Senran Kagura

"SENRAN KAGURA"

Genre- Action, Comedy, Ecchi, School.

The way of a 'shinobi' stands very different from our general lives. By risking their lives fighting in the shadows, shinobis have nothing but themselves to rely on. And as this is a path that takes your very own identity from you, being a shinobi isn't for everybody.

Operating from the shadows, the shinobi society is well spread around Japan. While carrying out missions that cost them their lives, these shinobis must maintain the peace of society by taking on the hard role of being a spy, saboteur, or assassin. Asuka, the granddaughter of the legendary shinobi "Hanzou-sama", is a sophomore ... at the light shinobi academy, where she must train and become the perfect shinobi able to carry out her lineage. But with the dark fraction of shinobi, "Serpent School of Girls" lurking around in their shadows to obtain the super-secret scroll of Yang, things soon get out of hand for our protagonists. Losing fights after fights against the dark fractions, Asuka and the others must become strong to protect themselves and the people and things that they love. While the story seems typical for an anime, it is anything but far from it. With a mix of hilarious sketches, fanservice, and action, Senran Kagura lives up to its expectation as a ninja-based anime.

Throughout the season it shows us the growth of Asuka and others, which makes it worthwhile in my eyes, as I just cannot wait for its 2nd season. And with its unique and perfect animation style, this anime really does justice to the theme it has set making it one of the best anime I could've watched in the ecchi genre.

This anime is absolutely a "MUST WATCH."

This anime adaptation is quite a real disservice to the original source material for several reasons. First is that it doesn't give any time to develop the characters, why the original story of the game worked is because you got to see all of the girls' perspectives on the current matters of the game and each one's style of combat felt different for whomever you played as. As for Ninja Flash, things are kinda rushed around and we don't really get to know them enough. Although we are given their backgrounds which for the most part are respectful to the original game (except Hikage) but ... at the same time they just feel forced, as if the anime is desperate to get you to care about them.

The game also goes the long way in deconstructing the line between good and evil to show that perhaps there really isn't that much through multiple character interactions and showing how their personalities clash while the anime just has the Hanzou and Hebijou girls just be like this 'we are friends and we get along well with each other' mentality which on the surface seems to good but it's not realistic, their clashing personalities would actually get them into a lot of conflict with each other just like real friendships can do, and that actually happened in the game believe it or not; although what makes conflict between characters great to see is simply just how the deal with and resolve them which helps contribute to great character development. In here though you get zilch of that!!
And if we need to cover the fight sequences, oh boy do I have gripes for that!! This anime is completely tone depth of how these supposed serious battles to the death are supposed to work!! Now to be fair the original game didn't show any gore when fighting which can be mostly forgiven because video game has its programmed limitations on what it can be shown and even made up for that by other means, in an anime however there are no limitation and you can go all out!! Like show bruises, cuts, broken bones, sudden amputation, evisceration, decapitation, anything to sate my intense battle loving self. I mean the beginning explicitly said that shinobi did assassinations, so what's wrong with killing a couple of red shirts in brutal ways? And another thing that I moan about the battles is that girls underwear for their combat outfits are all wrong!! I've watched or read HxH, Dragon Ball, Berserk, Afro Samurai, Dorohedoro, and Rorouni Kenshin after all. OG Burst has explicitly specific underwear for their combat outfits that for the most part feel consistent with what they are wearing but in the anime they simply ignore all that and go with the default swimsuits of the games with only being concerned about showing boobage. Now I know that Senran Kagura is a rather fan service heavy series and later games kinda do the same with the underwear (which I find disrespectful towards the original) but at the same time it's not the entire focus of the games, that is more of the hook to draw new players to the story which is really well thought out, the anime though disregards all of that just to show more T&A which just destroys it.

If we need to get to the voice acting, well I watched the English dub because I already heard their seiyuu from the original game which are perfect in my eyes but for the dub it's kinda hit or miss. Sure, some of the VAs are able to portray the characters to which they respect the original material like Ikaruga, Katsuragi, Yomi, Haruka, and to my surprise Homura; when I saw that Homura's VA was Monica Rial I was nervous, she is the VA for Stocking Anarchy and literal Homjira does not have a high pitched voice but luckily she actually was able to nail it. However there are some VA's that I would change out like for Hibari and Hikage, honestly it would be better if Cherumi Leigh were voicing Hibari and either Christina Stroup or Molly Searcy were voicing Hikage since they have voiced characters that have similar personalities (Patty Thompson and Arin Kannazuki/Akame respectably). And I don't have a problem with Teri Roger's voice for Haruka-sama but since she probably comes from a Western background why not try a French accent or something.
And I need to point out this major plot hole of the anime, how can Hibari read kanji?! Considering how poorly she handles in class that would mean that she likely can't read kanji, much less the spidery kanji of the Super Secret Ninja Scroll of Hanzo, in fact I could name more characters that could be shaky with their kanji vocabulary skills, Katsuragi, Asuka possibly, Yomi, Hikage, and Mirai. And it would be better if the anime actually took this into account because we'd get a fun sequence of Hibari wiping the floors and Haruka-sama just laughing her butt off. And also, their could've been a lot more swearing to spice things up, but Homura and Monica at least are not against it, and in Panty & Stocking there are other 375 clips of characters just using the f word.

Now if anyone only wants to watch a Senran Kagura anime and not play the game, the only think I can think of would be Bakemonogatari. I mean it does a really damn great job of character interactions, fleshing out characters, exploring their thoughts, and its fanservice moments don't feel forced at all. I really suggest to go watch it, although if you really want a good officially licensed adaptation that does the original source material justice, I can only suggest the Guren no Hebi manga, since not only does it focus on he Hebijou girls over the Hanzou girls, it gives the characters their moments for the readers to understand them, and they're a lot more blood in it, along with the fights feeling more real; plus it's written by Takaki, the creator of the series!! Otherwise, you're on your own.

On a final note, Ninja Flash has a lot of problems, and it is understandable that adapting a video game is quite a monumental task but the anime that succeed in doing so sometimes become the anime of the year, take Stein's;Gate, and Ninja Flash also had that potential but noooooo, Studio Colors threw all of that away just for booty claps and made a plot that feels like they only read the Senran Kagura wikia page and not played the game. If this adaptation were handled by a more competent Studio or if Takaki were directing then we'd get a proper adaptation (like SHAFT) but this is all we got.

Now I've mentioned the original game a lot and have praised it a lot, but to be honest Senran Kagura Burst for the 3DS is not perfect and not for everyone. Even though it's so far my favorite game out of the series there are somethings that I would've like more out of the game, but when comparing this anime to the game, the game pretty much wins out in the end. I wouldn't recommend this to someone wants to get into the, it's more something for the fans who have played the games to just mock and that's it.

I won’t use any arbitrary numbers for the duration of this review. Senran Kagura is a series I picked up from a trailer I watched for Senran Kagura: Burst and let me tell you, I was just so fascinated. A fighting game where we pit scantily clad high school girls against one another and fight to destroy the other girls’ clothing? Count me in. WHY AREN’T MORE DEVS DOING THIS!? Then I realized there was an anime and manga series that fleshes out the legend of this mysterious series’ origins. Then it donned on me that this is not something I’d enjoy. I’m really at ... a loss for words with this one, because it wasn’t anything I didn’t expect. In fact it was so within my expectations I can’t give it a bad rating (not that it matters), because, let’s be honest, people eat up ecchi material regardless of the content or context. Criticizing this series for being ecchi isn’t really fair, because it is unapologetic and forward with the idea, it only really starts to dip in quality when it expects you to care about the characters and the story(?) that was going on, but I’m not a prude. I can accept panty shots, jiggle joggers and high pitched peeping as staples of the anime industry when it’s lacking in substance otherwise. That’s fine. In all seriousness, Senran Kagura wasn’t bad, it was just normal, which I think is part of what disturbs me about it. That we’re so used to this style of storytelling that it doesn’t faze us anymore, but that’s a story for another day.

As far as animation and other technical aspects of the show, it wasn’t terrible. It was fluid and appropriate albeit you can tell when parts were rushed. I’d venture to say that the series could have benefitted from more expansion of the plot and less booby bounces, or the opposite where there was less story and ONLY BOOBY BOUNCES. The finished product looks more like a mess when the finale comes around as a result, but maybe that’s what OVAs are for. Or maybe I’m expecting too much out of my anime these days.