Busou Shinki

The slice-of-life battle story is set in a future that has neither World War III nor an alien invasion—just an ordinary future set after our current age. In this world, robots are part of everyday life, and they contribute in various aspects of society. "Shinki" are 15-centimeter-tall (about 6-inch-tall) cute partners made to assist humans. Equipped with intelligence and emotions, they devote themselves to serving their "Masters."

These Shinki can even be equipped with weapons and armor to fight each other. Such Shinki are named "Busou Shinki" (literally, "armed divine princesses"). In particular, the Shinki Ann (Arnval), Aines (Altines), and Lene (Altlene) serve a high school freshman named Masato. Things change when a new Shinki, the bellicose Strarf, joins them.

(Source: ANN)

Arnval Mk.2 Main

Asumi, Kana Japanese

Strarf Mk.2 Main

Chihara, Minori Japanese

Altlene Main

Nakajima, Megumi Japanese

Altines Main

Mizuhashi, Kaori Japanese

Rihito Main

Mizushima, Daichuu Japanese

Zelnogrard Supporting

Shiraishi, Ryouko Japanese

Eukrante Supporting

Katou, Emiri Japanese

Tsugaru Supporting

Kugimiya, Rie Japanese

Jindou Supporting

Kamiya, Hiroshi Japanese

Ia Nee-san Supporting

Kasai, Tsutomu Producer

Tanaka, Gou Producer

Takatori, Masashi Producer

Kikuchi, Yasuhito Director

Reviews

Jan 19, 2017

KiramekiSparkle

Recommended

This review counts Busou Shinki as 13 episodes, with the OVA included as the final.

Busou Shinki is an anime about cute girls doing things in every day life. Shinki are little automatons modeled after girls, built to serve their masters. Originally designed for combat, they are now seen in various lines of work along side their masters.

If you are looking for an anime filled with battle harems and shounen shenanigans, then this is not for you. Busou Shinki is exactly what the description says. Futuristic slice of life with tiny robots.

In terms of having a story, the anime has one, but it's very loosely connected, ... and it seems to be done that way on purpose. It's somewhat episodic with the only common elements being that the Master of the automaton cast is a high school student freshly transferred in and the episodes being in chronological order.

Keep in mind, at least 80% of the story's events happen behind the main guy's back. This is just a story about cute little robots doing helpful things.

The later half of the story definitely fares better in the story category, with more interesting events happening. I feel like Busou Shinki sells itself short by saying that it is just a futuristic slice of life. In the later half we deal with themes like forgiveness, abandonment, grief, and death. Through out the whole story we begin to see that another important theme is the Shinkis' loyalty to their masters. To wrap up the whole story, our final episode dabbles in some fate and destiny to end on a high note.

I would have scored the anime higher in this category if it had more of a concrete story in the beginning. Once you get into it, the concepts and ideas in this anime leave you wanting more and more, and the well done second half doesn't quite fill the gap.

Story: 8/10

For Art and Sound, I'm no expert in these two categories, but I enjoyed them, and I felt the quality was fine.

I feel like the battle scenes look like a better Infinite Stratos. In fact that's exactly what the Shinki are. Thumbelina with an IS.

As for the sound, I can only think of two instances where it really stood out to me; but in these two instances I feel like they really manage to tug at my heart. Possibly because I'm somewhat sensitive. Then again, your mileage may vary when it comes to how much music affects you.

Art: 6/10
Sound: 6/10

Characters. Busou Shinki is largely centered around the automatons and their life as partners to humans. It is understandable that few human characters are ever seen.

I love how even though Shinkis have a limited variation of models, I can tell them apart by their personalities and their paint jobs.

One issue I have with the show is how they overplay the "loyalty to Master" theme. The automatons under the ownership of the main guy seem to have a one-sided crush on him. I feel like this could have been avoided by writing the characters differently, or lampshaded by making the main guy a "friend to all things" type (which he falls just short of being).

Another issue I have is that the characters of Ines and Hina. Both seem to have very tsundere qualities, although Hina seems to be intended to be more of the kuudere type. I feel like more work should have been put in to separate their personalities, which is what happens late in the anime. If these problems were hammered out earlier, I would have no issue.

In Busou Shinki, we see little to no character development in the sense that they change (aside from Hina, in my opinion). A large portion of this development is crammed into a two-episode arc and a flashback episode. I don't dislike this, even though I think it could have been done better by letting characters develop over the course of the 13 episodes.

Characters 7/10

In terms of enjoyment, I really liked this series. I came in after seeing the average score of 6.xx, and I figured it was going to be another battle harem anime.

I was pleasantly surprised. This anime could have easily taken a haremesque turn at many points, but they chose not to. They continued on making it just a cute anime about Thumbelina Infinite Stratos (with a better story and barely any ecchi at all).

On top of this, they also hit me with the feel bat. In most episodes, it's just a slice of life/comedy anime. Like I mentioned earlier, in select episodes, we deal with deeper themes. The first 6 episodes are mostly some cuteness and moe with asskicking on the side, while the last 7 are more somber and feature a lot of fighting for a slice of life.

Busou Shinki's creativity also deserves credit. They take small conflicts and make them bigger, including turning a lunch box delivery into a coup d'etat. There's also one part that deals with a "Hey, it's me your _____" scam gone dark.

Although some may be turned off by how over-the-top this anime can get, I loved it because these shenanigans lead to us seeing some minor characters given a call back to. Like a certain pair of Shinkis who are always up to Tom and Jerry-esque antics.

Enjoyment: 9/10

Overall, I gave a fairly high score, mainly because this is where I can add my personal feelings to the review. I feel like this anime really hit the spot for me. Especially the final, which really warmed me on the inside. It gave me sort of a warm "its a small world" vibe. If I were to take out the personal feelings part of the score, then I'd say at least 8/10.

OVERALL SCORE: 10/10

Reviewer’s Rating: 10

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Dec 23, 2012

DakenFrost

Mixed Feelings

So reading the tags of this anime (action, sci-fi) you may think (like i did): "Cool! Custom cute robots fighting!"; well that was true, but not the only truth. Most of the anime will lack a TRUE background plot and the fighting scenes are not...really the top...
Let me explain in the deep:

Plot - 5 (i am being good here)
Basically it's a slice of life anime without a defined plot. After the first episode you could see the ep 6, then the 2 and you will notice NOTHING. The only exception to this are some minor arcs of two episodes but that's all; you can see ... the last two episodes after the first one and all will looks just fine. Not a single evolution of events in the whole anime, boring.

Characters - 5
Standards characters: a blond and a blue airheads, the tsundere and the heroine. The master is a totally bland character so they are just "mediocre"

Enjoyment - 4 (that's my personal opinion)
I hate it. The first episode was promising with Ann (the heroine) almost defeating in a fight one of the champion of the tournament but that's all: no tournament, no serious battle. A lot of girls fighting to be pat by their master, looks like an harem -_-'

Overall - 5
Are you ok with a casual plot? Are you ok with characters without any kind of "soul"? Well if you are give a shot. If you are looking for some real action with cool characters click back or close your browser and run away from here.

Keywords: NO LASERS AND UBER CANNONS!

Reviewer’s Rating: 5

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Oct 8, 2019

mouthpiece

Not Recommended

THE STAFF
- Animated by 8bit, a minor studio that has produced nothing but passable ecchi shows.
- Directed by Kikuchi Yasuhito, who has made several anime of several genres, none of which are particularly good.
- Based on a toyline by Konami, meaning this is just a toy advertisement show.

One of the first anime I watched as a kid was Plauress Sanchiro, which featured a boy controlling a small fighter robot and taking on other contestants in tournaments. It was fun, with very original and interesting concepts for its time, plus it looked well animated. Many years later several other similar shows tried to do the same, ... the most famous ones being Medarot and Angelic Layer, which were of course mostly made to advertise affiliated plamo toys and not to offer interesting action scenes or concepts. Meaning, they were hardly as good. The recent one of this type is doing even less. Busou Shinki is 100% sleazy fan service and no plot, becoming deviant and trashy to all viewers besides sleazy fat hikikomoris.

The production values are quite good when it comes to action scenes and the use of 3D models, something that feels like overkill and wasted budget on such a show but at least makes it a tiny bit more enjoyable.

The plot is barely there and you can find more in almost any ecchi comedy. A dork protagonist is surrounded by small cute half naked gynoids and lots of naughty things happen that border hentai. They try to mask the whole thing a lot by not directly showing too vulgar and even to make it seem safe for kids to watch. Yet, see past the obvious and you find every single deviant stereotype you can think of, with absolutely no plot or depth.

The whole fighting theme is there only as an excuse for the robots to fight for some ridiculous reason, and barely tries to explain why every robot in the show is a dumb cute girl. Don’t even ask yourself how they would allow the creation of artificially intelligent robots with so much firepower and free thought and then sell them to little kids as fighting games.

Ok, I am obviously trying to reason with something that is made to be unreasonable. It is clearly a guilty pleasure show for ronery boys. And just like most hentai, it is watch once and throw away, unless you fall for it and run to buy the toys and… play with them. Creepy…

Other than that, nothing to see here. Even a silly show like Magical Pokan tried to offer a bit more depth than this crap. Highly not recommended.

Reviewer’s Rating: 3

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	Poll: Busou Shinki Episode 10 Discussion Elite60 - Dec 6, 2012	19 replies	by gebraffe »» Apr 19, 8:37 AM
	Poll: Busou Shinki Episode 8 Discussion Elite60 - Nov 22, 2012	27 replies	by gebraffe »» Apr 14, 8:53 AM
	Poll: Busou Shinki Episode 7 Discussion Elite60 - Nov 15, 2012	22 replies	by gebraffe »» Apr 13, 7:26 PM
	Poll: Busou Shinki Episode 6 Discussion Elite60 - Nov 8, 2012	23 replies	by gebraffe »» Apr 11, 1:32 AM
	Poll: Busou Shinki Episode 3 Discussion Venneria - Oct 18, 2012	41 replies	by gebraffe »» Apr 4, 10:01 PM

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