When you pick up a Tetsuya Saruwatari manga, you know what you're going to get: a protagonist who looks like Riki-Oh, a sibling or childhood rival, cartoonishly sadistic villains and absurdly violent martial arts fights rendered with excruciating anatomical detail (Seriously, the guy must have had anatomy textbooks off-hand while drawing). Dokuro is no exception, and its only differentiating factors are an evil religious organization and the hero's gimmicky weapon - a hook-on-a-wire that results in many scenes of decapitation, hanging, lips getting torn off and faces stripped off skulls.

With Saruwatari, you come for the spectacle, not the story. As usual, there's little plot or character development to find; The hero goes from one fighting set-piece to another with little reason (including the author's favorite setting, a maximum-security prison), and he's pretty much an invincible force-of-nature the whole way through, so there's little tension. The author also stinks at writing endings; They often feel too easy, rushed and anti-climactic. Speaking of which, a detective gets introduced and the manga seems to be building up to a final clash between him and the hero, but it never happens.

With that said, if you enjoy a little mindless carnage (I know I do), you shouldn't be disappointed.