Coming from the same author who made Assassination Classroom, you'd be surprised to see how much gore this anime lets out, it's such a drastic change in tone and stakes, yet it does it in such a playful way, the only way to describe The Elusive Samurai is psychotic perverts fighting each other for their own 'fetishes'.
The story starts off like an average coming-of-age plot about a young samurai, but like the title implies, the guy sucks at fighting and he also happens to be a shota. If you're familiar with the name 'Nagisa Shiota', this is the author doing the same thing with his protagonist again. From there on, you're introduced to the series' first perverts, Yorishige Suwa, who exhibits every behavior of a stranger trying to groom children, but that's okay since he also has a child and has divine energy emitting behind him, so he has to be a good guy right? This is where you realize that every character introduced here will be a bunch of weirdos from there on. Later on, you get the MC, voiced by an actress, enacting lines of a flushed child who just discovered his fetish of confronting death and 'elusively' runs from it (pun intended). It's an anime about relishing on the desire to live out your twisted fantasies in the sight of the battlefield.
Animation-wise, the anime for the most time looks good since it has CloverWorks name in it but you can tell it has some moments where it feels off. By the time they shifted to 3D animation, it becomes a battle of tolerance. But if you can keep up, it's not that bad. The anime also includes the time to paint antagonists the party has to encounter in the most psychopathic, dubious, and unholy of all expressions to ever exist. You have multiple characters that are recognised by their cartoonish-like characteristics, for instance, enlarged ears that makes a man look like a monkey. A character that looks like your savior-incarnate only to be a vile killer. A man whose eyes are about to pop out anytime and a thief who can literally shape-shifting his face into anyone they want to and make their same behavior.
Speaking of characters, you just entered the lottery, ladies and gentlemen. In this environment of redundant perverts, there are in fact normal characters in this anime and it shows on the face of people who reside with the main character or central antagonist of the anime. Unless for a few exceptions, the story doesn't completely forget how a normal person acts. You're just shoved into the perspective of an abandoned noble meeting an endless amount of perverts that you might worry if the abyss stares back at you. You're never going to find a cast this twisted other than degenerate hentais with dubious roles or fanservice propaganda.
I'm not going to say that the anime is flawless by any means. The pacing for something that is meant to be chaotic and bamboozling ends up feeling slow and predictable. For something that wants to make a mature but playful tone, it ends up getting stale quickly once you know exactly what the characters' antics do. There's rarely any development, since most of that sweet 24 minutes per episode is focused on introducing bigger bad guys in a contest of becoming the incarnate of the Seven Deadly Sins, but only in Japan. And whenever there is one moment of character development, it's only given to Tokiyuki for very little development. The characters might have good design and a reason to exist, but without any reasonable development to grow alongside Tokiyuki, it makes them look like your cast of Naruto's chunin students who were set up to be rivals with different set of skills. Their supporting characters are made to be introduced, act like friends and rarely got feedback for their own growth as well.
It's sufficient in multiple aspects, like a jack of all trades, but likewise it also means the anime doesn't excel in any of them. You'll leave thinking of a decent experience, but you'll find yourself too bamboozled to make words out of the fetishes you were exposed to in this anime.
Thank you for reading.
