Having been able to play one of the earlier games for a bit while at a relatives house a few years ago I have occasionally looked back but often found the games to expensive. So when an anime came out for them whoo I might actually be able to enjoy this without paying a ridiculous amount. I was also interested because rather recently my interest had been sparked by this period of history.
The first episode didn't really grab me, there was a few moments that made me laugh. I only stuck around due to the knowledge that everything was going to go very wrong within about five minutes of the next one. So second episode impressed me and I liked the third as well, all about friendship and that and everything going wrong. It was the fourth where I started to lose interest. The story moved too fast and completely ignored the ties between many characters, such as the one between Hideyoushi and Mitsunari which is at least mentioned in the game as far as my knowledge goes. They then completed the "what the hell are you doing, stop this now" feeling by killing off what felt like half the characters.
I carried on watching simply because I went into a stage of "something interesting might happen, keep going" and there was just dreary politics for a good few episodes before anything happened. Even after it was pretty dull up until the final three. I also had a particular hate for the person that I was supposed to consider the good guy, personally I sided with the western army while I was researching before watching this and the anime did not alter that.
It was the final episode that gave any merit to this anime. I was well aware the budget was quite low for this and immediately it was clear they put everything into the last episode. Even though my two favourites died in the fourth episode and I am the biggest wuss when it comes to character death their deaths didn't really get me. All the emotion that should have been felt when the other half of the cast died was put into the final few moments. I bawled like a baby but reflecting on that if there had been the same kind of quality for the other deaths I would have liked it more because it played about with your emotions more, what character death is supposed to do.
Even with that however the only truly amazing thing about this anime (and this is exaggerating) was the art style. The character development and connections between the characters was badly done and would only make any sense if you watched the special set before hand which I only found when I was half way through the anime. My advice: stay away unless you like politics and the art style
