History's Strongest's Disciple: Kenichi

[Dracos]

Mediocrity.

Mediocrity, Mediocrity, Mediocrity.

It is this in all things that defines the anime Kenichi, an overtly generic shonen fare which follows the young Kenichi and his troubles with bullies and then gangs, increasingly stronger and absurd with various sporty combat types.  The area is, of course, lawless, with even adults staying in fear of any gang around.  Never fear though, since Miu, the busty female lead, has come to introduce kenichi to her dojo, which magically can always teach him a move to oneshot whatever superpowerful and fearsome gang member he is facing today.  Naturally, in shonen style, they all have nicknames, trash talking sessions, power rankings, and other trash.  There's even an annoying character that keeps track of all these so he can rant them out.  I don't know why because outside the gang, no one seems to place any importance on it.

Kenichi, the main character, is a coward who, through martial arts training by ridiculously powerful folks, slowly becomes a little less cowardly and capable of beating people up.  This is always overshadowed by the fact he does it with Miu, who continually demonstrates the capability to take out the entire gang by herself, and that any one of his teachers are more than capable of such a feat.  Therefore, any comments about danger and throwing into it are made pretty artificial.  Strangely, the gangs which always study martial arts, are completely unaware of a dojo consisting solely of martial arts masters within casual walking distance of the school.  In general, the conflict feels consistently both juvenile in scope and artificial in construction.  The martial arts lessons that patter it feel consistently like one attack lessons rather teaching anything, and they work like that.  The characters are pretty flat too, with Miu being such obvious geekbait, it isn't even funny: A young blonde busty girl who dreams of being the perfect bride and wants to support the pride of her husband and is an excellent martial artist, cook, gymnast, cleaner, etc, etc and is of course naïve and excited about anything you tell her.  Sheesh, laying it on a bit thick?

The art is both equally mediocre, feeling like a bunch of still frames for the most part and littered with mishmashes of drawing effects.  Most notably is that every martial arts master, who has nothing better to do than train Kenichi, constantly does shadowed or glowing eyes.  It's almost weird when they show their eyes and it's not covered by some effect.

And, that's all I can give to it.  Really, stay away =p