Story: 610.
The entire story focuses on dominance and territorial war. The plot is very simple and straightforward. All episodes are filled with ground-breaking battles with generals as the main center of the battle.
The second season (Sengoku Basara 2) offers more depth in story aspects than the first one, but there are still some common flaws to both. An example of this would be the running gags, which are a bit too repetitive (and lost its quality in the process) when used too often in the series. The battles are also a bit too influenced by the presence of the strong generals (a.k.a the playable characters in the game version of this anime). Because of that reason alone, common soldiers seems to only serves as a decorative aspect of war (sometimes they could only watch their general fighting the enemy general when the enemy soldiers are there, right besides them). In the end, if a general alone could annihilate hundreds of people in one attack, who needs soldiers?
Still though, the soldiers proves to be a decent addition; at least it is very cool for the main characters to be able to wreck an entire army formation alone, with typhoon attacks or with earth-shattering slashes.
The entire battle concept reminds us of games such as Dynasty Warriors and, of course, Sengoku Basara. Watching the anime even felt like watching the game itself.
Art: 9/10.
The characters are very well-drawn and detailed even to the armors and weapons. Background is simply superb, including the buildings and natural structures. The entire series looks vibrant and rich in color.
The battle scenes are also drawn well, and expressions are very vivid. The characters are easily distinguished with their respective army theme colors.
Sound: 7/10.
The character voices are really suited to the characters' personalities. Although some voices sounds a bit exaggerated to the point of annoyance, some others are very natural and well-voiced.
The background music isn't very memorable. The only one noticeable would be the orchestral music used for cool situations. The OP and ED songs are decent though, it is very suited for a historical shounen-anime such as this one.
Character: 8/10.
There are so many characters in this anime and it is a bit necessary to memorize some important names to understand what's going on in the dialogues.
There are only little character development in this anime, but with so many types of personalities and characters in the series, it could be easily tolerated. The anime tends to emphasize currently available characteristics, rather than applying character developments (which is pointless if the character himself aren't very remarkable to begin with).
Regarding the quality of character interactions in this anime, the main focus to the characters' quality would be their attachment to their respective leaders. Throughout the series there are very few cases of romance. Most of the intimate interactions in the anime are those between a ruler and his personal adviser/general. As for the main characters, the two shares a strong bond of rivalry from the start of the series.
Enjoyment: 7/10.
The main enjoyment to this series are watching the action itself. The battles are very cool to watch, and interaction between characters are variable and interesting. The end of every episode always sparks a sense of curiosity on how the war turned out in the end.
Overall: 7/10. ( Good )
+ Ground-breaking actions
+ Beautiful graphic and character designs
+ Many weapon and skill variations to look forward to
-/+ Exaggerated human power
-/+ Very few female characters compared to the quantity of male characters
-/+ Simple storyline, no need to think too much
- Too many names and terms to remember even in the beginning
- Might confuse people who's not familiar with Japanese history
- Soldiers as only an addition to the war, not the main factor.
