazy. Otherwise, I personally didn't have too much problem with it.

This story's characters are a prime example of a manga-ka choosing quantity over quality. He introduces a plethora of different characters that he spends approximately a half a chapter to at the most two, explaining their past. And what's even worse is that the manga-ka ends up using the a bunch of the same characters over and over again in the fights throughout the entire story. Though it is still offset with the introduction of new characters within each mini-arc as well, so it prevents it from becoming too repetitive. The main "good" characters are your typical ones that you encounter - a silent, cold-hearted swordsman, a bully rival of Recca's who has more brawn than brains, a female childhood friend and a 13-year old genius kid. However, each of these characters are developed extremely well over the course of the manga and they complement Recca and Yanagi nicely and really help bring alive the story.

As I alluded to earlier, the manga-ka does recycle a lot of the old villains and uses them for later battles, which ends up getting repetitive. They get beaten the same way both times, but just by different people or slightly different circumstances. Otherwise, the manga is really enjoyable as the author was able to throw in enough comedy to balance out the seriousness of the story. You can't help but to absolutely fall in love with Yanagi's cuteness and admire Recca's bravery. A lot of the powers unveiled are really interesting and unique, although a bit on the freaky side. The freakiness is especially apparent in the second arc, where you'll be encountering more of the supernatural aspect of the story, as the villain uses genetic altering to create insane looking monsters.

In the end, Flame of Recca is more of an old-school manga, but completed in 2002. Given that it is 300+ chapters long, you would hope to see the plot have some kind of complexity - or thinking situations, but they are sorely lacking, as the story is pretty straightforward from start to finish. Despite the fact that this story doesn't involves many complex situations and plot lines, and doesn't delve too deep in many of the character's pasts, the plethora of characters and character developments help offsets those weaknesses. If you're looking for that tournament style shounen, superpower anime that is coupled with a "saving the world theme," and in addition, are looking for some good quality comedy and romance, Flame of Recca is something you should consider on undertaking.

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Jun 28, 2008

infinity

Recommended

-- [ Flame of Recca Manga - 33 volumes / 329 chapters ] --

One line: "Good art. Good story. Ok characters. What more to ask?"

Flame of Recca (FoR) is one manga where you will see the evolution of a mangaka's style clearly. It has a good plot, interesting characters, and a good bit of ecchiness. It definitely makes a good read.

- [ Art - 9/10 ] -

In the first volumes, the art was no good. The eyes were exaggerated, as well as the various body parts. It was plain old-style manga drawings. However, as the volumes move on, you see the style of the mangaka ...

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Jan 11, 2015

Beobachter

Recommended

Flame of Recca is what I'd call a comfort food of shonen combat manga, with the closest comparison I can think of to be Yoshihiro Togashi's Yuuyu Hakusho. There's nothing particularly original in it, but it's still well-executed enough to potentially be really enjoyable.

Every shonen combat manga needs a cool conceit, and for Recca it's ninja. The titular main character Recca Hanabishi is a ninja superfan to the extent that he's trying to live the ninja lifestyle in modern era, which in his mind necessitates looking for a master to serve. Said master ends up being Yanagi Sakoshita, a timid girl he bonded ... over their mutual secret power; Recca can conjure flame from his hand, and Yanagi can heal wounds. There's also an extinct ninja clan who played an important role in the backstory, but as a whole, don't really expect anything resembling authentic ninja experience from FoR. Instead of kunai, shuriken, and stealthing around, you'd be seeing a lot more of superpowered people, superpowered weapons (made by the aforementioned ninja clan), underground assassin group, underground tournament, genetic abominations, time travel shenanigan, etc. You know, the good ol' tropes that I and (presumably) you love.

FoR pretty much nailed the characters. I like Nobuyuki Anzai's design, as he is equally capable in drawing appealing characters who are easy on the eyes, cute chibi-fied effect, AND things that literally looked like they just crawled out from Hell itself (the latter would be increasingly prominent toward the end of series, as Anzai's art gets darker and more detailed). Personality-wise, the main cast is based on types that you've probably seen before; Recca is the hot-blooded leader, Yanagi is the pure-hearted girl and designated damsel in distress, Tokiya is the icy rival, Fuuko is the tomboyish action girl, and Domon is the boneheaded brawler. Thing is, this group has a genuinely strong dynamics and even if their character arcs might be very predictable, they're well-fleshed enough to invoke some emotional investment whether they're struggling against an opponent, trying to master their weapon/skill, or simply bantering with each other. The same thing also applies to the antagonists and supporting characters, to the extent that even a high number of one-and-done mooks has decent amount of personality and backstory. Impressively, while the cast of allies, enemies, and enemies turned allies (if you enjoy this particular trope, you're definitely in for a treat) steadily grows, it never gets out of control and neither does the main spotlight stray too much from the core group of characters; something that other combat series with bloated cast often don't get to say (*coughbleachcough*).

The plot structure is very straightforward: more or less, it consisted of an obligatory introduction arc, a tournament arc, and three dungeon arcs (one before the tournament, two afterward). By 'dungeon arc', I mostly refer to a particular set-up where our heroes have to advance through a series of one-on-one and occasional tag fights before they reached the big bad guy waiting at the end of a certain labyrinthine structure. Again, there's nothing imaginative or realistic about those (*you have to think the bad guys would've had way more success by just ganging up on our heroes from the start instead of going through all the trouble of setting up a video game-y set of challenges), but they're ultimately just an excuse to showcase the individual battles. It's a good thing then that Anzai's battle scenes are arguably where the series shined the most, as they're well-paced, easy to follow, and feature cool & varied abilities, weapons, and resolutions. The tournament arc (*an aspect most similar to Yuuyu Hakusho, due to the team-based nature), which takes up slightly more than one-third of the entire story, deserves particular mention for being one of the most exciting tournament arcs I've ever read.

I may have nostalgic bias considering it is one of my favorites during my formative years, but I strongly recommend Flame of Recca to those looking for a fun, balanced combat series that doesn't take an eternity to finish. Consider the final grade to be more like an 8 if you're a genre fan who doesn't mind familiar character archetypes and plotting, or a 6 if you're not.

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Apr 2, 2023

hexashadow13

Recommended

tl;dr: Very generic but solid old school battle shounen.

Flame of Recca is a manga that ran from 1995 to 2002 that strongly embodies a lot of shounen tropes and structures that came into being during that era. It’s a very typical shounen, but it’s good shounen. The core of it is ancient objects known as Madogu that give their wielders supernatural powers, the vast majority of time these wielders using them to fight each other. There’s an overarching plot that involves ninjas, time travel, reincarnation, and an evil mega organization centered around making its head immortal, but for the most part it just felt like ... window dressing to provide some structure for the battles and character beats which were what really matters. As such, the manga is incredibly simplistic with very little in terms of major twists or variety to its plot threads, but that in and of itself makes it charming in a way. It’s a manga you can enjoy just going with the flow on without having to think about it at all.

The introductory arc involves the protagonist, Recca, getting into smaller fights with the rest of the core fighters, beating them, and them all joining him when the first major conflict emerges. The main cast also includes a healer girl, Yanagi, who can’t fight and thus generally serves as a damsel in distress that the rest of the cast has to protect or rescue. The motivations of the cast are thus generally incredibly simplistic, they just want to save their friend. Each of the main cast has background beyond that and some semblance of character and relationship arcs, but they felt pretty weak. There’s not a lot of substance to them and thus the cast ends up coming out pretty flat. Still, most of them can be pretty amusing so it’s enough to get the reader at least somewhat invested in the cast so what are supposed to be heavy emotional beats can land at least somewhat well.

There are a lot of side characters as well and though the vast majority have very little presence beyond the part, they’re relevant in, the manga does often briefly just throw them in again here and there for the hell of it. There’s very little substance but seeing the same characters repeatedly does make it easier to follow along and stay invested. The main exception to the lack of substance would be Kurei, who serves as the first major villain and then as a sort of side villain I guess but not really, and those who surround him. The actions of him and his group during the later portions of the manga don’t actually make a lot of sense, but he and his allies have a pretty strong presence centered around rule of cool so they’re pretty interesting nevertheless. Kurei also has the most depth of any character in the manga, though that still isn’t all that much. And this is a shounen battle manga full of karma houdinis from beginning to end so it’s pretty easy to ignore the villainry.

And finally, the action is pretty great. The power set has a good variety to it and the match ups between the powers of the characters fighting results in some pretty great battles. And while the characters in a general sense don’t have a lot to them, the moment-to-moment interactions during battles were pretty strong as well which once again came down to good match ups. The plot sometimes has to get incredibly forced in order to produce those match ups, especially in the final arc where it felt like half the battles were completely pointless in the grand scheme of things. Still, the way each member of the main cast continued to grow battle to battle while showing off new abilities, the way battles flowed and were framed, the pretty fast but not too fast pacing, and the general sense of impact and weight to the hits made the battles pretty satisfying and fun nevertheless.

The art I think was pretty good in terms of showing off the action, but was pretty lacking beyond that. The character designs were in general pretty dull I feel and outside of the action the framing and such wasn’t all that great either. The art quality was also pretty high for action related elements, but in general much lower for anything outside that. The cover art I also thought was mostly pretty bad.

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May 2, 2021

kuik

Mixed Feelings

I just wrote a comment on the last chapter, but I think it's more suitable for a review. Also this is my first time writing a review.
I talk more about the things I didn't like because:
1. I want you to read the manga and find about why I like the good things I mentioned.
2. I don't want you to read the manga because of the annoyance of "the bad" ones.

IMO it was a good manga for it's time.
For the present it's 5/10.
Won't rate it on MAL because I don't really want to lower the score for the future readers who are looking for a good ...

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Apr 16, 2009

purple_neko

Recommended

I forgot exactly when I finished this...but here goes.

Hmmm, well I am such a fan of Joker now, and am so pissed at the anime for not showing more of him...damn you animators! *shakes fist threateningly* (but eh, let's face it, what anime has translated everything from the manga it was based on into the screen with 100% fidelity?) it's all the differences in manga and anime's medium...staff (often, the author of the manga has little to none to say about the anime...)

But enough about me comparing apples with oranges(even if the oranges are genetically modified to resemble the apples :P) haha!

Well, what I first ...

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Jan 4, 2010

Uthred

Recommended

My first exposure to this series was back in ye olde days when I saw the anime version of it. While I enjoyed the anime considerably it was clear that it only covered a small portion of an otherwise much larger story. At the time I searched for a manga translation but to no avail. Cut to several years later and in my search for complete manga I was drawn to the tempting sight of "31 Volumes - Complete". I must say I was certainly more than satisfied with what I found.

At its heart Flame of Recca is a tournament style story, similar to Yu ...

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Mar 11, 2025

nicolem_animefan

Recommended

8/10
+Contains strong genre ingredients: imaginative lore, a likeable hero, a great supporting cast, and a sweet romance
+Enjoyable action sequences that move plot at good pace; gorgeous artwork
-Various character and story beats underdeveloped; focuses too much on action and filler
-Simplistic storytelling may not suit all tastes

Reading Flame of Recca sparks feelings of a more innocent time. The life of teenage Recca Hanabishi undergoes a transformative change after awakening to a mysterious power following an encounter with an evil witch and his idol, Yanagi Sakoshita. This classic battle shonen greatly captures what’s so enjoyable about the superhero genre. With a fiery but heart-of-gold protagonist, a ...

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Rekka no Honoo
Flame of Recca
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