Flame of Recca

Flame of Recca (烈火の炎) is a manga series by Nobuyuki Anzai, which was adapted into an anime series spanning forty-two episodes by Studio Pierrot. The manga was originally serialized in Shōnen Sunday starting October 18, 1995, with the last chapter published April 18, 2002, and has been compiled into 33 tankōbon volumes by Shogakukan. Both the anime and manga were licensed for North American distribution in English by Viz Media. The series has also been adapted into two video games; Flame of Recca for the Game Boy Advance and Flame of Recca Final Burning for the PlayStation 2.

Plot
Flame of Recca follows the story of a teenage boy named Recca Hanabishi, who is interested in ninja and claims to be one himself. He often gets into fights because he made it publicly known that the person who manages to defeat him will earn his services as a loyal ninja. Despite this, he eventually pledges his loyalty and services as a ninja to Yanagi Sakoshita, a girl with the innate ability to heal any wound/injury, because of her kindness and compassion. Recca soon discovers that he possesses the innate ability to control/manipulate flames, and eventually learns that he is actually the son of the sixth generation leader of the Hokage, a ninja clan that was wiped out by Oda Nobunaga in 1576, roughly 400 years before the series' present day.

The Hokage ninjas wielded mystical objects called madōgu (魔導具), which are referred to as "psychic devices" or "elemental weapons" in the English versions of the series. Madōgu grant their users special abilities, such as allowing their users to manipulate certain elements (as in the case of the Fūjin, which allows its wielder to manipulate the element of wind) and enhancing their user's strength/skills (as in the case of the Dosei no Wa, which increases its user's physical strength and the Idaten, which increases its user's running speed). Oda Nobunaga had invaded the Hokage in 1576 for the purpose of acquiring these weapons, and the series' main antagonist, Kōran Mori, is searching for a madōgu that will grant him eternal life. Recca and his friends become entangled in Mori's quest for eternal life as he initially attempts to kidnap Yanagi, believing that her healing powers will help him achieve immortality. This leads them to join the Ura Butō Satsujin, a tournament wherein the warriors that wield madōgu gather to battle each other. After successfully winning the tournament, Recca and his teammates discover that Mori was on his way to acquire the Tendō Jigoku (天堂地獄), a madōgu said to grant its user eternal life, and once again attempt to stop him.

Though initially following the same basic storyline, the Flame of Recca anime series ends right after the Ura Butō Satsujin ends, while the manga goes on to include the subplot involving the Tendō Jigoku. The anime also omits certain characters from the story, and several of the characters' physical appearances are slightly different from the manga.

Characters

 * Recca Hanabishi (花菱 烈火)
 * Recca, the primary protagonist of the series, is a teenager obsessed with ninja and anything related to ninja. Recca was born the second son of Ōka, the leader of the Hokage ninja clan that existed over 400 years ago. Recca's older half-brother, Kurei, was supposed to be the heir to the leadership because he was the eldest and was born with the ability to control fire, but Recca also exhibited the same abilities as an infant, and is declared the true heir of the Hokage leadership. In an attempt to save him during the slaughter of the Hokage ninja clan, his mother (Kagerō) used a forbidden technique that opened a portal that would transport him into the future, where the Flame of Recca storyline begins.


 * Yanagi Sakoshita (佐古下 柳)
 * Yanagi is a teenage girl gifted with the innate ability to heal any kind of physical injury, and Recca immediately offers to serve her as his loyal ninja after seeing her compassion when she healed a severely injured puppy in a local park (in the anime series, she heals Recca after a pile of metal pipes collapsed on top of him). She is the prime objective of the series' main antagonist, Kōran Mori, as he believes that her healing powers will help him attain eternal life.


 * Fūko Kirisawa (霧沢 風子)
 * Fūko, a tomboyish teenage girl, is Recca's childhood friend who has always aspired to defeat him in battle so that he would serve her as her ninja. She initially gets irritated by the fact that Recca chose to become Yanagi's ninja just because he wanted to. For this reason, she decides to accept the aid of Kagerō, who offers to lend her Fūjin (a powerful madōgu that controls wind) in order to enable her to defeat Recca. In actuality, Kagerō implanted a stone in the Fūjin that allowed her to brainwash Fūko, but Recca manages to defeat Fūko and destroy the sphere. Fūko ends up being friends with both Yanagi and Recca after the incident, and she also keeps the Fūjin and wields it throughout the rest of the series.


 * Domon Ishijima (石島 土門)
 * Domon is Recca's schoolmate who, like Fūko, has always wanted to defeat Recca. However, he is never able to do so, and ends up befriending and joining forces with Recca. Domon wields the Dosei no Wa ("The Ring of Saturn"), a madōgu which enhances his physical strength. Later in the series, he also wields the Kuchibashi-Ō ("Beak King"), a super-sharp snapping claw on an extendable chain, and the Tetsugan ("Iron Ball"), which transmutes his entire body into a living iron golem for brief periods.


 * Tokiya Mikagami (水鏡 凍季也)
 * Tokiya is Recca's upperclassman and wields the madōgu Ensui ("Dark Water"), a sword that utilizes water to create its blade and is capable of creating and controlling all three states of water (liquid, solid and gas). Tokiya wanted to take Yanagi from Recca because she looks exactly like his sister, Mifuyu Mikagami, who was murdered when he was young. He uses the Hyōmon Ken style which was developed specifically for the Ensui. Tokiya joins forces with Recca in attempting to rescue Yanagi from Kōran Mori's mansion, and he continues to be part of their team throughout the rest of the series.


 * Kaoru Koganei (小金井 薰)
 * Kaoru was once a member of the Uruha, but eventually becomes a member of Recca's team "Hokage" in the Ura Butō Satsujin. He wields the Kōgan Anki, a puzzle-like weapon that has five different forms.


 * Kage Hōshi (影子) / Kagerō
 * Kage Hōshi, whose real name is Kagerō, is the first antagonist of the series, and is later revealed to be Recca's mother. She possesses the 'Eikai Kyoku' ("Shadow Ball"), which allows her to teleport through shadows, show people the past, and perform acts of scrying. She performed the Jikuryūri (a technique which allows the user to travel or send another person to a different time) to save the infant Recca from being killed along with the rest of the Hokage clan, but is cursed with immortality as a result of using the technique.


 * Kurei (紅麗)
 * Kurei is Recca's half brother who is four years older than him. He is also a flame master with the power of the phoenix, being able to capture the soul of a dead person in his flame. The most notable manifestation of his flame power is Kurenai (紅), his former lover whose soul he absorbed using his flame when she was killed by Kōran Mori.

Staff

 * Original Manga by: Nobuyuki Anzai
 * Producers: Ken Hagino and Madoka Takiyama
 * Director: Noriyuki Abe
 * Script Writer: Hiroshi Hashimoto
 * Story Editor: Hiroshi Hashimoto
 * Episode Director: Noriyuki Abe
 * Planning: Kenji Shimizu and Yuji Nunokawa
 * Art Director: Shigenori Takada
 * Art Design: Yuji Ikeda
 * Character Design: Atsushi Wakabayashi and Mari Kitayama
 * Music: Yusuke Honma
 * Director of Photography: Harutoshi Miyagawa
 * Key Animation: Kisei Yamada
 * Sound Effects: Yasufumi Yoda

Manga
The Flame of Recca manga was originally serialized in Shōnen Sunday from October 18, 1995 – April 18, 2002, with a total of 329 chapters. The series was compiled into 33 tankōbon volumes and was published by Shogakukan. Shōnen Sunday also released the manga in 17 wideban volumes. Both the anime and manga were licensed for North American distribution in English by Viz Media and United Kingdom distribution in English by Gollancz Manga. The manga was also published in France by Editions Tonkam.

Viz did not censor nudity in their publications of the manga, but starting from volume 20, the female characters' nipples have been removed. Additionally, the manga series used to be published every other month, but Viz has begun to release the manga quarterly, starting with volume 25.

Anime
Flame of Recca was adapted into an anime series by Studio Pierrot, and aired from July 19, 1997 to July 10, 1998 on Fuji Television. The 42-episode series covers around volumes 1-16 of the manga. There are several notable differences between the anime and manga, such as the character design (e.g. Fūko has red-violet hair in the anime, but has brown hair in the manga) and in the storyline itself (e.g. In the anime, Yanagi's healing powers are first revealed when she heals Recca after he gets injured while protecting her and a child from being crushed under metal pipes, but in the manga, Yanagi heals Recca when he gets injured while protecting her from a group of male students who were forcing her to go with them ).

Music
The Flame of Recca anime series featured "Nanka Shiawase" (なんか幸せ) by The Oystars as its opening theme, and used "Love is Changing" by Hikaru Nishida and "Zutto Kimi no Soba de" (ずっと君の傍で) by Yuki Masuda as its ending themes (for episodes 1-32 and episodes 33-42 respectively). All the songs were released in singles, and all except "Zutto Kimi no Soba de" were included in the original soundtracks.

Soundtracks
Flame of Recca Original Soundtrack Vol. 1 was released by Pony Canyon on December 6, 1997, and features background music used in the series (composed by Yusuke Honma) as well as the series' opening song and first closing song.

Flame of Recca Original Soundtrack Vol. 2 was released by Pony Canyon on May 4, 1998. It includes more background music used in the series along with a special CD drama entitled Recca no Honō SPECIAL CD DRAMA: Daitōron Kai Tsuyoi No Wa Dareda?! (「烈火の炎」 スペシャルCDドラマ: 火影大討論会 強いのは誰だ?!). The drama features the series' main characters (Recca, Yanagi, Fuuko, Domon, Mikagami, and Koganei) as well as the creator of the series, Nobuyuki Anzai.

Video games
Flame of Recca has been adapted into two games to date; Flame of Recca for the Game Boy Advance, and Flame of Recca FINAL BURNING for the PlayStation 2. The storylines in both games are based on the last five volumes of the Flame of Recca manga, and both have character designs more similar to the character designs in the manga than in the anime series.

Flame of Recca: The Game is a fighting game released by Konami on December 20, 2001 for the Game Boy Advance. In this game, the player selects a character and presses certain button in order to make them move, attack, dodge, and perform special moves. Apart from having an HP bar, the selected character a power bar which increases when the character deals damage and decreases when the character performs a special move. Each character has his/her own set of special moves that do greater damage than normal attacks, and one super move that deals a significant amount of damage. There are nine playable characters for this game, including the main characters of the series and Kurei, as well as characters that only appeared in the manga (Renge, Hiruko, and Kadotsu).

Flame of Recca: Final Burning is a adventure/fighting game released by Konami on June 10, 2004 for the PlayStation 2. A limited number of soundtrack CDs and sets of four bookmarks with character illustrations by Nobuyuki Anzai were given out along with the game CD. The game's graphics and FMVs are done in 2D animation. The game utilizes a split-screen format wherein players must press different button combinations to make their selected character perform specific moves. Certain cutscenes require the player to determine what the selected character will do next through choosing from a given set of options. An example of this would be when the player is required to choose if Koganei will dodge or stay put when the building he is staying in starts to collapse.

Flame of Recca: Final Burning features 24 playable characters, composed of the main characters, Kurei, and the following characters:


 * Hiruko
 * Zombie
 * Z
 * Karame
 * Kamui
 * Joker
 * Shiguma
 * Gaō
 * Gasekiō
 * Kōran Mori
 * Tendō Jigoku
 * Aoi
 * Miki and Aki
 * Mikuru
 * Meguri Kyōza
 * Pochi
 * Raiha
 * Mokuren