Samurai Girl Real Bout High School

Anyone who is reasonably familiar with Neo Geo's classic fighting game franchise "Real Bout Fatal Fury" will probably be confused as I was upon stumbling across "Samurai Girl Real Bout High School". I'd wondered whether the series is some spinoff from the games, and the opening scenes did little to dispell that suspicion - it features a hand to hand combat between two fighters, one of whom resembles Wolfgang Krauser, a boss from the video games (in fact he resembles the video game character more than the actual Wolfgang Krauser in the anime "Fatal Fury 2: The New Battle"). However, soon it became clear that ... "Samurai Girl Real Bout High School" had no real connection with "Real Bout Fatal Fury", though I guess it's possible the games did provide some inspirations for it. Even though I was a little disappointed to find that the anime series and the games are unrelated, I have to say that I did not expect to like this as much as I did.

"Samurai Girl Real Bout High School" is a strange anime: a mixture of action, comedy, school drama, with an intruding touch of fantasy. It's this touch of fantasy that makes the whole thing strange, and without it, I think I would have liked the series quite a bit more.

My initial impressions of "Samurai Girl Real Bout High School" is pretty much inline with my expectations - it seemed to scream mediocrity in all departments. The idea of using "K-Fights" in a school to settle disputes is a poor excuse for fighting, one that almost matches the absurdity of another fighting/martial arts anime "Variable Geo" (which, by the way, is about a tournament to determine "who is the toughest waitress in the world"...). Other elements that I dislike in anime such as the whacky comedy and the panty shots are also omnipresent.

But there was one bright spark that seemed to promise to redeem the anime, and that's the first proper K-Fight (proper as in not one of those fights where some cannon fodder gets annihilated within like 2 seconds) that happened in the second half of the first episode. It comprises some breathtaking action sequences the quality of which I honestly did not expect from this kind of show, and it became my first highlight of the series.

Alas, it turns out that K-Fight is the best fight in the whole series by some distance, as later battles never lived up to the expectation set by it. Most of the later fights involve battling monsters, and those are pretty boring if I'm being honest. I was more interested in the side of the comedy/school drama that was being unfolded. At the time of watching, I'd already gone through 100+ anime titles, and I suspect my brain had finally succumbed to typical anime humour and was beginning to accept it. As the action got less and less entertaining, I found to my surprise that the comedy of this series was beginning to entertain me more and more. Also, the development of the non-supernatural part of the story, shallow though they may be, was beginning to rouse a casual interest in me.

Episode 10 brought an astonishing change of mood - in a single episode, the series manages to introduce a new dimension of romantic drama that was not present before. Prior to this, the "romance" is mostly there as a source of comedy (like the silly K-Fight over lunch), but episode 10 turned it into a much more serious affair . It shouldn't have worked, but for me it did, and in fact I liked it so much it's my second highlight of "Samurai Girl Real Bout High School".

It also turned out to be the last highlight. After episode 10 brought "Samurai Girl Real Bout High School" to an all series high, episode 11 promptly dragged it down to an all series low. It's an episode that comprises a measely amount of new footage and about fifteen minutes of pointless flashbacks. Things don't improve after that either, as the remainder of the series goes on to finish the demon story (badly) and that was that.

I do see the story as the weakest aspect of "Samurai Girl Real Bout High School". I know I said earlier that certain aspects of the story triggered my interest slightly, but as I'm sitting here writing this, try as I might, I cannot remember what the supposedly interesting bits I was referring to were. The only strong impression I'm left with when I think back on the story is that awful demon slaying fantasy. It comes out of no where, doesn't integrate well with the the school aspect of the anime, and is badly explained to boot. As a matter of fact, they hardly explain it at all. Towards the end, I noticed that this is made by Gonzo, which goes a long way towards explaining the mashed up, half-arsed story, as it's one of the trademarks of their works.

I guess it must have been the characters that kept me interested. I genuinely found them likeable even if they are mostly quite shallow. I have to say voice actors did a great job of bringing them to life, particularly the protagonist Ryoko, whose voice has an audible "wild streak" in it.

So, expect comedy, expect fanservice, expect action that can be brilliant AND boring, expect a half assed, incomplete fantasy story and, if you don't expect too much in terms of quality, then maybe, just maybe, the show will spring a couple of pleasant surprises on you as it did for me.

I started watching this anime in 2002, but I only saw the first three episodes. At the time, I was just a teenager without much money, so it was difficult to find the complete series. However, those first three episodes left such an impression on me that I always wanted to see the rest.

Today, 22 years later, I finally had the chance to finish it.

The first thing I want to say is that those first three episodes are definitely even better today than they were 12 years ago. This anime really starts off very well. A mix of great characters, an intriguing story with the ... promise of getting deeper and deeper, and a great touch of humor whet our appetite for more. There's no doubt that I had a good eye 22 years ago.

However, ironically, the anime starts to fail after the fourth episode. It's as if the author had spent all his intellect at the beginning of the story and then didn't know how to develop it. It's clear that it had great potential. But for some reason, the anime starts to become silly, empty, and hollow. In some episodes, the viewer can't help but wonder, "If you're promising me a good narrative, why does the author end up dedicating two episodes to pure comedy without contributing anything to the real plot?" This anime is only 13 episodes long.

The lack of follow-up to the main plot is so great that in the last episode, even the protagonists are still as confused about the development of events as they were in the first two episodes. What a waste!

In short, Samurai Girl Real Bout High School is one of those stories that could have been great. It had everything going for it, but the author got lazy and ended up making an anime that, while not bad, is an average comedy that you can enjoy but will forget about.

The GOOD. Charming characters. The protagonist, besides being beautiful, has a personality that makes you feel like she's "your friend."

THE BAD. After three episodes, the author gives up on an interesting narrative and dedicates himself to an average comedy.

SEPARATED AT BIRTH: Ryoko Mitsurugi, the protagonist of this story, looks like a twin of Kenshin Himura from Rurouni Kenshin, and of Juubei Yagyuu from Samurai Girls. It seems that 20 years ago in anime, it was a requirement to be red-haired and long-haired to be a samurai.

There's Anime you know are going to be bad from the first few minutes of the first episode. It's usually because they start with tropes that never get done right and and get spammed endlessly. When you get three or more of those tropes in the first few minutes, you know there's going to be a whole lot of bad in the future. Having a whole lot of bad is the one place where Samurai Girl doesn't disappoint.

The unbeatable MC is a deathtrap of a trope for anime. It can be done well but almost no one gets it right, and ... Samurai Girl gets it really really wrong. How does it get it wrong ?

1. It tells you the MC is completely undefeatable right from the start. There is only one person that can beat the MC and they never try. This is a pit that Samurai Girl throws itself into, when it didn't have to. What's worse it never tries to dig itself out of it. It never makes the effort to try and sell the fights, there's never any tension, it's just watch an episode watch the MC win some fights and get nowhere on the romance front.

Predictable as water flowing downhill.

2. The comedy just isn't there. I am not even sure what I was supposed to find funny. Was it hordes of bento boxes being shoved at a character ? Was it the stupidity of the script ? No idea.

Just not funny.

3. You probably expect this from the ridiculous start, but there's no story to speak of. It's Premise (combat hs) ---> Defeat Minor Bosses ---> Defeat big boss----> done

Tedious Plot. Character Development is not even a concept.


TLDR: If you want to listen to people saying stupid things in japanese in the background, this may be for you. Otherwise give it a pass.