If you read Ichi the Killer, you maybe were looking for a little more hyper violent action featuring your favourite sadistic crybaby manchild. The thing is, Ichi the Killer was written five years after this prequel story, and you can tell that time was spent drmatically improving the authors storytelling. The art is among the worst ive seen published. in some of the drawings a characters chin will take up 90% of their face, other times characters will become 11 feet tall and be half their height the next panel. The memorable characters of Ichi the Killer are totally absent, with Ichi being half as interesting & Dai being as generic as any character ever written. The overall plot is much less grandose than the sequel, being a basic "High school punks fighting other high school punks" saga.

TLDR: IF you like Ichi the Killer, this might be interesting. For everyone else in the world, there is so much better out there.