Flame of Recca is a very good manga. Even though the artwork for the first 5~7 volumes wasn't good, it got better and I can say that that's one of the main reasons why Anzai-sensei rocks.
The tournament and character design may be "similar" to Yu Yu Hakusho but...there's more to Flame of Recca. ^^; The tournament theme was a hit during the era where FoR was still starting out so I guess Anzai-sensei joined the bandwagon. And in this world where even trying to be original is getting harder, what's more important is not if someone copied someone or not. What's important is how that person can OWN the thing. A cliched plot isn't always bad, the story, characters and dialogue are waaay more important and I believe Anzai-sensei did a great job in that.
And obviously, the manga is better than the anime. If you're judging Flame of Recca just by its anime, then you suck. xD
The arc after the Ura Butou Satsujin is very cool so if you haven't read this great manga fully yet, you better read it and I swear you wouldn't regret it. ^_~
In pandaslayer0's review, he says:
"the protagonist is pissed off at Kurei [the baddie] for no reason - he basicially just attacks the guy."
You're proving that you didn't read into the story or THE FREAKING DIALOGUE with this claim. Recca didn't attack Kurei "for no reason" when it was WRITTEN that he hated the things Kurei did: Taking advantage of Ganko's innocence, cutting off Sekiou's head just because he lost to Domon and a lot of other inhumane things that Kurei did. I know he's your typical protagonist with the "For justice!" kind of attitude but that's normal, really.
And the bad guys didn't "get wimpy and changed sides" because Joker, Raiha and the others were still on Kurei's side 'til the end. Joker even kept on asking Koganei for a fight and declared that because the Hokage were also rooting to kill Mori didn't mean the equation "an enemy's enemy = ally" applied to them. :/
You may call me biased but at least I have read the whole series for 3 times and can admit its good and bad points where you can only point the bad ones because you can't look at it through different angles. x(