About as Deep as a Muddy Puddle

Written by MithrilSword on February 8, 2011 at 4:18 PM

The first episode I saw of this anime quite while back before the rest of it ran, I had high hopes of this being an really decent anime. The art style had me captured from the first few frames - its utterly gorgeous. The idea of famous samurai being reincarnated to fight this "great shadow over japan" and the alternate history had huge amounts of promise for an interesting story. The fact these reincarnations were girls was a slight and amusing twist. I thought to myself "maybe this anime will be a bit more than a stupid harem with a awkward, cowardly guy." I was wrong >.>

Story: In short, it completely sucks. What bit of premise that was set up in the beginnings turns into nothing more than devices to power the harem aspect of this anime. About every character cliche out there occurred with this anime - and it made me angry. If you've seen anime like Love Hina, Tenchi Muyo, and just about every other harem genre/sub genre out there, then you know the characters in this story. For once, I would like to see a the male protagonist not be such a spineless introvert around women

Dialogue: Its a harem anime. What do you think's gonna be in it? Lots of accusations of perversion, lots of needlessly awkward conversations, women going from reserved to cougar-ish to reserved again... The scripting sucks. But then again, with a bad story, there's not much to work with.

Animation: If you were to turn the sound and subtitles off and just watch the artwork in motion, this anime would be awesome. The style is refreshing, just different enough to draw audiences in. The style is supposed to mimic Japanese block prints and it does this beautifully. Now if the same artist could draw a better anime in this style, I'd be extremely pleased.

Entertainment: If you're in it for the story, bail out the ship now. You won't find it here. If harem anime's your thing, then this delivers on everything you'd expect: lots of fan service, awkward moments, love (or lust) triangles, and a main male character who doesn't know the difference between respecting women and running away from them. Its mildly entertaining at times, but overall leaves much to be desired.

Final Verdict: Unless you like this sort of anime or have absolutely nothing better to do, I would leave this alone. The art's pretty and all, but just find some official artwork on the web instead of torturing yourself with this anime. There's nothing to this that would hold the attention of anyone over 15 years old. And I was gravely disappointed that the legend of legendary swordsmen didn't appear in this show: Musashi Miyamoto