Asu no Yoichi!

Story: Mountain bumpkin, Yoichi Karasuma ,moves into the city and has to adjust. First couple of episodes were actually fun and enjoyable, but after that, this show just got significantly worse. Even though the story sounds unique it's just your generic ecchi harem anime and that's what makes it suck. I say this because it had potential based of the premise, but decided to just pull the same harem crap we were oversaturated with in the early 2000s. It's a show that could have been cool, but changed its mind immediately. Now this show could of course remained being a harem if it so desired, ... the issue is the lack of story. You sent the main character to his new location for a reason, so make that reason apparent instead of making it the background activity. The story also sucks because the characters suck too (more on that in the character section).

Art: Just like the story, it's generic and bland. It's not bad, but it aims to just get the job done and that's all. It's as if what we're watching is the draft of what's to come, but they thought "meh... good enough". The "action" scenes are also just plain boring and repetitive. I'm positive that this samurai only has one to two move-sets in his repertoire because that's all he uses. I also have a hard time believing that the four sisters, Ibuki, Ayame, Chihaya, and Kagome, are related at all. I know it's anime, but I'm a fan of characters that are siblings to at least look alike in some way. What genetic pool births a brunette, a blonde, a green haired, and blue haired children? That kind of detail in anime has always bothered me when it comes to siblings.

Sound/Music: Starting with the opening and ending theme: They are boring and forgettable. I actually had to go look it up and listened to it just in case if this series had a hidden gem and I was disappointed. I now regret looking it because it was just meh, which I guess matches the show completely in retrospect. I'm now happy that this show doesn't have a great opening theme song because it would have been wasted on hot garbage. The soundtrack overall was just generic. I don't even know if that's a good thing or not at this point. I can't tell if the soundtrack is only good because everything else just sucks or if it's bad just like everything anymore.

Characters: They all suck and when I say they all suck, I mean literally everyone in this series. Yoichi is just your boring, generic, harem protagonist. Guess why these girls like him? Because he's a nice guy and you know why he's a nice guy? Because you're a nice guy. Of course that means he's dense to other girl's feelings. I seriously have no clue why any of the girls like him. Yeah, he says sweet things every once in awhile, but they are by no means panty droppers. The weirdest part about this harem is there's literally nothing you can look at and go "Oh okay, that's when she fell for this schmuck and this is why". Ibuki is the eldest sister and she digs Yoichi the moment he exists in her life. Dead ass fam. There's not even any build up to it, she just likes this dude and I'm going to have to go with the shallow route with this one and presume it's because he's handsome/cute. There's literally nothing with her. Ayame is my favorite because she's tsun af, that being said she also sucks. She never progresses with her interest for the MC which I do not know what she sees in him other than "Dude is nice", but she's one of those characters in the harem that you can tell is not going to succeed whatsoever, but she has the most moments for some reason. Now you might be asking me "How does she have the most moments, but not progress with the MC?" Good question dear sir, but it seems every time a moment occurs between these two, that moment is deleted moving onto the next episode. Chihaya was a waste of space of character. She adds nothing to the story and don't even know why she's here. She's not even in on the harem really, but she's here alright. Kagome is also a waste of space, which is a shame because I love little sisters in anime (They make my heart warm and fuzzy). The only character I managed to somewhat care about because they have character development and I believe that's really cool is Ryou Washizu. He acts as a rival to the MC for Ibuki's affection, fails, joins the dojo so he can become stronger and get closer to Ibuki then eventually joins the gang to go save her and my dude does not get enough credit like he should. I would go through the rest of the cast, but no point; I hate the rest anyway.

Enjoyment: I enjoyed this series when I was 12 and now as a 25 year old, I despise this show. I'm positive skinny dipping in an active volcano would be more fun than re-watching this series. If Men in Black showed up to wipe away my memory, I would thank them beforehand. Even the fan service wasn't fun and enjoyable. If you can't even pull off fan service anymore, just give up.

Overall: This show is a waste of time and I couldn't even recommend this show as a joke. I wish it had developed an actual story since it had a pretty decent premise to run with. If you want to watch something generic, this is your show. You wanna watch some fan service that doesn't get excited in the slightest? Boom! This show is the one for you. Have fun!

Overall
A very uninspired love polygon/harem anime, with stuff snatched from all over the place. Concepts from mainly Love Hina, FMP, School rumble and Kenshin are obvious and despite borrowing from good sources, the end result is simply not good in any way.

Animation
Stiff animation and very standard graphics. Often, this is enough if the characters are well designed, but sadly they are not. They really tried to make the characters looks unique and cool, but they just look grey and unpersonal. Except for Ayame, who looks great and would have deserved starring a better anime than this.

The fighting scenes are not really much about fighting, but ... rather still poses and a lot of wind blowing about.

Sound
Opening and ending themes are allright, and so is voice acting. Except for Ayame, whose voice doesn't really suit her.

Story
As usual in a harem, it is qiute easy to predict the outcome. Actually, the story gets a bit more complex with each episode, as new characters are introduced, which is a good thing.

I never really got emotionally involved in the story or the characters, so I never appreciated the most of humour either. The "Washizu views" and the "raven" ninja guy were fun, though.

Character
Welcome to Big brother: Anime stars. Starring
Himura Kenshin
The lovechild of Narusegawa and Kaoru
Harima Kenji
Er... and some other people (including a couple of surfing ninjas)

...and they ALL have giant boobies. Yes, even the ten year old.

Most of the characters are shallow and flat (not talking about tits here) and don't evolve much. The most interesting are the bad guys and Ayame.

Yoichi is one of one of the most boring main characters I have ever seen; he can't be beaten in combat, he is always polite and the comedy potential of his unawareness of society never really takes off.

Hey folks, this will be a review for Asu no Yoichi. I have a fair amount of negative things to say about this anime. As someone who loves this genre its generally hard to find one that I dislike to this extent. Lets get into it.

The story is somewhat interesting and has a premise which could have been used to create an entertaining anime. A boy who lives in the mountains and trains in his family's special sword skill is sent to live in the city with people his father knew under the pretense of training further. The first couple of episodes played this out ... really well. We were introduced to our main character Karasuma, Yoichi, and got to join him as he made his way through the city the first time. Needless to say he runs into trouble almost immediately and gives the false impression of more fun to come.

After these first few episodes we are thrown into random encounters. The show has a slice of life feel with terrible scenario writing. Each sister has an event which makes them either come to like or respect Yoichi. However these events are terribly written, or should I say poorly written and hindered by the lackluster characters. After the sister events Yoichi and his sword style are targeted by an unknown person for unknown reasons. This remains true until the last two episodes which are so lame it was all I could do to not drop it. Unfortunately I cant go further into detail without spoilers but, it really felt like the writers felt bored wrote something then tried to patch it together into a coherent story later.

The art and sound were just ok. I liked the art style but it is dated. Soundtrack was very forgettable.

The characters were the straw that broke this harems back. As eluded our male MC is an uncultured samurai. After reading the synopsis and watching the first episode I had thought it would be similar to FMP. Unfortunately the writing kicks in here and they just turn him into one of those super unlucky characters surrounded by violent women. He constantly is getting his butt kicked by the sisters for various things that are either stupidly childish like the "oops, I grabbed your boobs even though nothing was going on but it felt like the correct time to add in a laugh", or various other situations that he actually wasn't responsible for.

The four sisters Ikaruga, Ayame, Ikaruga, Chihaya, Ikaruga, Ibuki, Ikaruga, Kagome were amazingly shallow(as was all the other characters). Ayame was the super tsundere who after being a cunt for the first couple episodes decided to cook for the sick Yoichi, who even in his sickened state managed to do impressive acrobatics and win her heart with kind words. She goes on to not do anything to progress her love for Yoichi and interrupts the action with jealousy at every turn. Chihaya is a manga artist and loves to tease Yoichi and get him into trouble. She actually had a decent enough story behind her interest in him but felt rushed. She basically only makes a few appearances and really isn't important. Ibuki the main female character is violent and falls for Yoichi because of his swordsman skills. Kagome was supposed to be the grounding stone in this family as a cute young semi mature sister. However she only plays small parts in aiding either a story event or helping a sister do something.

The other characters are barely worth mentioning. Throughout the show they introduce more characters but they all are basically cheesy villains that are used and tossed aside. There is a massive love tangle in this show. Almost everybody likes Ibuki and this becomes the driving factor later in the show. This introduces your typical blonde haired delinquent and your rich prince like character.

I was so disappointed in this anime. I didn't expect it to be amazing but at least average for a harem. The beginning was a good hook and made me interested in the rest of the show. However it quickly becomes repetitive, cringy and even frustrating. The ending was pretty bad and really drags this shows score from mediocre to bad. The girls weren't that cute, main character didn't feel like he had a personality and wasn't really interesting to watch. Not really a bad thing but I should also mention calling this show ecchi is a major overstatement. There are only two moments in the entire show which was eye catchingly sexual in but the rest was like shoulder level cleavage and the occasional ripped shirt to show an undershirt. Overall this one should be avoided, even by those of you who enjoy this genre. This isn't very well detailed because this show is so bland that even the smallest detail would probably save you a few episodes.

TLDR: Not good, poor writing, bad characters, no echhi. Even harem enthusiasts like myself shouldn't watch.

I think this anime is only the ghost of the manga. I decided to see this anime only after i read the manga and a lot of things are totally absent, like the ecchi element. In the anime the pantyshots are nowhere to be found, in the manga are everywhere. The story is poor and the events are messed up, in the manga you can see how the relationships between Yoichi and the opponents born and there are plenty of explanations. In the anime i can see only a bunch of evente thrown without a context. The only "spoiler" i can do is about the ... "assassin": in the anime he's just a side character that appears in only three episodes when in the manga has a deep story and a daughter.

Asu no Yoichi started off very strong. I found the first three episodes or so to be hilarious, watching Karasuma adapt to life as a regular teenager. Unfortunately, as the show went on, it gradually went downhill, culminating on the finale, where, as many reviewers have written before, the show really fails to deliver.

The Samurai is a very interesting protagonist, though he doesn't reinvent the classic airhead harem protagonist wheel. Probably the most special thing about him is his odd speech pattern, which was funny the first two episodes. The Ikaruga family was... interesting, to say the least. Kagome is hands down the most useless ... one of them, so I won't talk much about her. Chihaya was bearable when her little character arc came up, but after that, I just found her character to be very annoying, especially during the finale, where she threw an ink bottle at a guy, hit him with a manga, and somehow made him fall off the bridge, then said, "Manga artists can fight too!!!" Like, seriously? That made me cringe three times over. Shut the fuck up talking about manga! We get it, you're a genius mangaka at a young age, can you please have literally any other character traits that make you likable? This isn't the only reference to manga she makes during the finale, she does it twice more. In one of the last shots she's in, she says, "I can make a manga out of this". At that point, if the episode wasn't already almost over, I would have skipped to the ending right away. I cannot STAND her character. Moving on, I don't have much to say about the second daughter, as Washizu calls her. She wasn't the most interesting character, but also wasn't completely boring. The star heroine of the show, Ikaruga, was... pretty average as far as heroines go. Damsel in distress at the end of the series trope, like we've all seen in some harem anime somewhere.

Moving on from the important girls (Pink haired girl and her assistant are too minor of characters), Washizu was one of my favorite characters. The first time he's introduced, the show really portrays him as the one-shot thug who gets his ass kicked and disappears from the show, but he actually established himself in the main cast pretty smoothly. His Washizu Vision moments were hilarious, and his best friend, Torigaya, was a great character as well, albeit getting minimal screen time. I'm glad he didn't get zero screen time, however. There's way too many shows where the protag's best friends before the show begun just... cease to exist. Washizu and Torigaya were together on the show until the very end, though one was more important than the other.

Story is a big meh. I've seen a lot better. The ending was absolutely abysmal. It was your classic "move through the tower, fight the enemies, then go to the top, fight the boss, and win the girl" finale. The finale episode doesn't tie any loose ends, in fact, it creates a lot more plot holes than it closes. I won't speak too much about it, but when Ikaruga gets saved, she doesn't question anything. She doesn't ask where she is, how they got there, etc. She just... takes everything as it is and comprehends the situation immediately, somehow. Also, Samurai finally fought using more than 10% of his strength. This whole show, he's been using the same three techniques (or, strikes, as they're called) to defeat enemies, and I was kind of getting sick of it. In the finale, he uses a lot more strikes, but the way he defeated the main bad guy was a big cop out by the animators. They had a long distance fight... the bad guy threw two moves at Samurai, which he cancelled out with his own, I guess, and then Samurai did one move and BOOM, he wins. Is this really what they wanted the final battle to be? What a disappointment.

In conclusion, Samurai Harem was a show I enjoyed quite a bit. I rated it an 8 in enjoyment, but when you factor the story, characters, art, and sound (opening and ending themes, for me), it comes out to a 4. I am writing this rant directly after finishing the last episode of Asu no Yoichi. I imagine I'll forget about this show, given enough time. It was not particularly memorable, even the opening and ending themes were lackluster. The ending theme is one of those types of themes you skip every episode. I don't think I ever listened to it fully without getting bored or immediately going to the next episode. Anyway, I hope you've enjoyed reading this rant-review, have a good day.