Sengoku Youko: Yonaoshi Kyoudai-hen

I bid you good day, tired adventurer. Have you grown weary of the endless deluge of isekai and reincarnation in your fantasy? Have you yearned for characters that have empathy and compelling motivations? Perhaps you would be partial to stories that don't rely on familiar tropes and instead seek to subvert your expectations?

Give Sengoku Youko a chance.

I know, its current rating of low 7 isn't exactly a great sell in the age of inflated scores, but hear me out. It's the kind of story that starts off in a very modest fashion but continuously picks up momentum as it goes. With nearly every single episode, ... you're watching its best episode yet. What starts off as a road trip turns into an epic tale of love, friendship, and camaraderie.

The author, Satoshi Mizukami, has earned his cult following for a reason. His works showcase a very particular style of storytelling focused on creating a diverse case of unique characters with compelling motivations and letting them figure out the story based on what these motivations are. In his worlds, there are no truly good or truly bad people; rather, there are people who care for different things and finding themselves in misfortune or conflict with each other. You could say it's kind of like Game of Thrones, except not edgy or cynical; quite the opposite: the character interactions in Sengoku Youko and Mizukami's other works are remarkably warm and soulful—to the point where you end up loving the entire cast, and even antagonists can be empathized with.

This adaptation by studio White Fox isn't breaking any records in terms of production values and cuts corners relentlessly where it can afford to, but it's clearly crafted with passion and is honestly much better than I would've expected for a very niche manga from the late 2000s, showing respect to the original work and enhancing it where possible. The early episodes are the weakest episodes as I've alluded to earlier, mostly due to the source material's somewhat haphazard pacing and the need to fit six volumes of manga material into a single cours' of TV runtime, but once it finds its stride mid-season, it's all smooth sailing from there. The soundtrack by the famed Evan Call is fantastic as usual and helps set the tone for the action, and the opening by MindaRyn was one of my favorites from the winter 2024 season.

Overall, the first season tells a compelling story by itself, but in the grand scheme of things it merely serves as a setup for the main bulk of the narrative. And trust me: the second half, coming summer 2024, will reach much greater heights. I, for one, cannot wait.

This is the the most underrated anime of Winter 2024!!! If you're hesitant to start this because all the reviews are praising it while it sits at a disgustingly low score of 6.97 then don't bother! All this means is that MAL is filled with brain-rotted zoomers who have the attention span of a cockroach and can't process anything besides shitty isekais and shounens.

I'll admit that the first 3 episodes are a little slow and might have been hard to keep up with on a weekly basis but that's no excuse to be rating it this low!

Premise: This show is a classic yokai/human ... conflict story you'll find everywhere in Japanese media. I've never even seen Inuyasha and even I can tell that it's probably heavily inspired by it. The show doesn't bring anything new to the table in terms of folklore or deep, complicated storylines like in Durarara but it does everything cliche well. If I had to compare then I'd say it's somewhat similar to Katanagatari.

The story is simple; Save the world: 7/10
The animation is the best in this entire season: 10/10
The sound design and op/ed choices are well suited to this type of anime. The voice acting is raw and unfiltered! I felt every single emotion the VA's tried to convey: 10/10
The characters are awesome: Jinka and Tama are lovable and heroic, while Shinsuke provides us the emotion and drives the story forwards. I love Shakuyaku and that's all I'm gonna say about her: 9/10

ENJOYMENT: I thoroughly enjoyed watching this week to week for the past few months and I'm excited for the continuation that will be airing soon. This show reminded me of classic anime. It's a very japanese and very anime show and White Fox did an amazing job with this as they usually do.

Sengoku Youko - The 1st arc of 2 for a renowned author, and it still has a lot of cooking to do.

If you have been in the AniManga scene for quite a while now, you would recognize a famed mangaka by the name of Satoshi Mizukami. This prolific author's stories are a mishmash of unorthodox proportions, but yet creative at the same time that you'd be wondering how someone like him is able to be so gargantuan at his many notable series. From the likes of the famed series of Spirit Circle (which is the mangaka's greatest work that hasn't got an anime adaptation yet) ... to the rather lukewarm adaptation of Fall 2018's Planet With (which J.C. Staff did decent where the "original" anime came first before the manga's release), and the abomination that was Summer-Fall 2022's Hoshi no Samidare a.k.a Lucifer and the Biscuit Hammer (which the anime was the series's biggest sin by way of poor and lackluster production values), the anime counterpart definitely needed a lot, and I mean, A LOT of time in the oven to cook.

All of this, leads us to the other ironic side of the coin, which is this Winter's season's Sengoku Youko, which covers the 1st part of the manga: the Yonaoshi Kyoudai-hen a.k.a World Reform Siblings Arc through the first 13 of its intended 37-episode series for a "complete" split 3-cour season. And for an interesting fact (if you want the TL;DR critique) of the show in general: Sengoku Youko is Satoshi Mizukami's weakest work, but given the most competent AniManga adaptation thus far from a near-far-gone, returning renowned studio.

In Sengoku Youko's fantasy world, there exists 2 factions of creatures: ordinary human beings, or monsters in the form of Katawara, experimental beings who are laden with power. The latter is true for a girl named Tama Youko (yes, which literally means fox), whose only goal is to like Jesus Christ (if he was not a human), correct the people in their evil and sinful ways and guide them back on the proper path of goodness and justice. However, what is said truer to her, doesn't apply to her brother Jinka, who is a human, and still hates humans in both bone and flesh, with his grudges unknown. Their journey to reform the world is met by Shinsuke Hyoudou, who's a samurai, but a coward by the main fact, who vows to become stronger to protect his loved ones. Together, the trio may have their separate ambitions, but the goal is one and the same to explore and reform the world as they deem fit. But enemies stand in their way, not to mention ruthless, and a ploy to experiment on humans and transform them into the aforementioned Katawara creatures, set them onto a path where dangers lurk at every corner, fighting against people that will give them quite the challenge on the road to purification.

At first, the trio are faced by the Dangaisyuu: a group of monks who're just as they look, innocent monks. But its leader, Yazen, is one that has a quench of power, and the people that serve him, serve the Katawara side of the community on their path towards evil, so much that they have power unabashed to trample on their opponents with much katawara power. But then again, this is the sibling duo of Tama and Jinka they're facing against, and the trick about them is that while Jinka is the human, Tama is the Katawara source which provides him powers to be transformed into a powerful Katawara, much like Tama's namesake of being a Youko to give Jinka fox powers, which the more tails, the more powerful Jinka is. The more colourful characters that follow thereafter, say, from Shakugan (saved from being a Katawara), to Jinun, Douren and Resshin, these are the true masters of their craft who also sides with the Dangaiyuu to push Yazen forward in his world-conquering quest of transforming humans into Katawara, which does not bode well with Tama's philosophy, while testing Jinka's limits of becoming a human-Katawara hybrid to the detriment of his thirst for power.

If you ask me, Sengoku Youko's a pretty wild story of the standard Satoshi Mizukami style that is really Mizukami levels of unmistakable both from the manga and anime standpoint, though Part 1 of 2 here of the Reformed Siblings Arc that covers the manga's first 6 volumes of 35 chapters worth, it does take some time to get used to, especially if this is your first time watching a Satoshi Mizukami show or have been burnt by Hoshi no Samidare a.k.a Lucifer and the Biscuit Hammer, and wanted an exoneration in his name in the animation department. Well, we finally got that treatment.

Well, well, look who's back. I did not expect to see the famous Re:Zero studio come back from the grave, especially since the studio's massive undertaking to complete another season of the Utawarerumono series. Taking a year apart to get back to the Re:Zero groove coming back this Fall, studio White Fox may have an episode of their fall from grace, but that doesn't NOT give us a chance to praise their ever-so-consistent production, even if this is kind of a re-start for the studio before the famed series will take up most of their time, leaving the 2nd part of the show after Season 3 (which I'm totally fine with). Finally, Satoshi Mizukami gets the name recognition along with good production values to boot from White Fox, albeit with director Kagetsu Aizawa who had a misstep with 2018's Hakyuu Houshin Engi modern reboot.

The OST by Evan Call, really helps liven up the atmosphere of the show greatly, even if the show does kinda wobble from time to time. Still though, that does not stop the theme songs from being great songs, of which MindaRyn has a song that I finally can say that her OP song "Hibana" is her best Anisong thus far. KEIKO's ED song does the job following the show's historical and mythical fantasy, which is great since it's famed composer Yuki Kaijura, showing that her craft is still unmatched.

Despite all the praise I can really give about Sengoku Youko as a whole, the story unfortunately is still the weakest link tying everything together, and it will not be until it's latter part of the double-length, 24 episode-long Senma Konton-hen a.k.a Thousand Demons Chaos Arc, is shown that has the story explode in terms of mythical lore. Again, I can only judge the show by its completion one-third of the way, which is decent overall.

Still though, this is your best chance to experience a new Satoshi Mizukami anime, and trust me, things in the future will look better once Part 2: The Thousand Demons Arc arrives later in Summer...just not now, not yet.