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I won’t use any arbitrary numbers for the duration of this review. Senran Kagura is a series I picked up from a trailer I watched for Senran Kagura: Burst and let me tell you, I was just so fascinated. A fighting game where we pit scantily clad high school girls against one another and fight to destroy the other girls’ clothing? Count me in. WHY AREN’T MORE DEVS DOING THIS!? Then I realized there was an anime and manga series that fleshes out the legend of this mysterious series’ origins. Then it donned on me that this is not something I’d enjoy. I’m really at a loss for words with this one, because it wasn’t anything I didn’t expect. In fact it was so within my expectations I can’t give it a bad rating (not that it matters), because, let’s be honest, people eat up ecchi material regardless of the content or context. Criticizing this series for being ecchi isn’t really fair, because it is unapologetic and forward with the idea, it only really starts to dip in quality when it expects you to care about the characters and the story(?) that was going on, but I’m not a prude. I can accept panty shots, jiggle joggers and high pitched peeping as staples of the anime industry when it’s lacking in substance otherwise. That’s fine. In all seriousness, Senran Kagura wasn’t bad, it was just normal, which I think is part of what disturbs me about it. That we’re so used to this style of storytelling that it doesn’t faze us anymore, but that’s a story for another day.
As far as animation and other technical aspects of the show, it wasn’t terrible. It was fluid and appropriate albeit you can tell when parts were rushed. I’d venture to say that the series could have benefitted from more expansion of the plot and less booby bounces, or the opposite where there was less story and ONLY BOOBY BOUNCES. The finished product looks more like a mess when the finale comes around as a result, but maybe that’s what OVAs are for. Or maybe I’m expecting too much out of my anime these days.
