This is an entertaining anime, and therefore worth watching, so I don't mind suggesting it to you.
The battle scenes are well presented for the most part, though the amount of cheesy dialogue is overwhelming and unfortunately does not only occur in the battles.
The story is original in the sense that everything in it was originally in Bleach, FMA, Naruto, and pretty much any other action-oriented anime that you can name.
The plagiarism does have its positive side, as one of my favorite characters from Bleach, Inoue Orihime, is cloned in Buso Renkin. Unfortunately she's the main character's sister in this anime, so there's no possibility of a romance, but she's not as busty here, so it's ok.
To wit, Buso Renkin is a decent and entertaining anime, but far from a masterpiece.
Animation~A bit bad for 2005
The animation is of poor quality compared to other 2006 anime. Heavy black lines frame many of the foregrounds in cells, and the background designs don't form an exciting, vibrant world.
Mind you, it's not bad, just not on par with most other anime from this time period. The use of CG is done well, at least, integrating properly and flowing and even enhancing the art.
Sound - Nice opening themes
I like the opening theme, it's energetic and sets the anime up well. It's also got that nice cheese factor that pervades Buso Renkin. The first closing is ok, but not so special, the second is more suited to the anime, and also fair musically.
BGM is decent as are sound effects. They maintain the world well enough, but aren't invigorating.
Voice acting is fine. Most of the characters have appropriate voices that suit their personalities well.
Story - Bleach was a great anime for a while
I really liked Bleach for a while. It had a great storyline that was very original and set its world up well...
oh yeah, I'm rating "Buso Renkin".
Right right, alchemy. Bleach with alchemy and no DD-Inoue.
I've read other reviews that claim that this is a clone of Fullmetal Alchemist. I don't buy that at all. Why? It's far too much like Bleach. Sure, they use the idea of alchemy poorly, and include words like "Renkin" and "homonculus", but aside from that, this is a Bleach clone all the way.
It feels like Bleach in almost every respect:
1) The setup of the story.
2) The main character is ultra-powerful and strives to accommodate his power.
3) It looks a little like Bleach, and even has some characters that feel right out of Bleach.
4) It's an action-oriented hero-powers-up-more-and-more with every battle anime, just like Bleach, and even
5) the poor development (just like Bleach) of the storyline mirrors Bleach in some rather critical aspects, and
6) if I say Bleach one more time I think...
The real point is, this is one of the least original plots and storyboards I've seen.
Aside from it's lack of originality, Bleachuso Renkin is not scripted very well for someone wanting to get into its serious side. It's cheesy at inappropriate moments, such as one vivid point in my mind where the main hero jumped in with this big fanfare and even had a swath of light glowing behind him like some glorious superhero, making me cringe with laughter instead of marveling at his greatness.
However, Buso Bleachkin has some funny moments (aside from the unintentional ones), the battle sequences are pretty cool and are written well enough into the plot that they're meaningful, and the storyline is ignorable when crummy and enjoyable otherwise.
One thing that is different from Bleach, Buso Renkin presents a relatively coherent story through its run of episodes... then again, so did Bleach for its first arc...
Characters - I can't remember any of their names
The characters are very poorly developed, more accurately, they're not developed at all. They're just sort of there, and if you want to know more about who they are or what their personalities are really like beneath the surface, you're not going to find out by watching this anime.
Their partially-dimensional personalities are stable, at least, so they're good foils for each other in order to get the comedy going and add some measure of excitement to the battle scenes, and overall they play their roles in an appropriate manner.
Worth watching? Sure, got nothing better to do...
This anime isn't very well done, but it's still enjoyable. Bleach, from which this anime stole pretty much everything except the vocabulary (which it stole from Fullmetal Alchemist) is a more intense version of Buso Renkin which really starts to suck after episode 60ish.
I can't see Buso Renkin going past 26 [and it didn't], but it's an enjoyable action series with some good comedy, just like Bleach, and so if you liked Bleach at some point you'll probably enjoy Buso Renkin somewhat, and conversely, if you enjoy Buso Renkin you'll probably enjoy the first two arcs of Bleach a lot more than this.
