Ranked #1382

Shikabane Hime: Aka

Story - 8/10
Ok. This series started on the "monster-of-the-week" formula, so it may be very misleading. Even the sypnosis that a Shikabane Hime must kill 108 corpses to go to Heaven is misleading. The real plot and story has really nothing to do with it. The truth is, this series does provide a reasonable and interesting plot development in the SECOND half of the season only. And the last four episodes or so does have enough plot to build up decent cliffhangers that forced me to watch the raws and chinese subs (instead of waiting for the english subs because of my impatience). But keep in mind that there is a second season that follows up directly, so this whole first season gave me the feeling of PREQUEL to the actual story (which turned out decent)

Art - 7/10
Sometimes, the actions are animated in a pretty sloppy way. The characters' design are sometimes too simplistic.But you may argue that it was done intentionally as a more "stylish" way of animation. The colors are all in the range of grey, dark red, black and deep blue, blending into a nice gloomy atmosphere befit of a horror action series.

Sound - 9/10
Nice fighting music and nice insert songs, opening songs and ending song by angela. The music is very catchy and the voice acting is not bad. Ouri (main protagonist)'s voice sound pretty unique and has a good touch of innocence and tonelessness, befitting his strange attitude towards death (a key element in the plot)

Characters - 8/10
I would say the characters are decently developped for an anime series. Ouri's evolution is clearly portrayed throughout the series. Makina's realtionship with Keisei is revealed bits by bits in a very good rythmn. At the same time, Makina and Ouri's relationship also evolves with each episode in the SECOND half of this series.

Enjoyment and Overall - 8/10
The first half was pretty random and generically boring. The second half really redeemed itself. This is series is underrated because the first 6-7 episodes didn't have enough to keep the audience from labelling this as "another generic action series". Although it is far from being a breakthrough, the second half really made good progress in terms of plot and character development. It does deserve the slightly above average rating of 7.5 to 8 out of 10.


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Shikabane Hime: Aka is an anime that deals with the issues of death and life in an interesting manner. However, despite some of this anime's strengths, there were weaknesses littered throughout this series.

The main thing that the story gives is uniqueness. After being murdered, Makina Hoshimura turns into a "living corpse". Armed with dual sub-machine guns, she must kill 108 other corpses in order to gain entry into heaven. She is assisted in this task by Keisei Tagami, a Buddhist priest with links to an anti-corpse group known as the Kougun Cult. The setup of the storyline is rather unusual, and there have not been many anime that look at a living corpse working together with a living person to try to destroy other living copses.

The animatioin was very decent. Each character had their own distinguishable look. The background was very well done and the action scenes are pretty good as well. Gainax is known for creating some of the greatest animation in the industry, but in this anime the art didn't deliver what it could have. Something the animators did very well was creating the mood with the dark animation. You couldn't help but feel scared in some scenes because of the dark backgrounds. Gainax did very well in creating atmosphere.

The opening theme was very, very good. Other than that the sound was meaningless. I don't remember the sound being a big factor in the anime.

This anime seems to focus mainly on Ōri and Makina. There was only one character that I truly liked, and it was Makina. She is the main character and a contracted "living corpse". She is tasked with killing 108 corpses to gain entrance to heaven. She has formidable physical skills and her weapon of choice is an Ingram MAC11 machine gun. Makina starts slow but develops faster than Ōri and by the end of the season she becomes a great character. The main male character, Ōri himself, was really annoying at points. Ōri Kagami is a normal high school boy who was raised at Keisei Tagami's temple. He coincidentally appears at several points where corpses appear and the reason of this is unknown. Ōri is a bland character that slowly develops as the story progresses.

I didn't really enjoy this anime. I kept looking at the time and wanted it to finish faster. It wasn't all that bad. It was pretty confusing but there were a couple episodes that were really good.It was a pretty decent anime. Nothing special but decent. read more

Shikabane Hime is a barely decent anime that was released in 2 parts: AKA & KURO. For the purposes of convenience, my review is about both parts because its all really the same story and if you watch one part, you'll likely watch the other part as well. From the outset I had a problem with this series. starting with the title "SHIKABANE HlME" If it were just the anime title l'd be ok with it but it is a somewhat silly name for a zombie slayer. Why HIME? Is there a king, a queen, a prince? No there isn't it's just once again no one used their imagination or creativity. They know anime viewers all around the world have cottoned on to the Japanese word "Hime" by now so hey, why not use the word HIME in the title....it worked so well for Mai-HIME, right? Names aside, like I said, its a barely decent shonen fighting anime about monks & monsters. Of course the monks don't go into battle alone, no, they mostly fight by proxy via supposedly dead little girls dressed in all manner of skimpy or tight-fitting outfits catering to the various otaku fetishes.
I really did not pay attention to the music of this series. I did watch the anime in English audio and I must give credit to the actors, they were pretty good even if the script was just proper shit. Lucy Christian is pretty much good at everything and I especially appreciated Aaron Dismuke's voice, maybe because you just don't hear too many authentic teenage male voices in anime.
Nothing earth-shattering about the art here at least not for me. Maybe for teenage boys and horny otaku. I can't remember anything about the places in the anime... Probably because they were just flat and boring or maybe because the art is more focused on the characters, monsters and fighting scenes. And even something about that annoyed me... like they plagiarized the fighting scenes from Naruto. Didn't that water fight scene between Makina and Hokuto seem eerily similar to the water fight between Naruto and Sasuke? It's the things like that through out the series that got on my nerves. Not just being simply unoriginal but almost seeming to copy bits of successful anime.
The story is a very basic one, demons exist and there are those that must kill these demons. Nothing supremely new here. Once again I'm a bit underwhelmed. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to see that somewhere, some dude (erm company) said "Hmmm, I need to make a story about hot chicks fighting in skimpy clothes...let's build around that idea!" I say this again because the obvious questions arise "Why HIME?" Why only girls do battle against the shikabane? Clearly there are male Shikabane, surely the same arrangement can be made. There was some flimsy answer provided, one that they (the creators) easily punched holes thru and contradicted themselves with because there is no genuine interest in cultivating a genuine answer much less perpetuate story integrity. The only real focus is about having big-breasted school girls fight in skimpy clothing and watch it get ripped up. Let's keep it real. Let's keep it 100. I'm actually surprised no one busted out with tentacle monsters.
OK so with the obvious aside, the next logical question is; Is there a real story there, Is Shikabane Hime really worth watching? The answer to that is: meh! To be fair, there is a story there but as far as worth watching... well no. I've seen better and have been entertained by similar and better told stories: Kite, Gunslinger Girl, Mai-HIME, Blood+, just to name a few. The fact they flip-flopped between comedy and seriousness was tiresome. And then the fact that Shikabane Hime has no overall message or theme, which is vital to any great story was also bothersome. You can feel them making it up as they go along, working with just the basic concepts but never fully fleshing it out. Just generic storytelling at best with lots of very large breasts, Is the story about revenge?... sorta, with lots of very large breasts. Is the story about love? again... sorta, with lots of very large breasts! But like I said the story dances around vague concepts and notions, just choosing a "paint by numbers" approach to storytelling; Let's have a character die here, let's have the sauna scene there. But you don't ever really find yourself crying over any death or being interested in any cartoon titties.
Shikabane Hime definitely did not create any revolutionary characters here. It's all pretty much your run of the mill characters, monks & big boobed fighter women all possessing your standard anime stereotypes: big boobed nice girl, big boobed mean girl, big titty ninja chick with toothy fang and cat ears, angry chick with pig tails & ribbons, Loli-type, But it's the so called doctor female with half a white labcoat but all the titties that took the cake...I just wanted her to stab herself in the boob with one of those ninja knives. Who fights with sharp weapons half naked? The monks are just accessories. Everyone just bored me and I just kept wishing they all died.
I definitely give this show as a score of 3. It's lucky to even get that score, because normally anything lower than a 4, I would just delete it and move on to the next title.








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Shikabane Hime is a action horror hybrid from Gainax. It centers around undead girls who are given a chance to enter heaven if they fight and kill other undead. Equal parts exhilarating and disturbing, Shikabane Hime feels like a shounen with heavy horror undertones. This combination is what makes the show worth watching, especially in its later stages, despite its numerous shortcomings. Just for the record, this review covers both seasons: Aka and Kuro.

Shikabane are monsters born of strong regrets a person might have when they die. Ageless, powerful, and bearing an animosity towards the living, shikabane are a threat to mankind. The only line of defense against them is the Kougun Sect, who employ the use of undead girls, called shikabane hime, to eliminate shikabane under the supervision of a contracted monk. If a shikabane hime is able to kill 108 shikabane, then they can enter into heaven. Makina Hoshimura is a shikabane hime with a vendetta and a strong bond with her contracted monk, Keisei Kagami. However, things begin to unhinge when Keisei's adopted younger brother, Ouri, becomes involved in the secret battle between shikabane and the Kougun Sect; a battle neither Keisei nor Makina want him to be involved with.


The show starts off with an episodic "monster of the week" type deal. These opening episodes are in the same vein as Vampire Princess Miyu (the TV anime, not OVA), with our heroin hunting down and destroying shikabane; just done much better than Vampire Princess Miyu, namely because of the more exciting fights. At the same time, the show follows Ouri as he slowly finds out about shikabane and the Kougun Sect. These episodes are the show's weakest because while the fights are all good, the scenarios are hit-or-miss, and time with Ouri is usually dull. Luckily, the show starts getting better mid-way through the first season, when Ouri gets deeply involved with one shikabane hime, having tragic consequences. Characters get some god character development: Ouri struggles with the fact that shikabane hime are dead, Keisei laments Ouri's increasing involvement with shikabane, and Makina's reasons for being a shikabane hime and past with Keisie are relieved. All the while, the viewer is treated to more grotesque scenes of horror and gleefully violent action sequences. Near the end of the first season the main antagonists, a group of shikabane called the Seven Stars (because there are seven of them), appear and aline with the previously introduced Traitor Monk Akasha. In retrospect, I wonder why they didn't do this earlier in the series, as it would have made the show more evenly paced.

The second season, Kuro, moves at a break-neck speed compared to the first. It is so overstuffed with twists and plot revelations, there is no doubt the show as a whole could have been paced better. Still, it can't be accused of being boring. There is a certain shounen-esque excitement to having a villain league like the Seven Stars in the fray.It is fun to watch Makina take them on one at a time. There is also a lot more drama in this season, mainly concerning Makina and Ouri, which is pretty good; but also some drama involving minor characters which really doesn't go anywhere, just adding more fluff to the already cramped running time.

One thing the show definitely could have handled better was its themes. The show deals a lot with death and regret, but scarcely actually explores them. There are a few occasions where it does, like at the end of both seasons, but for the most part the concepts of death and regret are thrown around like "friendship" and "courage" are in a typical shounen. There is also the issue of the relationship between shikabane hime and their contracted monks, which is somewhat like the Fratello in Gunslinger Girl (except including complications of having more matured bodies...), but handled far less maturely. Their relationships range from being as complex as the one between Makina and Keisei (and Ouri), to as simplistic and one dimensional as the one between Saki and Rika. One particularly nasty one is Minai and Itsaki, which is the equivalence of Jean and Rico from Gunslinger Girl, unfortunately does not get enough development (even though an extra episode was dedicated to them).

As I mentioned at the beginning of the review, this is from Gainax, which means it is going to at least look decent. The show goes for a dark look, even with the vivid color pallet found in most Gainax series, with shading which borders on unnatural but still suits the show well. Backgrounds are fairly well designed and characters have that certain cartoon-ish expressiveness you will usually find in a Gainax work; the shikabane are a bizarre looking bunch. There is also the copious amount of fan service we've come to expect from Gainax as of late. The animation is for the most part solid, a bit of spottiness here and there but nothing to complain about; the action scenes are treated well. The music does its job of controlling the atmosphere, especially during the tense moments, but honestly you are just not going to remember it. Not the best of Gainax's projects, but certainly not bad at all.

Taken as an action horror, Shikabane Hime is a decent show. It doess have some major problems with its themes and pacing, which are honestly kind of a mess. However, if you are in the mood for violence, disturbing imagery, and maybe even some solid drama, then you might want to give Shikabane Hime a try. read more

Zombies.... ooo zombies... I feel like I can’t think of apocalypse without you anymore. Gruesome bipeds hunting me for my brains, drooling and screaming while you slowly sustain inordinate amounts of lead to the face without cringing... I love you all for all the beautiful dreams and nightmares you give me.

You can imagine my excitement when I found out my favorite giant robot making studio was going to give it a shot to epically portray all of you in the most gar-ified way possible. Right when I got into the show I was overwhelmed with the amount of familiar faces, all it was missing was a huge drill actually and I would have probably wet myself in excitement. The breasts were there, the over the top action was there, the weak but soon to become omnipotent character was there, “K” was there… but something was missing. This something kept bugging me for all throughout the show and by the end I started to realize I can’t think of mediocrity without you anymore as well, but you know, its zombies so I knew you guys were going to put a good show for me regardless, or so I thought.

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Story
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ARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!! This is all I am used to hear from you, so you can imagine my big facepalm with all the repressed angst I got instead. You still did scream a fair amount and I will say those were the shining moments of your performance here, but whenever you silenced the guns and sat around for a long and tedious talk all we got was…. Well, long and tedious talks. At least that was what I would like to call them. In fact, they were long, tedious and flashbacks... lots and lots of them.

Please, don’t take this as a direct attempt to discredit your motives. Repetition aside, they are fairly well constructed and would provide a perfect scenario for your bloody fest if not for the insistence you had in giving the spotlight for some unnecessary, non zombie, characters. I really liked your plight and how you were thriving to fulfill it, just too bad you had to insist in bringing detractions, the worst offender being the one to get the most out of the screen time, a bit of a masochistic choice if you ask me.

Even then, the variety of zombies you guys presented me with was nice and I found a few particular main characters, even some non zombie ones, pretty compelling, but the climax would only work if you had built upon it better… you know, like the guys behind you are so good at when they are dealing with giant robots. I also felt a bit cheated by you since you spilled all the few twists you had in store right at the opening, and after seeing it eleven times when it actually came to be I really felt like my brain had already been eaten.

I know you must be tempted to tear me apart right now, but hang on a bit longer; I still have some mumblings that might make me even more appetizing.

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Animation
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I have to hand it to you; you still know how to move. Whenever you guys are flying about exploding people’s heads or cutting them in half you really look your best, this time even better since you don’t have your usual decomposing skin anymore and the close ups on your new assets really does provide some extra oomph.

Here is also were the otherwise formulaic nature of your plot helped, since the usually boring queue of weekly monsters waiting to be beheaded brought variety of characters and bloody ways to crush their admittedly interesting entrails. They are vicious, colorful and varied, and contrast perfectly with the pretty schoolgirl variety of zombies you guys brought into display here, bringing to the table that old good “princess and the beast” feel we are all so found off in ample dosages, something that even if we had forgotten for a second a character would promptly shout towards the audience so we would recall it instantly.

Still, I know you can do better. Not even once my inner fangirl started screaming at your fights as it is usual when you are around bludgeoning stuff to death, and this alone is a big red flag. The fluidity both you and the hands drawing you are known for is kind of blurry here… it seems I don’t know you anymore! No need to get dismembered about it thought, it’s just that my final perception of you is lower than what I was expecting… please don’t come eat me alive yet!

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Sound
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Your frenzied destruction is never complete without an appropriate music, and gladly you managed to score it this time. Not only the opening and the ending, but the climaxes all felt a bit chewer thanks to the soundtrack. I just wish your voices also sounded as good as the rest, but unfortunately most of it were not up to par…. Perhaps if you would be more willing to scream “brainssssssssssssssssss” more often who knows, the truth is, you only sounded good when the only thing I could hear were the guns and awesome explosions you were creating, as for the biggest part, you sounded dull and out of character.

…I know you must be drooling by now, but just a bit more and you can have a bite at me.

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Conclusion
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What can I say to save myself now? I hang at your side your for the whole time, I tried to get as hyper excited as possible whenever you filled my screen with zombie glory and filled my ears with ultra violence, I even gritted my teeth to try to sob for you when you were sad… but to what avail? You delivered anything but the ordinary I am used to with other much less awesome things such as teenage magical girls!

Ok, some of this is my fault. The story only got to an enjoyable portion after the 9th episode barrier, I should’ve kept up with you in silence while you explained to your brainless victims how your plot worked for the 100th time, I should have properly ignored the apparent useless episodes where nothing of notice happened, and I should’ve kept my lack of excitement with your twists out of the room when you arbitrarily did stuff just for the sake of your current attempt to flash characters we don’t want to see.

But I couldn’t. And this is why I write this to you now, before you munch me, so I leave behind a testament to other people that tread this place. This way they will know that despite still looking good and interesting, you are far from your best here, and they would be much better suited looking for their visceral zombie thrill or cute girl galore somewhere else… at this day and age in a particular high school as well. read more

Well, to start, I binged Watched this one thanks to our friends at funmation. So I have one review for both seasons (plus bonus).

I was both pleased with this one, and also very displeased. I know, I know.. you want me to make sense. Lets get the mechanics out of the way.

Character Development: Not bad.. Most of the main characters (I stress MAIN) are developed well. they have depth. Some of the secondary and lesser characters are paper thin (Ie: the otaku Hime).

Animation: Well done. At least to my preference. Detailed back grounds, interesting colours and scenery, smooth animation.

Sound: Also Well Done, except for some of the music overlays. I felt them to be too loud, and were drowning out the convesations.

Sigh.. Story: I felt the premise to be interesting. and the action and story development for the most part were good. And this is the part that kept my attention, Dispite the rest.

I found the ending to be poor (EDIT: By ending here, I am refering to Climax of the story), the story lacked the substance needed to pull of such a strange twist. It ended like so many other animes.. Feeling rushed. Also, I felt the whole segment about Shikabane Mother could have been chopped from the story line. It did nothing to advance the main story line. they could have used those few episodes to make the main plot clearer.

I did like how the very end (The wrap-up portion after the action) left you hanging. Perhaps a movie? or another season. It was left in such a way as it could stay the way it is, or not.

Overall: I do not regret the time watching this, and I will likely buy it (when I see it), and watch it again. However, I do not feel this will be an anime that will be remebered in the long run
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This review covers both seasons of the franchise; the second is a direct sequel to the first and equal in lameness… I mean quality … or the lack of it.

Two minutes in the first show and I could already see this as a Bleach wannabe with chicks with guns flavor. Ok, I could dig the premise, despite the silliness. Two episodes later I was more than sure it would be what I call a Swiss Cheese anime, that is a typical story with lots of plot holes. Being the average series it is, following the tired formula to the later it didn’t manage to change my impression to the end … or the lack of it.

This show is a fine collection of “what can go wrong in a story”. I will not praise any of its pluses because frankly it doesn’t excel somewhere that any other similar anime hasn’t already implemented many times before and most of the times in a more interesting or enjoyable way. So I will start by the things that ruined the show’s attempt at being more than average at times.

1) Premise. It can more than easily be compared with Bleach, Noir, or any show that has ghost busters or chicks with guns. It is not original, nor does it manage to be any different or special in its implementation.

2) Animation. Sometimes tries to be horror, sometimes comedy, sometimes it is just a bunch of blobby cartoons doing nothing. It has no overall consistency or specific atmosphere, thus it fails to be scary or funny or … something specific.

3) Dialogues. They are stupid. Plus they keep force-feeding us what the characters are doing during every battle, because they treat us as brain dead idiots who can’t figure out anything without it being spelled at us as it happens.

4) Dead time. Most of the duration of both seasons is a waste of time as there is no real progress, or further character immersion offered, or great brain dead action to consider it worthwhile.

5) Ending. It does not exist. No further explaining needed.

Here you go; a perfect formula to succeed at making a failed series.
And now some more in-depth analysis.

The animation is hit or miss most of times; at some points it looks great and at some others it is plain sloppy. The contrast between scenes with dark colors and mutated freaks next to silly scenes with slice-of-life comedy is just huuuuge and doesn’t seem to have uniformity. What is even worse is how they throw in lots of indirect fan service; just check out how all the monster slayers in this show look. Yeah, cosplaying chicks with school uniforms and eroge personalities. There is even a nekomimi thrown in there just for lulz. The entire horror aspect is lost right there. As for the action scenes, they are at least very dynamic, with lost of moving around, shooting, blowing up, bleeding, dissecting… Too bad it’s all random mambo-jumbo without any real choreography or even power level balance. If the plot asks for it, the monsters are unbeatable; if not, they are easy picking. Plus all the mince-meating is done to the monsters; never the heroines so there is no justice or equal footing at hand here. Add a lot of badly drawn scenes and lots of frozen panels and you got nothing impressive in overall. I still give it a 6 for making such a funny mess out of everything.

The sound part is good only in the opening and ending themes; all the rest are retarded shounen dialogues that constantly describe even the most obvious, or use tired jokes you can easily find in any run of the mill show. Gets also a 6.

The story is as I said Swiss Cheese; written with the mentality of a ten year old who thinks it is cool to have ugly monsters and pretty chicks doing mambo jumbo for 90% of the time before getting serious in final showdowns. Seriously, it’s just shadow organizations fighting monsters or trying to take over the world, and some chicks who must kill zombies in order to avenge their deaths and go to heaven. Sounds like a lot but it is really just this one-line of text and nothing more to make it look any smarter or interesting. There is also no ending at all; it actually stops with a cliff hanger. Gets a 3 for hardly trying.

The characters are all cop-outs, 2 dimensional archetypes you can find in any shounen these days. I will give some credit to the main male character Ouri for slowly becoming more than a typical high school boy (cue for useless wimpy irritating idiot), the main girl Makina for being given lots of depth to her character and not only her curves, as well as the lead priest (whose name I have forgotten) for becoming a lot more than a ero-senin comic relief dumbass. The problem here is that they are just three characters out of dozens, and whose development is all done in the first season. The second has nothing of interest anymore, other than some generic villains who are doing generic stuff, with generic methods. For all I care, all other women in this show are just prostitutes and all other males are dumbasses you will hate right away. Cast gets a 3 for hardly trying.

Value and enjoyment… practically none, since you can watch a hundred other similar anime with far more enjoyable plots, battles, characters, artwork, pacing, transforming swords and shitz. This is practically a waste of time if you are well versed in such shows. read more

Gainax is know for producing great anime and though Shikabane Hime: Aka may fall short in some anime viewers opinion I for one disagree.

Story: The story followed a cliche of "woman fights monsters, guy waits in sidelines" & "protagonist is the only one who can kill the monsters".

though people may think its cliche and played out (which it is) Shikabane Hime doesnt stray from its cause.
Bleach anime held the exact same features that Shikabane Hime: Aka did with "monsters come from people who don't yet want to "pass on" and thus become monsters in order to stay".
but what Bleach didn't do was keep that motion of helplessness where the hunter was alone and had to fight alone the majority of the time. Shikabane Hime: Aka is still catching the feeling of weakness where the protagonist is still fragile though she is almost immortal.

Art: isn't very catchy. Very simple scenes like bullets dropping wasn't new but felt satisfying. Hair styles where done cheaply (a first for Gainax). backgrounds and such weren't a letdown. some scenes depicted chibi or other comical relieving art which in my opinion made lite of the story or progression of it. and fight scenes were shortened in a disappointing way.

Sound: The music, sound effects, voice actors are all decent.
though none of them are renown voice actors they still play their parts well catch people into the story. the music wasn't bad in-fact it caught my attention and made me check out the song artist.

Character: Cliche, slow development that builds its way up. not much to say.

Enjoyment: i for some reason found the anime very catching after i watched it. read more

I picked this series by chance after reading its premise about a high school girl which by the way is undead fighting to extract revenge to an organization that wronged her.

The story revolves around a young man named Ouri in his quest to solve the supernatural mysteries which involves unexplainable deaths that is occurring in his town. While being episodic with the 1 monster-per-week format until about halfway of the series, a lot of things happened in those episodes that told bits of the main story moving the series forward such as meeting up several important characters, his discovery of what his hidden talent can do, and several other events concerning the Kougan cult and the Shikabane Himes in particular. When the real antagonists finally started showing themselves during the middle part of the series, it was at this point that the show finally started to get really interesting. The finale for the series leaves a lot of things to be desired that was later answered when the second season was aired.

The animation for this series is dark, very dark, even when the setting is daytime. It is something that the viewers can eventually get used to because it suits the series quite well as the story is shrouded in mystery and supernatural phenomena, so a dark setting is really appropriate. The background and characters are somewhat lazily drawn, having poor details and generally bland. The animation is not really sharp and crisp makes you wonder if the series is really an HD show or an upscale. The bright points of the animation are the fight scenes, it is detailed in such a way that makes the effects looks stylish and nicely choreographed while maintaining the simplicity of the animation, special attention was given to the animation of the Shikabane-Himes since they provide the fan-service for the series.

Music is not really the strength of the series. The OP and ED themes provide a good feel for the series but not really memorable at all. The soundtracks are pretty decent especially during the fighting scenes and several other important scenes have a nice selection of songs playing in the background. Voice acting on the other hand is fairly good. Note worthy amongst the cast are veteran seiyuus such as Sugita Tomozaku, Horie Yui, Fujiwara Keiji, and Yuuki Aoi. What is surprising for me are the seiyuus of the main characters namely Akiyama Nana which voices Makina and Hasome Tatsuya for Ouri, both are very new in the business but did a very good job giving voice and life to the characters they portrayed.

I generally preferred female leads that have strong personalities, one that doesn't back down and is always up to the challenge, so Hoshimura Makina is a big win for me and an important factor that made watching this series an enjoyable experience. In addition to that, she is also hot and cool when she wields her two guns and start shooting on her opponents. The male lead Kagami Ouri is also not to be toyed around. He could be annoying at the beginning especially when he came across to the mysteries that revolved around him but he developed into one fine male lead as the series progresses. The other main character that give huge impact to the story is Tagami Keisei, initially a very secretive character but with his relationship with Makina slowly being revealed, his presence is pivotal into closing the gap between Makina and Ouri. There are also several characters from the Kougan cult, other Shikabane Himes, and antagonists that made an appearance mostly to progress the development of the main characters.

Shikabane Hime: Aka is a fairly well done series as a whole. Despite it short-comings in animation and the episodic format in the start, it didn’t affect my overall impression of the series which is more on the positive side of things as it improves at the midpoint and ended with a lot of questions that was eventually answered with the airing of the second season. As for my final note, I would recommend this series for viewers who like stories that are supernatural in genre with lots of action, gore, drama, and hints of romance.

Note: This is a re-review of Shikabane Hime: Aka
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Very very nice!
Did not like it much when I watched some episodes while it was ongoing.
Had almost made up my mind to drop it, BUT then I changed my mind, and started watching it all over.

Watching it back to back made one helluva difference.
It has some comedy, which often means I don't like certain series. Heavens be blessed that did not happen while I was watching Shikabane.

I'm so happy I decided to give it another try. The story and the characters interaction makes it a great watch.

I want to watch the sequel Shikibane Hime Kuro, but I'll hold my breath and try not to start watching it until it has finished airing. read more

10/10. This was a series I happen to stumble upon. It took merely 5 minutes into episode 1 for me to be hooked. This series really created an atmosphere, a storyline, and characters that are enjoyable and entertaining. I watched all of season one in ONE day.

The pacing, I thought, was excellent. I would've loved to see more episodes, but they managed to give you a lot of information with a good balance between the 13 episodes. There was never a point where I was bored, or waiting for it to get on with the story. I was thoroughly involved the whole way along.

The character development was another really strong point. You come to care for all the characters, especially given how many characters have troubled pasts.

The fight scenes are incredibly animated and just BAD ASS.

The story is original, action paced, and tragic at times. Definitely check it out! :D read more

At first I thought that the series would be so great and I got so excited because this type of story is one of the genres that I really love but I had “MADA MADA” or just average feeling about it.

The story was not particularly new. It was about a girl who was already dead but was revived as corpse and gained superhuman strength. Like your typical story, she partnered a human living guy in order to gain energy. The whole story was about her killing another corpse as so she can go to heaven but it turned out she has personal reason as to why she was searching for the villains. I strongly believe that the story itself was interesting enough but it didn’t work for the series. It was good but not good enough to leave an impression to viewers.

The characters were not particularly interesting, too. You can’t feel any greatness or impression from the lead characters to the villains. They were not interesting enough that you would remember their character. The main female lead was not great. Even with great abilities, she wasn’t specifically strong or special that would make her different from other SHIKABANE HIME which was so important as so to make her stand out as the lead character. The male lead also was not particularly interesting. He was weak-willed, soft, pure, and naïve. His naive character struggled a lot for the type of world the series has.

It was entertaining enough to make you want to finish it or anticipate the next season but that would be for the sole reason that you want to finish something that you started not because it was so interesting. I am definitely not loving it but not hating it though.
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Shikabane Hime… I wasn’t going to do this one either… seemed a bit too generic. But I bit the bullet and watched it anyway. It wasn’t good. It wasn’t bad. It was just… decent. I’ll probably watch the next episode to decide if I keep it on my roster for the season. Production values were all right. The OP isn’t really memorable, and neither is the ED. The general BGM throughout the show is okay, but isn’t really memorable either. It’s kind of a shame that music isn’t memorable at all in this show. I thought it could really have potential, considering the premise of the show is somewhat Bleach like, and Bleach had great music. The animation was all right as well… a bit jumpy in some spots, but generally fluid. The character art was decent, and semi-consistent, though I say that their noses are far too large for anime. Its just kind of a shame that nothing really stands out as spectacular in this anime. I suppose I should give it time to see if it blossoms, but my cynicism won’t let be get my hopes up.

The premise of the show is very Bleach like, which is not to say that it’s a knock off of Bleach, but they are very similar. Spiritually sensitive kid lives in a temple, and sees spirits. He has three friends that have anime stereotype personalities (Rukia is the only good female main character in Bleach, god dammit!). He stumbles upon the main female character Makina, who is a shikabane hime (someone who hunts shikabane, I’m guessing) and he is startled that she’s dead. He has a trippy run in with a spirit cat that tells him things, but eventually he shrugs it off. Yagami, the male lead, moves out after this incident. It turns out that Yagami’s aniki Keisei is the head of this secret society that hunts shikabane. Shikabane are corpses that have enough will to keep moving after death, and its Makina’s job to hunt them. I’m guessing that Keisei loves Makina or something, because they make it pretty damn obvious when you compare his attitude towards her to the other members of the society. Well, nothing really happens for most of the first episode, then at the end, Makina kicks ass with sub-machine guns and takes out the shikabane for the episode.

We can all guess that soon, Yagami will delve into all of this business, as he has met Makina. He saves her from being permanently dead (which had a trippy mind-fuck sequence) and then she slaps him and books it. I’m kind of disappointed in the first episode. It had real potential to be memorable, but it just didn’t wow me. Check it out if you want. I’ll probably watch the next episode before deciding anything. I give the show a total 6/10. I should note that this show is already slotted for a sequel, even before the first episode aired. It better turn out damn good, or I get to get out the pimp hand.

Produced by Gainax. Airs on Thursdays. Subs by Lunar.
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So let me start by saying I haven't finished this series and that is very uncommon and under normal conditions quite stupid to review a series before you have completed it (after all if you drop it half way through or finish it half-way and decides its bad who are you to call it such after as far you know the next episode could very well be the redeemer for the whole series and all of a sudden bring the spark of life it needed to be good). So now let me get to why I am reviewing this one without finishing it (other than that it has completed airing yet). This is more of a warning than it is a review, if you're planning on completing this series be prepared to fork out some cash because every subbing group out there has dropped it now while I believe it is important to support artist and creators I must point out that the money you pay for DVD's and such barely even benefits them...that's right most of it goes to the company (the same is not completely true for manga and if you have the money I suggest that you probably should buy them). So yeah back to what I was saying you will only find to episode 6 online or at least that's the cap I reached after searching for hours on end for episode 7. It's a good series I honestly want to know how it ends so now I will sit here and wait patiently until I can be the DVD set cheaply off amazon.com. I promise I will come back and give this a proper review once I have seen the whole series but for now you must excuse my unenlightened and slightly negative attitude towards the series.
Story- This story is about the shikabane hime (misguided souls/demons that hunt other demons/misguided souls) and how they must kill 108 shikabane (demons/misguided souls). The plot indeed thickens out more to that but because of the limited number of episodes I am able to watch this is about all I can sufficiently provide you with (sorry blame funimation).
Art- The art for this series focus on a unique combination of well drawn normal looking characters (okay not that well drawn or normal the eyes and nose seem a little strange in my opinion) with the monsters being drawn to be absolute abominations to the human vision (they seem to using a different coloring and drawing style for each monster which I for one think is amazing if not a little unnecessary).
Sound- Surprisingly enough what impresses me most about this series is sound I love the voice acting as I'm quite familiar with a few of the voices I here from other series. Also I love the opening to this series it perfect matches the context of creepy, undead people fighting to the death. This section however lost points from the gun sounds I've fired a lot of weapons in my days and while they did a decent job of capturing the sounds they seemed to have flubbed a little when it came to the sound of the 9mm and rifle.
Character- There the leading role (by which I mean the one we follow around the most) Ouri surprisingly has very little to do with the actual story just like us he just seems to be a confused observer that seems to get more in the way of the real heroes rather than show some bad assery of his own however we have a good understanding of his character and how his mind works by the third episode. Makina however our other main character kicks serious butt this only flawed by the fact that she is so cold and mysterious and that even by the sixth episode we only know enough about her to assume things rather than know them (but that's fine and dandy since that's her character type). Kesei I for one think should be the leading role in this series he's charismatic, funny, strong, and has the slight hint of mystery that you always need to make a good story unfortunately the story seems to be focusing more on his brother than him and that can only need to disappointment (also he's a pervy monk hehe he's tries to give his brother porn).
Enjoyment- Despite my whining I really do enjoy this series and do hope to finish it one day as the way things are left off now I want to near tear my finger nails to know what happens in the next couple of episodes. What can I say I have weakness for violence, hot girls, pervy monks, and killing monsters which this series has no lack of. read more