First things first this anime is NOT a sequel to Ninja Scroll, another gory 90s ninja anime that came out a few years before, despite the fact that the makers of Makai Tenshou intentionally styled the cover art the same way and named the main character Jubei after the protagonist of the other film. In short even the producers new they had to falsely market this anime in order to get anyone to watch it.
The story (if you could call it that) follows Shimabara Rebellion, an actual historic event when Christians in Japan revolted against the Shogun. Except the catch is here that being a Christian here actually gives you special powers for some reason, and our two main characters, Jubei Yagyu and Amakusa Shirō are real life historical figures except the latter has superpowers and is the reincarnation of Jesis. Shirō/Jesus offers to sacrifice himself to Jubei to save the Christians civilians, which the latter accepts, but after seeing the army massacre all the Christians anyway, Shirō/Jesus becomes enraged and turns into a monster. God then tells Shirō/Jesus that God doesn't exist (makes sense yet?) and Shirō/Jesus vows to reincarnate into Satan.
The pacing of the anime is equally bad, one moment people are getting bloody murdered, the next there's a random scene of children fishing, then a flashback, then a rape scene, than people getting murdered again. There is very little characterization, nothing flows together, and it comes off more as random stuff being thrown at you than anything coherent. The dialogue is awful, with almost every line being exposition and having no connection to the previous lines.
The animation isn't the absolute worse, but it is still incredibly ugly and only gets worse in quality as the anime goes on. The best scenes were those at the beginning of the episode and those were entirely comprised of stock footage.
To add insult to injury the anime doesn't even have a proper ending, it just abruptly ends right before the climax is supposed to start. Not that it would have made this flick any more enjoyable, but it only aids in making this feel like an even bigger waste of time.
In conclusion I cannot un-recommend this anime enough. Makai Tenshou is too stupid for anyone who has a brain, blasphemous to anyone who has even the slightest knowledge of religion, too ugly for anyone who enjoys just action anime, and too abrupt and incoherent for the fraction of people out there who actually enjoy these type of overly gory trashy shows. This anime infuriated me this much that I felt I needed to write this review dissuading people from watching it, so take my word for its worth and skip it.
