The storyline and plot development of Sengoku Basara is barely worth mentioning – it is barely developed whatsoever, and the skimming over of the events of the period made trying to follow such an unexplained story fairly confusing for someone like me, who does not know much about the events of the Sengoku Period themselves. It becomes obvious that the bare threads of story only serve to connect the fights of the series, and this in turn contributes to the rushed feeling of the series itself. The basic time-worn concept of good vs. evil presents the main plot of the series, a very stereotypical goal for the demographic.
The cast of characters for the series is quite large, surprising considering the fairly short length of the series itself, and because of this large cast/short series imbalance, character development is practically paper thin. Some characters only show up for one episode or so before being offed, or in some cases, only appear for two or three moments in the series, despite being seemingly interesting characters (prime suspects for this being Mouri Motonari and Chousokabe Motochika, the latter only being revealed at the end of the series and basically has around 5 minutes of screentime in total). Also, opposite to the above point, several characters that are featured prominently in the series have barely any interesting fight scenes or development whatsoever (prime examples being Sarutobi Sasuke and Kasuga). This presents a very ‘half-finished’ view on the character development of the series, which is never a good thing. Despite this, however, there are some characters that are developed more than others, such as Date Masamune or Yukimura Sanada, for example, but these characters still are not developed very much, and their dialogue mostly delves into a sea of predictable phrases later on in the series. Interactions between characters are fairly unremarkable, unless they are fighting between each other, and many of the ‘gags’ that occur throughout the series (such as Yukimura’s exchanges with Takeda Shingen, or Kasuga’s interaction with Uesugi Kenshin) are very repetitive and don’t really add much whatsoever, they just end up being fairly silly and irritating as time goes by.
It is clear from the very first episode that the primary focus of Sengoku Basara is with its action scenes, something which the war-time setting caters to greatly. However, many battles simply degrade into one of the main characters using some kind of absurdly powerful attack to tear through legions of nameless weak soldiers, and this does become repetitive quickly. Despite this, the majority of the battles take place between the main protagonists and antagonists of the series themselves, and these battles can sometimes be fairly fun to watch, but most delve into the limitless vault of shonen series tropes such as powering up/energy blasts etc., which really hampers the uniqueness of the fights, even if interesting elements are involved.
Visual direction of the series is quite well done, the fight scenes are fluid and transition well, and generally in itself the animation is quite detailed. Frequent splashes of colour and sketching effect are used very liberally throughout the series, to highlight the flashy special moves that the characters exhibit, which is somewhat interesting at first but is not particularly explored. There is a surprising lack of blood, even for a shonen series of this kind, which does make the battles somewhat disappointing to watch.
Audio wise the series does not present a particularly memorable soundtrack, most of the series’ background music consists of either stereotypically created hard rock tracks for the fight scenes or somewhat traditional sounding music for the scenes that were not taken up by fighting, which is not very many whatsoever. The opening and ending themes are also fairly unmemorable rock pieces which contributed to the series’ tone itself in principle, but really were not notable in any other merit.
In conclusion, Sengoku Basara is a very average and overrated series. A lack of coherent story beyond an excuse for characters to fight, poor overall character development due to a large cast and not enough screentime, subpar and derivative action sequences with too much incessant energy blasts/special attacks, a fairly unremarkable soundtrack and a lack of veritable historical accuracy for the period translates to a measly 5/10. Some may find this entertaining as merely a baseless and flashy piece of media, but these features should not be treated as compliments.
