The story follows Kenichi Shirahama, an average 17 year old high school student, who despite his good intentions, always ends up running away from almost everything. However on the first day of the new school year he meets a girl, Miu Furinji and decides after seeing her protect someone from some street thugs, he wants to be stronger to protect her.

Over the course of the series, Kenichi learns various styles of martial arts from his masters at Ryozanpaku, who instruct him using some extremely odd techniques as well as some very harsh and punishing ones. Throughout the series, Kenichi is pitted against stronger and stronger opponents and even manages to make others see that there is more than just being a street thug. Kenichi takes his training a whole new level when he moves to the Dojo, but his reasons for moving in are not exactly martial arts reasons, more like marital ones.

But Kenichi soon learns the hard way that getting close to a girl who has studied martial arts all her life is easier said than done.

The overall quality of the animation is very clean, but it can be rough at parts. As the original series aired in Japan back in 2006-2007 It was created before the tools became wholly digital. As such there are some odd occurrences of artifacts on the screen. Sometimes they are just an odd line, other times they are the old gaffe of having a character hold something, it gone in the next shot and then back again. These minor quirks do not subtract from the overall viewing experience.

The fight scenes are also something to behold. Thankfully they do not go the Dragonball route and make them super fantastically, but base those in reality that shows it would be possible to fight with the same moves. Of course they do add in a level of fantasy to the fights so people don’t get the idea of actually attempting them. The character design is taken from the anime, and each main character has a unique look that if silhouetted would still make it easy to distinguish the characters.

Here is where the sound experience can vary. Because this show was created in Japan first, there are two audio tracks and it depends on your millage where you want to listen, but in both cases the Japanese and English audio tracks are sublime. With both casts putting in a lot of effort into making sure that the characters come alive. The effects for the fight scenes, or Kenichi’s training are also quite impressive.

If you listen to the Japanese soundtrack there are more examples of the transition period it was made it, with some parts being quite clear and others not, but for the most part the audio is just as awesome as the visuals that accompany it.

Madman have over the years been able to perfect their packaging of the DVD’s they release, and Kenichi is no exception. While the collection is 8 discs in total, they take up no more room on a book case than 2 standard DVD’s. There are however some downsides to this collection. First up is that this is a repackaging of the volumes that were released earlier, and as such there are no new extras. In the original run you got 4 discs in a set, and the final disc contained all the extras, and as such those are the only ones you get here as well.

The other issue is that as a collection, you would expect a certain level of pack ins, but this is not the case. It does not draw away from the awesome series that you would actually buy it for, but it is a shame that nothing extra is provided.

In short, Kenichi The Mightiest Disciple is a great series, it shows that through hard work anyone can accomplish anything they truly desire. The quality of the show is amazingly detailed, and apart from a slight lack of extras is exceptional viewing no matter who the audience is.

Original Comic Books Created by Syun Matsuena © Syun Matsuena・Shogakukan/KenIchi Project All Rights Reserved Under License to MADMAN ENTERTAINMENT Pty. Ltd. Produced by TMS ENTERTAINMENT CO., LTD.