More on New Manga by Kenshin Creator

For those interested, the following is a summarized review of the premier story of Watsuki Nobuhiro’s latest manga serial, taken from the Rec.Arts.Manga newsgroup.

Gun Blaze West, set in 1785 in Illinois… a one street desert town cliche… surrounded by forest… has not made a favorable impression on me so far, I’m afraid; like Kenshin, it starts with comedy, but unlike Kenshin, there aren’t any characters I instantly like. There’s a tough female character and this unshaven dude named Marcus who gets the crap kicked out of him and steals his food. He’s a decent shot, but is hampered since this kid had his gun. The kid is probably the basic problem here. Yahiko survived all the scrappy kid problems by being so intense and then winning. While I respect Nobuhiro for pistol whipping a nine year old 15 or so times in a single issue, it doesn’t exactly make me care about the little loser. I want to root for the main characters, not cover my eyes in embarrassment as they pathetically loose. I suspect he’ll [Nobuhiro] take a couple of volumes to figure out what works, and hopefully it’ll get as interesting as Kenshin, but I’d hoped for slightly more from him.