Books like Samurai Deeper Kyo, Volume 01

First things first. The anime adaptation of this manga is the most dreadful thing ever created and its makers deserve to be shot. Do not judge the manga based on the anime because you will make a most grave error.And now for the actual review. Samurai Deeper Kyo (SMK) is a much exciting samurai / action / adventure / superpower / mystery piece of fiction that combines the typical formula with lots of extras, like historical personalities and an engrossing number of characters who form a very complicating web of a relation chart.The art is in overall great, with almost everything looking as a perfect specimen of this genre should strive to look. The characters are all cool and sexy, with facial expressions that would drive even psychiatrists mad. The battles are super epic, DBZ level towards the second half, and can last up to one and a half volume straight and are full of severed heads and limbs and fountains of blood. The sceneries all look mighty interesting and detailed too. Even the chibi moments did not feel out of place. Art get a mark of 8 from me. I was thinking of 9 but usually the characters look like there is no uniformity with the setting and that makes things too silly to bear.The story in a flash. Super samurais, full of ambitions, clash in order to conquer Japan, destroy the world, avenge someone, bring hell on earth and other cliché we have already seen a million times in manga. The thing is, the way everything unfolds is not that typical, as there are far too many dark secrets and hidden agendas in each character’s portfolio that easily make everyone two-faced, or even three-faced! Although at first, it feels like another silly adventure of a male and a female looking for some magic artifact that can defeat the baddies, it quickly turns to a grim story of vengeance, greed and violence. The cast was huge, yet the manga took its time to reveal each character’s past and goals, so despite their typical personalities, they were colorized and dramatized enough to the point where you actually liked them and cared about them. It’s true that most of them are just for show and get killed along the way without damaging the overall story. But at the same time they are all very unorthodox and politically incorrect, with killing and destroying being an obsession even for the main character. Plus, many are based on historical figures while a small amount of realism is taken to make things half-believable based on the time and place of the setting. These extras raise the bar a lot and allow immersion and sympathy from the reader.It is clearly amongst the most enjoyable martial arts / fighting titles around. If there are some things that ruin the perfect mark, that would be the lack of wound severity that makes all battles look silly. After volume 20, the protagonist and his team enter the most dangerous place on Earth and have non-stop duels with the strongest warriors for 15 volumes straight. Yet all their clothes and wounds magically disappear and none has some sort of epic level healing power. So no, as much as I liked the story, after they enter Mibu the plot is just one duel after another and all traces of realism that was so well shown before now give place to random X-men in Feudal Japan. So it may feel tiresome in the last arc as the mangaka seems to keep throwing in mooks to slow an already simple plot. The ending is otherwise fine and complete, thus you are at least not left broken and betrayed.