Shadow Skill: Eigi

ELECTRIFYING! thats what occured to me when i watched it back in 2000, and they don´t make them like it used to. Elle ragu is maybe one of anime most BADASS girls ever, by design,personality, and her non-girly behavior, as well some of other important chara througout the serie. The story in beginning looks like a small recapture of the movie at the tournament, some simmilair scene´s but better animation and further developing storyline.
It gets better and WAY darker as everything progresses, So is the art, it looks better than the epiloge or the movie, and u really can ... see that money and attention is put in this emerald .i like the intro-outro part of the serie´s with nice dancemusic at the last episode ending credits. Then, the martial arts, quite a limited choice of martial arts are in the anime and not dozens and dozens like in fist of the north star, aside that the fighting in lots of scens are well executed by viilians and heroe´s, it made me jump from chair to chair out of madness and happyness but its not like some halfbaked kickass stuff, NO! Then the legend of gau ban, wich is an suprise story in and anime story! i already rewatched it soo many time´s i lost the counting , but it stays damn good

Shadow Skill is quite interesting when it begins, quickly having its own distinctive identity as a fighting series and setting up a story which may turn out to be amazing if handled nicely. And that is practically its downfall; it does very little with its own potential.

Shadow Skill is the name of a powerful fighting style, perfected along the years by slaves whose hands were always in chains. Thus all its power lies in somersaults and aerial foot attacks, while leaving the hands to be mainly for defense. In a way it shares the same origin as the funky Capoeira style, while adding some superpowers ... like sonic booms and bone cracking grabs. As far as the fighting goes, it is quite spectacular on a superficial level, as there is a lot of jumping in the air, using boomerangs, and binding chains, and smashing both terrain and skulls alike. Most of the songs are cool to listen and make the battles more exciting as well.

The problem here is the production values, which are not allowing the fighting arts to look as smooth and spectacular as they could have been and mostly end up feeling stiff or crude most of the time. Reused frames and static caricatures are all over the place, while the faces distort a lot during choreographies, something akin to what they did in Naruto battles (hiring different people for the battle scenes). It’s just Studio DEEN doing its usual lazy work and trashing its premises for retarded action and fan service. Well, there isn’t a ton of nude in it but surely, all those tight clothes, bouncing boobs, macho men, and cute girl sidekick can’t be ignored. But it doesn’t overdo it as much as the lack of realism in fighting, which in turn takes a lot away from the gravity of the backdrop story.

And yes, there is a backdrop story and I must say it is a decent one. The heroine Elle is the current practitioner of this style, and is also one of the four elite champions of her kingdom, thus her role is to protect the king from invading armies and other sort of internal issues such as raving monsters and powerful criminals. Along her travels an orphan boy she found in the battlefield, who is dead set on learning her style and fighting to protect all he loves. There are lots of scenes where the two of them share their worries and reveal their sad pasts, all part of a way of life where you need to fight for all sorts of reasons. And yes, typical to its genre all the fighters love to kick ass because it makes them be in control, gives them a sense of security, help them to find happiness through the thanking of the people they save, and so on. Elle is also not a peon of the king, as she constantly does things her own way, and usually acts very vulgar and undisciplined; thus she is a fine grey character. He adopted brother Gau also is interesting for slowly learning of how the world works and improving fast in the Shadow Skill. It has a very nice way of making you feel like there is more to the fighting; a serious aspect besides brainless action. And it is not just personal drama, as there is a sinister plan looming in the background, as evil fighters prepare to take over the kingdom by killing its elite protectors. Thus many of the seemingly stand-alone missions are in reality attempts to kill Elle and weaken the king’s defenses.

But as I said, it does very little to properly present all its ideas. Half the episodes feel like stand alone missions where we get to know the characters through their tragic pasts. And when the second part begins and the conspiracy starts to reveal, lots of stuff feel random and poorly executed. There is a super powerful man called Scarface, and he acts all mysterious and stuff, saving the heroes when they are in trouble before disappearing. He ends up being nothing but a plot device for cheap thrills. There is also the elite warrior of the conspirators, and he acts all mysterious before his goals are revealed and are just pitiful megalomaniac stuff. There is this chain-summoning girl dressed in green joining them midway as some sort of emotional support as well as a possible romance, but she ends up being useless and even a bother, as she constantly stands in the way of the fighting. And there is this invading army nobody can possibly stop when they otherwise can level buildings with a punch. The ending is also very rushed and even leaves things unexplained. Damn you DEEN; will you ever care to do it right?

And sadly, there are simply way too many shows out there that share Shadow Skill’s elements one way or another. When you think about Capoeira for example, you would easily prefer Cowboy Bebop or Samurai Champloo over this. When you think about a practitioner of a deadly martial art, Hokuto no Ken is eons cooler. A woman with a tragic past roaming the land along with a boy and fighting monsters? Here comes Claymore. I could go on forever with these comparisons but down to it, this could have been a lot more than your usual half-baked DEEN travesty.

And now for some excused scorings.
ART SECTION: 5/10
General Artwork 1/2 (generic)
Character Figures 1/2 (generic)
Backgrounds 1/2 (basic)
Animation 1/2 (crude during the battles)
Visual Effects 1/2 (basic)

SOUND SECTION: 7/10
Voice Acting 2/3 (corny but fitting with the feeling of the series)
Music Themes 3/4 (not great but fitting with the feeling of the series)
Sound Effects 2/3 (ok I guess)

STORY SECTION: 5/10
Premise 2/2 (interesting)
Pacing 1/2 (erratic)
Complexity 1/2 (not much)
Plausibility 0/2 (bad directing)
Conclusion 1/2 (solid but messy)

CHARACTER SECTION: 7/10
Presence 2/2 (sexy/cool)
Personality 2/2 (cheesy but well founded)
Backdrop 1/2 (generic and simplistic but it’s there)
Development 1/2 (overblown but it’s there)
Catharsis 1/2 (overblown but it’s there)

VALUE SECTION: 3/10
Historical Value 0/3 (none)
Rewatchability 1/3 (low because of the loose plot)
Memorability 2/4 (the drama was interesting but all the rest are rather generic)

ENJOYMENT SECTION: 3/10
I would like it more if it wasn’t DEEN who animated it.

VERDICT: 5/10

Rewatching this in 2023 is nothing but a nostalgia trip for me for the most part. I wanted to know why it was never heralded as one of the best anime series to have come out of the 90's. I had to find out the hard way.

This was so tough to sit through. From the slow start with so many unnecesarry comedic moments up to the underwhelming and dissatisfying second half. Not to mention how majority of the fight scenes and climaxes felt more of a slide show rather than dynamic and fluid as anyone would expect given the title of the show and ... what the main opening sequence highlights.

I would've loved to see the story go more in-depth with the fighting styles from every region and to have their power-ups and specials be left to sub-text. Infusing more martial arts scenes as well would've made the experience more exciting. The costume designs were frustrating. It felt all over the place. Very incoherrent on that department.
The story just has so much potential riding on it that was never fully realized.