Kengan Ashura

The Kengan Ashura anime is the most disappointing thing I've seen all year. I love the manga, it's one of the best martial arts stories and I wrote an entire review on how cool it is. I've been wary of the anime adaptation ever since I saw the first trailer and realized it was going to be in CGI. Being a Kengan Ashura, I felt obligated to watch it but I set my expectations extremely low. apparently, those expectations weren't low enough because I am still baffled at how awful this show is.

The most glaring problem with the anime is the CGI animation. While not ... the worst CGI that I've seen, it's far from what I'd call good. Character models are clunky and stiff, the attacks lack impact. The CGI does a poor job of emulating the beautiful art of the manga. The fight choreography is terrible, the camera is all over the place, never knowing what to focus on. At best it's uninspired and at worst it's just disorientating. It doesn't feel like it's ever taking advantage of the fact that it's CGI. The anime tries its best to replicate the exaggerated and detailed facial expressions characters have and it often falls flat. Sometimes they look fine but other time it just doesn't look right on a 3d model. The presentation of some of the techniques used by the characters is just abysmal. Raian's Removal and Ohma's Advance look ridiculous in the anime. Something about the way they glow is just off. There some 2d scenes during flashbacks, which are mostly still images with very limited animation. They're not great but they look better than CGI. The switching between the 2d and CGI scenes can be quite jarring at times.

The CGI is bad, but the real problem with the Kengan Ashura anime is the story. I've already talked at length about how good the story is in my review for the manga. It's a simple story but well thought out and executed. The anime somehow completely butchers it. The anime adapts 73 chapters from the manga, not counting the extra chapters. Obviously, a plethora of stuff was cut to make it fit into twelve episodes. Entire subplots and characters are just gone, it's a mess. For example, the anime just skips the second major fight of the series and jumps right to the third fight. I'm astounded that they would skip a fight, in a series all about fighting. The character that Ohma fights against is also important to a later subplot, so of course, that entire subplot was axed. I think the baffling change is the absence of Yamashita's secretary Kushida Rin. She's an integral part of the story and she just doesn't show up at all. They even cut some vital character development for Yamashita. He's more a comedic relief character than anything else in the anime. It's upsetting because he's one of the most well-developed characters in the series. The side characters suffer the most from the cut content. There are a lot of good character interactions that give good characterization and flesh out character relationships between side characters and most of them were cut. Because of this you're never really given a good feel for or reason to care about characters other than Ohma and Yamashita. The most these characters get is a flashback during their fight. The manga excelled at fleshing out all the characters and the anime seems focused on getting to the next fight as quickly as possible. Another bizarre change is that in the manga there's a character named Adam Dudley, a fighter from Texas. He's a rude and vulgar man with "FUCK" engraved on his teeth. Oddly enough this was changed to "DAMN" in the anime. It's a minor change but it feels unnecessary. He's still just as foul-mouthed as he was before, so why change it at all?

If there's one positive thing I can say about the anime, it's that the music is pretty decent. The opening song is good, even if the visuals of the opening leave a lot to be desired. The ending song is terrible, the rap does not complement the series at all. The background music does its best at trying to get the audience hyped for the fights and would succeed if not for the fights themselves didn't look so bad. The voice actors are fantastic for the most part Daisuke Namikawa is absolutely perfect as Kiryu Setsuna, he gives the best performance in the show.

Quite simply Kegan Ashura is a bad adaptation of a brilliant manga. The visuals and all the cut scenes are just horrid. It's an insult to both Daromeon's art and Sandrovich's storytelling. The manga was full of passion for martial arts, and I didn't feel any passion for martial arts or even love for the source material in the anime. It's such a hollow and soulless adaptation, and it's unlikely there'll ever be a proper adaptation. I'd advise anyone who was put off by the anime's visuals or story to try and give the manga a shot, it's a far better experience.

I loved the manga. It's the best thing I've read so far and it's honestly great. But this is just a mockery of what the manga was. I was disappointing when I saw the trailer for this ONA but actually watching it is another level of terrible.

Story-
7/10
The story is simple and interesting but it's not exactly what it was in the manga. I feel like the pacing was far better in the manga. Things were also explained far better in the manga too with a lot more detail and making the read a lot of fun but its numbed down in the anime.

Art-
3/10
The art style ... in the anime is truly terrible. I hate it so much. There are so many awesome moments in the original manga that just have no where near the same impact here. The main cast of characters looks so much better in the manga due to the amount of detail put into it but it's nowhere to be seen here. I would love to see how scared Kazuo would get in the manga due to his facial expressions but those are just missing in the anime.

Sound-
5/10
The sound design is pretty mediocre. Often during the start of the episode I was thrown out of immersion purely due to the sound of the drums making me think I'm watching Naruto. I also don't like the generic impact sounds during the fight scenes as it just doesn't carry that heftiness.

Character-
8/10
I like the characters, I really do. There are so many charming and interesting things about these characters that make them compelling to me but it's just all over thrown by the awful animation and how they decided to go about the character designs.

Enjoyment-
2/10
Yeah... It wasn't an enjoyable experience at all.

Overall- 4/10

I really wish Kengan Ashura gets turned into a proper anime at some point in the future as there is so much potential in it. I hope it gets the same treatment as JoJo where it gets fully remade somewhere down the line.

Have you read the manga? read it before reading this review. Have you read Berserk? do you know about Berserk (2016)? Search about it before reading this review.
I have created an account here on MyAnimeList just because of this abomination that is sorely called an "anime", imagine reading the most epic history in the world with artistic choices worthy of an award, getting hooked on it and then discovering there is an anime for you to watch, all those scenes come back to you as you imagine the thrill of seeing everything unfold with top-notch animation making justice to the beautifully drawn pages of the ... manga, then you see it is only available on Netflix, it is the most gut wrenching feeling you have ever had, you let that aside because you really like the manga, it couldn't possibly be done wrong... IT'S. 3D.
Well you only had one other passion as of manga, called Berserk, you recall how they destroyed it, it hurts. But with Berserk they chose an horrible studio who only had 3D experience with small bits in anime, only animated comedy shows and such, and you think: "well, Netflix wouldn't make this mistake." they did. Studio Larx was a bad choice, they have ONE complete show under their belt and it is awful, the 3D is so bad it makes your head hurt, i do not recommend that you watch this BEFORE reading the manga, have your first experience as God intended. READ. THE. MANGA.
Maybe by some sort of divine intervention someone will make a good adaptation of this amazing manga, but not yet.

Bad CG’s reign of terror rages on.

Story:
When businesses have a deal to work out, they could just negotiate, but wouldn’t it be more exciting to have an underground fighting tournament? The series spends about half of it’s runtime setting up this simple premise before we move onto the fights. There’s really not much to say for the story other than it feels like an overjustification for creating a fighting tournament anime. To spoil the ending, it was “wait for season 2 or read the manga”.

Sound and Visuals:
The opening and ending were both good choices for trying to hype up the show. I have no complaints ... with the voice actors either. Mana Hirata as the announcer in particular was willing to sacrifice her vocal cords for the greater good of hyping up the fights. If you’ve seen any of this show, you’ve seen the absolute lows that CG anime has to offer. CG anime peaked a few years ago with Houseki no Kuni, since then a lot of shows seem to be using it just to save more money on their manga ad. This show is no exception. It hurts because I’ve heard a lot of good things about the manga, and you can see the effort put into the choreography during the fights. But it really gave off the feeling of watching someone else play a fighting game that keeps skipping cutscenes.

Characters:
There weren’t any standouts here. You could see everyone’s personalities just fine, but the anime never really tried to go any deeper than the surface. Also, the standard character design was rippling strongman. When everyone is an ugly abomination of CG, it’s hard to really latch on to any of them. If I had to choose a favorite it would probably be Karla, and that’s mostly just for character design.

Verdict: Hard avoid
There’s nothing really worthwhile here. If you want to watch an anime about bad CG buff guys fighting, you might as well just watch Baki instead. It’s also on Netflix but some scenes actually look fine, there are memorable characters, and there’s some semblance of a plot.

This is a fighting anime so there isn't much to expect story wise, except the fights of course. As always there is a use of a lot of bs during the fights. For example, making up, in the middle of the match, a new technique that nobody knew about before, was ever hinted, so the chosen party can win. But this isn't uncommon in the shonen genre, but having to use this everytime isn't a good display of writing skills from the author.

But, if it was only that, this could have been a 6. The reason for this low score another: stupid nationalism shoved from ... the author. Caricature of african american people. Caricature of international nations, except Japan, which is perfect. Especially jarring how they ridcule everything of value of other nations while simple stuff of Japan gets spotlighted. Incarnation of a technique looking like missile, incarnation of a god, all these beaten by contracting the muscle and anti-riot police, of course. The first death, of course, from another nation. Japanese fighter uses kayoken from nowhere and then kills the priest that loved his sister.

The thing is that i know this is a Japanese opera but there was absolutely no reason to bring those themes in any way to the story. Stay racist Japan, as always.