Bakumatsu Kikansetsu Irohanihoheto

The historical context of this anime is indeed demanding - you will have to wiki some names and battles - but the artistry and the theatrics employed are so great you want to keep watching the play until the right names come about.
It's best lays between episodes 1 and 13 (felt some disorientation in the argument after that point, like they were trying to pull up several storylines that would somehow converge in one single point in a map).
All the characters are immensely valuable, particularly the secondary ones like tayu, hijikata's right arm, nakaya jubei and the 4 english elite warriors that, as they ... come, bring the story closer to us.

Hijikata's journey north towards honor is sublime and kanna's descent operates as an inverted journey into despair. We are not given the answers for all the questions this anime brings about but it is fine: there is an element of surreal that allows for it to happen.
Technically, this production has very high standards both in the drawings as well as the animation itself. The cenarios are very much in harmony with the action and the characters are very dynamic.

If that wasn't enough, the soundtrack is simply breathtaking.

✪ Genre: action (swordplay, gunfights), contemporary fantasy, historical drama, seinen


✔Positive Aspects✔

◧ By far the most impressive aspect of this series was its sound department. Beautiful and diverse melodies for every possible situation, keep the series afloat despite its multiple shortcomings (see below).

◧ I found the concept of this series very interesting, the blending of modern Japanese history (with a mostly accurate depiction of historical events) and contemporary fantasy elements, although it was not executed nearly as good as it could have been.


... ✘Negative Aspects✘

◧ Pretty mediocre animation, low saturated colors lacking vibrancy, not as crisp as it should have been, especially for a Sunrise production. The graphics around the depiction of magical auras & of magical spells looked as if they were from the mid-90s.

◧ Absolutely terrible action scenes. Even though they tended to end very quickly, they were clumsy, lacking clarity as to what had occurred, and were characterized by a terrible use of the slow-motion technique.

◧ I had enormous issues with the plot. First off, unless someone reads or watches a couple of introductory clips on YouTube on the Tokugawa period, he won’t be able to follow the series. Secondly, too many characters, too many sub-plots, too many historical information was being introduced at a very fast pace that was making their absorption incredibly difficult. Finally, it took around 15 episodes for the series to pick up and start gaining a sense of direction.

◧ Another gigantic bummer was character development. I am not only referring to the supporting characters or even the deuteragonists themselves, but also to the protagonists. Besides knowing his motivation to seal the Head of the Conqueror, I did not get to know much about Akizuki’s personal history (some information popped up during the last 2 episodes) or his thoughts and emotions towards specific people or even the world in general. I encountered the same problem with Ibaragi. The series did not develop this character at all since I did not get to know anything about his personal history, his motivations, his thought process, the extent of his physical and cognitive abilities. He was portrayed as if he either was a psychic or by far the most far-seeing strategist in anime history. I had no idea whether he was Akizuki’s trump card (without the former’s knowledge) or a ‘trojan horse’ antagonist (being the actual primary antagonist who was masquerading as the faux primary antagonist’s right-hand man).


Overall: A pretty uninspiring series, which took quite some time to start putting things together for the viewer in order to redeem itself, but unfortunately did not manage to do so in time.

Basically this anime had a lot going for it at the beginning, but had to balance that with what it had going against it in the same timeframe. The scenes about the theater troupe and the writing involving Ibaragi and his plays was actually very engaging and made me want to see more. The very accurate portrayal of Japanese Kabuki theater was great and made me want to watch the show. I really liked the way they jammed a lot of plot into each episode and just expected you to keep up. But at the same time the anime was trying ... way too hard to push the "OP Shounen" angle with Akizuki and would have been much better off just focusing on the theater aspect than including the need for supernatural powers and deus ex machina appeals to "destiny".

The second leg of the anime descends into utter supernatural garbage without any real historical underwriting, losing all the value the first half had built up to push a supernatural Romeo and Juliet story. Gone were the accurate representations of urban Japanese life, the intrigue, and any real sense of enjoyment from the anime. I mainly finished it so that I would not have to say I dropped it. Altogether this anime was a trainwreck and sets up a lot of false expectations about the nature of the story in the first half, which it can't live up to at all.