Unsure on where this goes but do I need to read this to understand the sequel? That is all. thank you.

Well, I had read some chapters of both, and it seems there are lot of things that are taken as a given in the sequel, plus some flashbacks of stuff that happened in the prequel.

This week's favorites:

• Golden Kamui

ççççççç[Ô.Ô] tsutopodus© will eat your manga and steal your cats!

That's what I was afraid of...
Edit: Does the anime do a good job of covering the same material?

To put it simply, the anime (saison 1+2, so 26 ep in all) cover around 2/3 of this manga (almost 5 volume exactly and there is 7 in total).
So there will be some miss for Amaenaideyo MS! but it would not be really missing.

I can't explain much since i saw the anime + read the raw manga (but without understand)

What missing (from what i understad):
the Sekishin in total (you see some in the anime like the two strange priest and Kazuki but nothing is really explain about them) and the whole arc related to this faction.
Basically there is three other character in this faction like a fighter and 2 girls with strange eyes (one seem to be related to ikkou like an old acquaintance)
The end of saison 2 is something like the end of volume 5.

The Sekishin want to take over Ikkou power but in the end they fail (almost like the end of the anime)
Plus, ikkou can awake a maiden of the sixth path and she become more stronger.
He seems to use this power for the 1st time against the strange fighter girl from Sekishin in volume 6 on Sumi.
And the head priest of Saenji left and Sakura take her place, end of volume 7.