Ranked #956

Mutsu Enmei Ryuu Gaiden: Shura no Toki

In a battle between an armed opponent and an unarmed one, does the armed opponent have an advantage? Not if the unarmed person practices Mutsu Enmei-Ryu.

Shura No Toki (Age of Chaos) follows 3 generations of practitioners of the Mutsu Enmei-Ryu UNARMED fighting style. The animation is probably the weakest part of this series but the fighting more than makes up for it, this is the most "technical" martial arts I've seen in an anime, without any of the "style", "blood" and "special powers" elements interfering with the purity of the art. This alone elevates this series above any other martial arts type anime offerings.

The first arc is about famed swordsman Miyamoto who seeks nothing more than to find an opponent who can "challenge" him in a fight. He turns down a nobleman's bodyguard job offer and instead suggests the nobleman hire a ruffian eating at the nearby road side stall, a ruffian with a strong aura. The ruffian is Yakumo Mutsu, a member of the mutsu clan. When fights begin, Yakumo distinguishes himself by never using any weapons. One never knows what direction the first arc is heading in, but expects that Miyamoto and Yakumo will have a showdown ... sometime!

The second arc is about ONE martial arts tournament. The story centers around revenge but I enjoyed this arc just for exposure to the various martial arts styles and methods of defeating opponents. The martial arts was so good in this arc that I rewatched it 3 times. While I normally like plots, in this arc I felt it got in the way of the martial arts tournament, which was a pure joy to watch.

The third and final arc set during the Meiji Revolution is the most plot driven. At times I felt the plot twists detracted too much from the premise of Shura No Toki martial arts, and it did not seem to feature as much martial arts as the previous two arcs. In addition this was set in a later era where there were guns, sigh. No matter how good the plot I found myself comparing this to Rurouni Kenshin, and Shura No Toki's 26 episodes just can't deliver the same amount of storytelling that 100 episodes can. So the ending tried to be too "historical" and skimped on the martial arts action.

All in all, I've never seen another anime like Shura No Toki. My buddies who are serious martial arts freaks were all majorly impressed by the fight scenes from a real life technical aspect. We all agreed it was the best example of hand to hand vs. (insert weapon) we've seen. The animation was ok, the sound was good, the story was great, albeit uneven. But everyone enjoyed the characters and action a lot. If you're into martial arts, you should try watching this little known but great anime. read more

Story: I think the story is great because how it flows really. In this series they manage to pack so much into each episode without it feeling rushed at all. I really think they did well here because even though each episode was around 20mins it felt just right. The story was pretty good fitting these characters into history which I thought was really good the thing that got me was the 3 different generations, which I thought was awesome. Overall the story is really enjoyable but the last generation is the best. It kept me hooked.

Art: Ok, first let me point out that this series didn't have a huge budget like other anime where they are able have amazing design due to great financial support. Even though this is the case they still do a good job of keep it presentable BUT i think the TRUE art style they wouldn't to use was the style from episode 24 which was stunning. I think it was unfortunate that the whole series wasn't like this

Sound: I believe that the sound for this series was pretty good. The sound track was pretty decent overall. The piano piece I think was amazing personally but the other music was ok.

Character: One thing about this series was that there weren't any characters that were straight up annoying like SOOOOO many anime. All the featured characters were pretty enjoyable to watch and through character development to started to care for them more and more even though each generation of people is only about 7-9 episodes each.

Enjoyment: YES!!! I really enjoyed this anime and recommend it to anyone. As I said before there weren't any annoying characters which is a GREAT plus but also the way that everything flows keeps you wanting to watch and holds your attention. While the fighting isn't flashy due to super powers its still quite interesting seeing the main characters fight bare handed against legendary fighters.

Overall: If you are reading this then WATCH THIS ANIME!!! I enjoyed it very much but as I said I think it would've been much better if they had more of a budget because then I think it would've been 10s all the way but can't have everything ^_^ read more