History’s Greatest Disciple Kenichi is another hidden gem series for action shonen fans. A series that began back in 2006, Kenichi is a story about a young teenager who’s being constantly bullied by his classmates at school. But things start to change for him when he meets an exchange student named Miu Furinji, who helps him learn how to defend himself.
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This leads to Kenichi training with Miu’s trainers: the Ryozanpaku, a collection of incredibly powerful martial artists who are capable of some feats that seem completely impossible. Could the teenager that was chosen as their disciple ever hope to keep up with them?
10 THE MAIN CHARACTER
Most shonen characters start out with a certain level of strength and climb their way up over time. Sometimes those characters are viewed as strong, other times they’re seen as weak. Kenichi falls much more in the second category, probably moreso than any other lead character that we’ve seen. Even once he starts to gain victories, his masters still view him as largely talentless, but continue to train him because he refuses to give up.
9 HIS BEST FRIEND IS STRONGER
While Kenichi is constantly growing, the people he’s trained by in the Ryozanpaku are some of the most powerful martial artists to have ever lived. What they’re capable of feels almost impossible, and what makes it worse is that there’s someone his age who seems just as capable as they are: his friend Miu Furinji, the granddaughter of the head of the Ryozanpaku. Miu is well capable of beating pretty much anyone in the anime, but stays out of conflicts so Kenichi can grow.
8 ANIMATED BY TMS ENTERTAINMENT
Kenichi’s television series was animated by TMS Entertainment. One of the oldest studios in Japan, they’re a company known for multiple different series over the years, as they’ve done all of Lupin III, but also worked on shows like D.Gray-man, Bakugan, Cardfight Vanguard, and more. Kenichi’s OVA series was done by Brain’s Base, known for their work on Durarara!! and Rin-ne.
7 THE CREATOR OF THE SERIES
The creator of History’s Greatest Disciple, Kenichi is Shun Matsuena. Matsuena has created several manga since Kenichi.
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His most recent series is You Are 008, a storyline that focuses on a young boy who mistakenly enters a spy school, and aims to become a top spy to learn more about his father, who turned out to be an incredibly talented spy himself.
6 HAS VIDEO GAMES
In 2007, Capcom released a video game for the series. It was developed by Eighting, a company known for licensed titles as they’d worked on Naruto: Clash of Ninja and Tatsunoko vs. Capcom. The story follows the Ragnarok arc of the story, and supposedly was in development even before the anime was greenlit. Another game, for the 50th anniversary of Weekly Shonen Sunday, was released two years later for the PSP that featured a ton of crossover characters, which included both Miu and Kenichi.
5 PUBLISHED IN WEEKLY SHONEN SUNDAY
History’s Greatest Disciple Kenichi was published in Weekly Shonen Sunday. This is one of the longest running shonen magazines. Matsuena Shun has had all of his major series released through this magazine, including his current series You Are 008. Weekly Shonen Sunday currently contains Arata: The Legend and MAO, and usually publishes roughly two dozen titles.
4 THE VILLAINS OF THE SERIES
When this anime first starts out, Kenichi’s villains are just the bullies he keeps running into. But eventually, as it becomes known that he trains with the Ryozanpaku, he becomes noticed by more and more powerful characters. Eventually, he runs into an organization called Ragnarok, made up of a bunch of martial artists seeking to forcibly bring Kenichi into their ranks. Afterwards, they wind up facing an organization that rivals Ryozanpaku, dragging him deeper into the world of martial arts.
3 THE ANIME IS...WEIRD
The anime begins about four years into the existence of the manga, which ideally would be a pretty great lead time. But somehow or another, TMS Entertainment got the bright idea to do something new to keep the series from ever catching up to the manga.
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Rather than simply do filler, roughly halfway into the series they begin to lengthen the recaps. With each successive episode, the recaps get longer and longer, until eventually each new episode is half footage from the previous week.
2 THE OVA IS A CONTINUATION
There are plenty of anime that have one television series then go on to get OVAs afterward. This capitalizes on the popularity of the series, usually packaging the OVA in with manga volumes to make more money off the manga. Kenichi has an OVA series as well, but rather than just including weird side stories, the OVA seems to continue the story of the manga. It tells the story of the rise of Yomi, an organization seeking to attack Ryozanpaku’s pupil on behalf of the organization opposite Ryozanpaku, Yami.
1 WHERE YOU CAN WATCH IT
Kenichi has some interesting rights situations at the moment. While Funimation is supposed to have the rights to it, it does appear they’ve let them lapse as of late. That said, the series is still available to be watched on both Hulu and Amazon Video. But that’s only the case for the main television series. For anyone who doesn’t speak Japanese, the OVA isn’t available anywhere, it seems.
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