YMMV / Flame of Recca

• Anti-Climax: In the anime, Recca never actually defeats Kurei. Instead, after he handily wins the final confrontation due to Recca's dragons being indecesive and suddenly revealing that his fire powers are actually phoenix-based the audience is treated to Kurei allowing his father's car to run him over with a rather comical "bonk" sound off-camera, followed by an explosion. The show then more or less just ends.
• Badass Decay: Tokiya in the latter arcs of the manga, giving up his need for Revenge robbed him of several of his competence, notably failing for a trap so obvious that Domon, someone much less intelligent figures out right away. Though you can say Domon WAS being lucky at that time, in which his perverted mind saves him (he accidentally drank on the same spot Marie drank to make it look like 'indirect kiss', only later realizing that it was the only spot undrugged, and it takes a pervert, something that Tokiya is not, to pull that off.), he'd still boast about 'figuring it out himself'.
• Complete Monster:
  • Kōran Mori is a hideous millionaire who believes he can do whatever he likes thanks to his wealth, and desires invincibility and immortality in order to enjoy his wealth forever. To this end, Kōran abuses his adopted son, Kurei, having killed Kurei's lover Kurenai, and blackmails him into service with a bomb inside Kōran's own wife—Kurei's loving adoptive mother. Kōran runs brutal underground fighting rings that routinely result in horrible deaths, and manipulates fighters into Training from Hell where their loved ones die, while he employs multiple insane murderers and uses them to kill innocents. After Kurei loses the tournament, Kōran reveals he created an Opposite-Sex Clone named Renge, after dozens of failed attempts led to tormented clones being either killed, or emotionally abused by Kōran for being "failures", and attempts to detonate the bomb in his own wife, gleefully declaring he will destroy whatever Kurei loves. After achieving immortality, Kōran becomes a Humanoid Abomination whose desires for food and sex have "merged," which he satisfies by raping and eating innocent women by the dozen. Along with continuing to abuse Renge both sexually and emotionally, Kōran ends up devouring her to steal her soul and power, even as she begs for his mercy. In the end, Kōran Mori is a wholly irredeemable beast of a man who lives for nothing save his own whims and pleasure.
  • Kaima is the creator of Tendō Jigoku and, much like Kōran Mori, desires immortality to satisfy his one lust in life—killing as many people as possible for fun. It was also revealed that he created evil Madogu, mystical objects that grant special powers; the Tendō Jigoku would grant immortality—by using children. When Recca rejected his offer, Kaima took the chance to gloat that he would never give his power to anyone with redeeming qualities like Recca and then proceeded to merge with Kōran Mori, turning them into a monstrous being that satisfies their "lusts" by raping and killing women. To create their own army, Kaima and Mori butcher dozens of innocents, then turn them into their mindless zombie slaves that serve them unquestioningly. Finally, they planned to create a dystopia based on devouring most of humanity, waiting until a few are left to repopulate the Earth, then starting the process all over again for all eternity.
  • Mokuren Nagai is a Serial Killer who loves to target women with nothing less than a Slasher Smile and cheerful glee. With his power over plants, Mokuren invents new ways to kill his victims, such as impalement with branches, creating carnivorous plants to devour them or horrible torture. Mokuren convinces his former kid sidekick to let down his guard before trying to devour him with a plant as well. Gradually gaining a seething hatred for Recca after Recca defeats him, Mokuren sinks further into depravity and evil. He develops a relationship with fellow evil teammate Mikoto, only to betray and murder her the moment she's inconvenient to him, coldly saying he never loved her and defeating Recca is all he cares about. Even after his death, the narrator discusses what a monster without honor, morality or humanity he was.
  • Sōkakusai of the Ura Uruha is the user of the madōgu Tamasui no Tsubo, a massive and magic urn. Sōkakusai stalks young women to demand their affections and upon being spurned, he traps them in the urn to die slowly and painfully, with a massive amount of corpses shown in the waters of the madōgu.
• Cult Classic: At first dismissed as a YuYu Hakusho wannabe, Flame of Recca nonetheless remained as one of the better-loved classic mangas with them saying that the comparison with YYH is more like a flattery to the series. The Hilarious in Hindsight entry with Naruto also helps raise awareness, and with the presence of Full Metal Alchemist Brotherhood, there are just as many retro fans that liked Flame of Recca and wished it gets a manga-faithful remake, just like Brotherhood. Despite its sizable, loyal fanbase, however, it remains overshadowed by the more mainstream Shonen Jump titles like the aforementioned Naruto, One Piece, or Dragon Ball or other non-Jump Shonen titles like the aforementioned Full Metal Alchemist or Attack on Titan.
• Epileptic Trees: A popular fan theory about Joker being Nanashi in MÄR.
• Germans Love David Hasselhoff: Together with YuYu Hakusho, Flame of Recca is still adored and well remembered by many Filipino 90's kids because it was one of the few animes watched on local television before the rise of Cable TV and Internet.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • Recca discovers that he's the last survivor of a ninja clan called "Hokage". Several years later, Naruto rolls around and the title character is obsessed with becoming the leader of his village, whose title is "Hokage".
  • Recca's two dragons were named Homura and Madoka... and years later, we get to see Homura and Madoka being the names of two Magical Girls in one of the darkest takes of the genre.
    • One of Recca's dragons is named Setsuna, more than 2 decades later, a third Love Live! group is introduced, which has a fire-loving school idol also named Setsuna.
  • Oda Nobunaga took an interest to the resident MacGuffin that grants supernatural power, and he's dead because other people thinks that he's gonna go full on megalomaniacal demon king that dooms the world with it. A similar premise can be seen later within Nioh, replacing Madogu with Amrita stones.
• Jerkass Woobie: As a child, Kurei was cursed without knowing the reason and was almost intended to be killed along with his mother, Reina, by the respected elders^note until Kagehoshi's intervention who suggested them to be exiled instead. When transported into the future, he is adopted by a ruthless monster, Kouran Mori. Growing up, he went through a hellish training to be a heartless killing machine and witnessed his love interest, Kurenai, killed in a gruesome death. Even his half-younger brother, Recca, can't help but slightly sympathize with him before Tokiya reminds Recca that Kurei has harmed Yanagi.
• Magnificent Bastard: Kurei Mori, The Dragon to Kouran Mori, who in turn is the string-puller behind the events of the first 50+ chapters. Kidnapping Recca's "princess", Yanagi, Kurei baits Recca to his castle. Defeating Recca and the heroes' Team Hokage, Kurei forces them to participate in the lethal combat arena, Ura Butou Satsujin, where the wealthy gamble on the fights—including Kurei's adoptive father, the aforementioned Kouran. After witnessing the abilities of Team Hokage, Kurei prepares powerful fighters to challenge them and even uses the heroes to take down the traitorous Genjuro, along with his minions. Having removed all other opposition, Kurei challenges Recca to one-on-one combat and after being defeated, honors his promise not to attack Recca or his friends. Helping the heroes kill Kouran after he betrays Kurei, Kurei proved himself to plan one step ahead of everyone else and always remained a Noble Demon at heart, despite his brutal tendencies.
• Memetic Molester: Oh, Kurei. When his first act to demonstrate his flame powers is to burn Yanagi's clothes away, of course fans are going to think that he's using his flames to strip girls out of their clothes.
• Moral Event Horizon:
  • While in-verse he crosses it, when he gloats on Hisui's death on a crying Fuuko after admitting he staged Hisui's murder of her lover. Out-verse, he crosses it when he kills Kurei's lover and his adopted daughter, Kurenai, just to anger him.
  • Mokuren crosses several times (his beating of Recca's teacher's wife, gloating over Yanagi's suffering and backstabbing Kogenai), but finalizes it with his murder of Mikoto, his lover, for proving to be useless.
  • Kadotsu crosses it when he admits to slaughtering Team Ku easily.
• Nightmare Fuel: Several moments within the manga are very disturbing, especially following the tournament arc.
  • Kukai's Oni state, the normally calm and friendly Kukai turns into a raged berserker that proceeds to give Recca an utterly one-sided thrashing, which is taken to worse extremes in the anime.
  • The Tendou Jigoku, containing the will of Kaima, which takes the forms of floating slit eyes. When they enter a host, they transform the person into a multi-eyed heavily mutated horror that can split into progressively inhuman copies. It fits the truly monstrous personality of Mori.
  • Mori eventually undergoes a metamorphosis into a mutated version of Satan whose handsome features are eventually distorted into psychotic expressions as he gloats about wanting to drive humanity to near extinction and repopulate the population so he can repeat it again and again.
• The Scrappy: Kamui for some, due to being an insane, murderous pederast with several past victims and yet is spared and allowed to pull a Heel–Face Turn. Doubly so because he remains an unapologetic pedophile even after joining the good guys.
• Signature Scene: Kukai's thrashing of Recca, especially the anime version of the fight, once he goes Oni mode.
• Tear Jerker: Mikoto's death. Mokuren kills her to give himself an advantage while she's begging him to stop fighting altogether.