Kaitouranma The Animation

Samurai: Hunt for the Sword feels like what would happen if you wrote an anime using cliff notes. It's not bad, but it's far from unwatchable. I would go as far to say that this might just be the most safely mediocore titles I've ever seen.
[STORY 5] Remember back when every seventeenth century feudal Japan-based anime opened with ninjas raiding a shrine and slicing down lots of useless guards? I might be a sucker for those cold openings, but I can't help it, it's so cool in classic, B movie fashion.
Door breaks down
Guard A: "Whose there!?"
Ninjas rush in ... and cut down 57 soldiers in a poorly-lit shrine
Random ninja picks up cursed/sacred item: "We have it, master!
Bad guy with funny hair cut and scar arrives and takes thing: "Now nobody can stop me! Bwahahahaha!"
-TITLE SCREEN-
Anyway, the core plot is simple, but incredibly faint. It does succeed in setting up tension for the final battle between the two swords, which in a way makes this like Ayane's High Kick or something.
[ART 6] Character designs are cute at the most, but I got tired of this art style quite a while ago after Saber Marionette. Like the gals in SM, these girls are kind of pretty, but not the sexy I think they were going for. They pass as eye candy, because the male lead has such an undistinguishing look, he may as well be dry wall. Outside of that, the world is decently drawn, but not particularly immersing. Environments are reduced to generic rooms, another generic room, and several scenes in a town square. Decent, but lifeless at best for this universe, although animation for the final battle (while too short) was pretty sweet, and I'm sure Bleach ripped off a few of these moves for their stupid-looking bankai battles.
[SOUND 6] Pretty okay english dub. It's sometimes pretty cheesy, especially during a scene where the Shinjuro is complimenting Busty Lady on her massive breasts and Koharu takes offense. It's funny just how bad the english dub actors try to make these lines comical. If you pick up the DVD, you'll get a kick out of the outtakes.
[CHARACTER 6] As paper thin and cliched as this cast is, I only thought one person was really useless, and it's the silver-haired ninja lady (I forgot her name shortly after finishing the show, but she's the one who instigates the boob argument). Besides her, I enjoyed everybody else. Sure, they have no other traits that may redeem them as actual characters, but the girls are all pretty likeable and fun. I wish more was done with them backstory wise. The villians' motives seemed a tad bit unclear to me and I was trying to decide if there was an actual villian at all. They wanted this sword, bit then Shinjuro catches the silver-haired guy's eye and he wants to fight him, but on even ground. Huh, okay, so he's the fair, evil guy.
[ENJOYMENT 6] Rewatch value maybe kind of low, but there's nothing really terrible about it (except the ninja lady). The humor isn't laugh out loud funny, but it's cute for what it's worth. If you like to watch cute ladies (and who doesn't?) kick around a bunch of ninjas (and who doesn't?), this is worth a look, but it lacks at holding interest in a story.
[OVERALL 6] If this were a linear series, it may have been kinda bad, but for an OVA it has a cheesy charm about it. If there were anything else I could nitpick about is that it just kind of stops as opposed to having an ending. That annoyed me a bit, but I'll take this over Kaidomaru any day.

PROS: Campy, light-hearted characters, cool final battle, DVD outtakes
CONS: Kind of uninteresting, too much 'tell' and not enough 'show'

This is an OVA series about a young man who has to fight against an evil group bent on obtaining the hilt to an evil sword in order to take over the world. His father runs a swordmanship school, and when he hears the news he leaves on a journey to find a sacred sword that can battle against the evil one. That leaves his son in charge of the school, and also in charge of fighting against the bad guys. He's a little wimpy and naive; and is of course drooled over by several girls, but surprisngly he's a good fighter. This is a ... very abrupt OVA, like many others, and is rather silly and shallow at times but I found it entertaining overall.