u/vale77777777

Title. I only read some chapters from the second part so no spoilers please.

What I liked: the artstyle and character design is great. Some characters are well written and partly relatable. The fights are good fights.

What I didn't like: well... I am aware that most of these issues will sum up to "That's how shonen works"

For starters, I think what bugged me the most is that female characters only exist to be desired by men. Even Greek literature women had more agency. There's no single moment where a plot-relevant decision depends on Yuria, the very same woman who supposedly drives the entire story and whom every single martial artist in the world burningly desires (yeah that got even a tad comical after the fifth martial artist declaring to love Yuria). The only real free will act she enjoys is trying to die (which is incoherent with her otherwise flat and absolute promise to wait for Ken by the way, but this gets very little attention). The same goes for Mamiya. By the way, I swear there must be like 5 identical scenes having Mamiya scouting in some goon-infested place and getting discovered and disarmed in a second. Is she dumb? Why does she keep doing that? Oh yeah, it's because she has to be saved by Ken/Rei/Toki/whoever. Also, Rei treats Mamiya like crap and humiliates her for no reason but this never gets addressed. And the second time he strips her bare-breasted it's supposedly because he doesn't want her to suffer, so he's at least good intentioned, but the first time he appears he actually seems to be trying to rape her? What was he on? I sense this could be a leftover from an original plan for him to be a morally greyer character, together with the never explained fact he had joined a bunch of goons, only to betray them due to desiring Mamiya (was he just duping them to begin with? what was going on with him?), but still it's strange. The closest thing to a woman usefully empowering herself is Airi getting a crossbow or something (which is actually useless in the Kenshiro universe from what I've seen and peasants bearing normal weapons just keep getting slaughtered, but Rei acts like its enough for her to fight on par with the bad guys so it's okay I guess). There's also the one who just kills herself out of unrequited love for Raoh, but this is so rushed, unforeseen and unelaborated it falls as much in this paragraph as in the storytelling one.

Ken himself is unfortunately a shallow character. He never shows a flaw, he never grows, hell, he rarely even tears. All the Shin stuff is anticipated so much that it seemed to me like that was going to be the main struggle of the story. But then Ken just finds out his girlfriend died and... nothing happens in his mind. He just continues going on indifferently after burying Shin, and it feels weird. His personal battle is completely over, but he doesn't seem to get even a little bit sad or demoralized or depressed. Also, the way he shows mercy to enemies who cause thousands of deaths with their orders for trivial reasons while he sadically executes random thugs who couldn't stop the murdering even if they wanted, it's weird. Like "I'll bury Shin because we both loved the same woman". Fella what? That's not the correct way you love someone, at most you could say Shin deserves empathy because he was once your friend, he just wanted love but sought it the wrong way and was also coerced or brainwashed by Jagi, possibly realizing his mistakes while it was too late to step back. Shin is actually the only enemy who gets redeemed by accepting an inglorious "martyr" role in the scheme of things, and that's another reason why he's my favourite character, but Ken still does not know that. The same goes for Raoh, and actually that's even worse. Dude was a genocidal power-lustful maniac who slaughtered millions of people for no good reason in the world. Why would he in particular deserve mercy? I guess this just gets reframed as "Eh, it was destiny for those two to fight so he had no fault either". The actual character-development reasons for which he could be understandable aren't explored, and Ken just talks about fate, brotherhood or whatever.

The story telling is... well, shonen. Many characters and enemies are actually interesting but the fact they are all introduced one after another with no intersection makes them just one-shot single-personality-trait guys with almost no depth. Also the escalation is weirdly managed. For example, in dragon ball, new menaces keep arising from different places of the earth and then from different parts of the universe, so for example Frieza is unheard of to the Z warriors when he first becomes relevant. But here... how does Kenoh's "heaven conquering empire of apocalypse" never show up or get mentioned anywhere before Ken decides to go after him? I mean, most shonen have this "forced power progression issue", but here it's not even a bit hidden and it combines with the scarcity of character depth into making the scenario weirdly rushed.

By the way, I still was sometimes ensnared by the story, ambience, art, dialogues and characters. Would recommend.

Absolute peak HnK1 according to me: Ken vs Rei fighting before the Fangs

My favourite characters: Shin, Yuda, Juza (possibly the goat)

EDIT: Thanks for the replies! Now I can appreciate some details I missed and some new points of view. Keep commenting please :)