✔Positive Aspects✔
◧ By far the most impressive aspect of this series was its sound department. Beautiful and diverse melodies for every possible situation, keep the series afloat despite its multiple shortcomings (see below).
◧ I found the concept of this series very interesting, the blending of modern Japanese history (with a mostly accurate depiction of historical events) and contemporary fantasy elements, although it was not executed nearly as good as it could have been.
✘Negative Aspects✘
◧ Pretty mediocre animation, low saturated colors lacking vibrancy, not as crisp as it should have been, especially for a Sunrise production. The graphics around the depiction of magical auras & of magical spells looked as if they were from the mid-90s.
◧ Absolutely terrible action scenes. Even though they tended to end very quickly, they were clumsy, lacking clarity as to what had occurred, and were characterized by a terrible use of the slow-motion technique.
◧ I had enormous issues with the plot. First off, unless someone reads or watches a couple of introductory clips on YouTube on the Tokugawa period, he won’t be able to follow the series. Secondly, too many characters, too many sub-plots, too many historical information was being introduced at a very fast pace that was making their absorption incredibly difficult. Finally, it took around 15 episodes for the series to pick up and start gaining a sense of direction.
◧ Another gigantic bummer was character development. I am not only referring to the supporting characters or even the deuteragonists themselves, but also to the protagonists. Besides knowing his motivation to seal the Head of the Conqueror, I did not get to know much about Akizuki’s personal history (some information popped up during the last 2 episodes) or his thoughts and emotions towards specific people or even the world in general. I encountered the same problem with Ibaragi. The series did not develop this character at all since I did not get to know anything about his personal history, his motivations, his thought process, the extent of his physical and cognitive abilities. He was portrayed as if he either was a psychic or by far the most far-seeing strategist in anime history. I had no idea whether he was Akizuki’s trump card (without the former’s knowledge) or a ‘trojan horse’ antagonist (being the actual primary antagonist who was masquerading as the faux primary antagonist’s right-hand man).
Overall: A pretty uninspiring series, which took quite some time to start putting things together for the viewer in order to redeem itself, but unfortunately did not manage to do so in time.
