At the start our princess Yukio gets kidnapped. We get a few seconds of the two of them together, and bam they are seperated. For good. We never really see her again for the rest of the show, and when she appears it is only so she can cry and weep at her uselessness. Far below the level of damsel in distress, it leaves us wonder why we should care for this character at all. There is no flashbacks or any background to her either. Yet our heroic Wolverine continues to get caught up in the Yakuza screaming at everyone to give her back.
Thankfully for the feminists we get two female sidekicks that fight alongside Logan. The more prominent one has an interesting backstory to her, and combined with the rest of his allies creates an okay story. The master samurai Shingen is turly badass, and while he can wipe the floor with Logan, he lacks any way to actually beat him. The true villain is an organized crime boss with a lack of balls; pathetic but when logan's motivation isn't transferred to us effectively it gives us a reason to cheer. He literally hides behind his waves of different underlings who are more interesting and praiseworthy than he is.
The plot is okay, but lack any impact or real surprises. After the first two or three episodes we've seen the best part, and the rest of the show is spent chasing down Yukio while the next episode's enemy is shown at the very end to attempt some sort of 'suspense.' Until they reach the stronghold of our villain, this same pattern repeats. As if my hatred had been answered, the ending provided me what I wished to see, but in a way it feels as if they storyline rage quitted and gave up.
The animation is good and done in marvel style. This carries over to the battles, but there isn't anything flashy about them; as I mentioned before there is only three times in the show where the opponent even has a chance against our immortal protagonist. Two of the more prominent characters are swordsmen so there are plenty of fights where he uses his claw like a blade.
It was a noble adaption, but the show was very ineffective at engaging the viewer into the plot. The action was average but they didn't put up much of a fight against wolverine, and the designated heroine was portrayed poorly till the very end. Better luck next time 'bub.'
