Souten No Ken Re:Genesis - Well, this show wasn’t bad at all as I originally thought. Not great yet still something you can watch and enjoy.
Souten No Ken Re.Genesis picks up where the first adaptation left off. It’s the 1930’s in Shanghai and the good gang just destroyed the last members of the bad gang. And it’s all thanks to Uncle Ken! [Kenshiro smoke] However not all is in peace as a little girl named Plot device enters the scene. Why is she a plot device, well she possess photographic memory and the germans wants her since she remember the list. Luckily she has a bodyguard who is voiced by Take-A-Hinto who is our kind of nanto user in this story. However, as this story progresses, we learn that the plot device has more secrets than we knew. A story with revenge, forgiveness, sadness, betrayal and two comic reliefs is full motion. Not to mention that season 2 turns into Souten No Cult. But are these any good?
Okay let get the most distracting thing out of the way. Yes, this does use 3D models all the time and yes, the speed of said models in movement seems to laggy. This of course does not mean the show’s way of presenting the story to be bad, the later just is distracting when you are watching anything else. Although I want to confess that the 3D models are good for being a weekly show. The details of each character really work for this adaptation. I guess the studio doing this had more confidence and knew what to do with its resources, unlike Berserk 2017.
And as for the animation, you kind of get used to the lag as you go on. The action does defiantly make up for this. They are rich of techniques and gives many moments of suspense. The voice actors are also good. We have returning actors from the previous anime like Uncle Ken, who does a good job of someone like Kenshiro, but with a sense of humour. Ofcourse I need to mention the new voice actors, Dio and Gun Dad. When I saw that Dio’s voice actor was going to be in this anime and was going to use his Dio voice, my inner jojo squealed with excitement: Because I know that this voice actor will do a great job. Hell, considering the opportunity that we were going to have Dio’s voice actor against Uncle Ken, I made this video out of pure passion. And then we have Gun Dad, you know, this guy might be good enough to be consider a north star regular. There something in his voice that makes to be a great addition. Btw the voice actors name is Rikiya Koyama. Oh yeah, we have heard a lot from Rikiya this year. His reveal as the main villain is predictable, he played the silent guy for over 5 episodes he was in. I’m not gonna tell who is he, but I’m going to tell who it is. It’s the giant ass Raoh look alike with the MASK!
The rest of the cast where okay, not gonna find new favorite characters here however as we do have many side character to balance out with each other.
The both opening are great. One is more rock oriented with fast editing and dynamic looks, but my favorite is the first one. There something with the slow and smooth editing of the opening shoot. It’s like a gate is being opened slowly with Uncle Ken waiting for one and the rest of the thing is like a homemade music video. Just some weirdly camera angles and some rap music in the background. The second one is more of a montage of the anime, but I do find it neat how they changed it when the true villain was introduced.
What I need to comment on regarding the story, is that this is not a faithful adaptation from its source. This does not mean it is a bad thing, it just goes a different direction. You will notice after episode two that plot goes . And these changes, aren’t that great. Don’t get me wrong, I do like how miss plot device or Elika is more relevant to the overarching story, but at the same time it becomes less story about Uncle Ken and more about people around him.
One of the beauty of the original manga, was that it was more eccentric with Uncle Ken and the history of Hokuto Shinken successors as it left behind the story about gang wars. Here it seems that it’s put on hold as we need to tell the story of other branches close to Hokuto. Not to mention the manga had one of the best fights during the last chapters. In my opinion at least.
Some decisions on the plot just seems so bizarre. For example, did you know that the difference between the season 1 and 2 in universe are like 4 years? 4 years and the girl looks exactly the same? Why spend so long to get the plot started again if nothing seemed to changed? Because fuck you. Also I haft to say that, SPOILERS, I really feel bad for the sword jew, he dies like 3 times in this anime. Poor guy.
I do think we has lost something in this adaptation that we might not regain back. Like where are all the violence, the deaths are censor so that we don’t see the heads exploded per say. Where are the focus on Uncle Ken, it seems that Elika has more screen time than any other character in this story.
Furthermore, I haft to congratulate this series for finally making a human version of Frieza. After all those cosplays and reimagining, we finally reached perfection. I am not joking, the goonies seem more of a threat these times around due to how they where written. It fools you thinking these baddies are just for one episode, but then they introduce their powers and our heroes are taken off guard. I like these baits where you think the dumb raging brute would just be a dump lump of meat, yet here he seems to polling off some smart moves, for a dump lump of meat of course.
Even if we have these bad guys around, there are still some characters I raise my eyebrow at. To be more specific, it is the new comedic reliefs. It seems to be that these guys are around to push the plot around and to push jokes around. I thought they would play a bigger role, but they seems to be filler. I’m expecting more gory death than two goofballs being dreaming about getting jerked off. I don’t hate these characters, I just think they are too many scenes with them. If this anime was longer, then I might have forgiven some of the elements in the plot. But since we spend episodes and episodes of Elika and her drama, we barely had time to for Uncle Ken to shine.
With all said about this anime, this anime gets a pass for me. It isn’t a north star experience with the violence and brilliant. It’s okay, but not at the best. Would I recommend it, yeah, if you could watch the first adaptation, you can watch this one. At least this was better than DD Hokuto No Ken 2 that I can say!
