Bakumatsu Kikansetsu Irohanihoheto

I think it's important to firstly note that this anime is heavily influenced by Japan's history.
It is a re-telling of what Japan went through in the final years of the Edo period, when the Samurai, Ronins, Citizens, and Military forces from Japan and foreign countries, fought for control of the country. The interesting battles and real-life tales of betrayal and backstabbing, are retold with a hint of the supernatural element, which although seemingly far fetched, does hold more than a hint of realism. The story is fascinating, but if the viewer is not into the history genre and does not care about sitting through, ... what may at times seem like a history or Asian culture class, then this series is definitely not for them.
I enjoyed this tale immensely, as it was good to see the behind the scene drama of such an important era in world history. Some of the events are fictional, injected into the series so as to make it more "watchable" and a few of the characters never existed in real life, but it does make things fascinating.
The Supernatural factor, which focuses on the protagonist's journey to destroy an object that is too powerful to remain intact among humans, can be used as an element to show what happens in real life when man becomes consumed with power and greed, and their drive to do the "right then" soon gives way to the very thing they sought to fight against. Though the powerful object did not truly exist, the story does well to incorporate into history.

The Art for the series is good. It suits the story and its time-line perfectly, and is solid for all 26 episodes. The only problem I had, which really boils down to my preference, is that the art does have a smoky-like appearance at times, as if it is being viewed through a very very thin film of mist. I can understand why the method was used, as it does relate to certain scenes in the story, but since I like to view things nice and sharp it didn't win me over completely.

I am going to go out on a limb here and say that the sound is good, despite there being only a few scores, which were all used repetitively. But the thing is, they suited the story perfectly and since it's obvious that the creators did not want anything drastic and over the topic, it was right on the mark.

I'm tempted to say that the characters are Very Good, but I think "Good" is more accurate.
The lead protagonist, Akizuki, has quite a somewhat stiff and at times unreadable attitude, which suits his role perfectly. It may be viewed by some as "boring" but when really get into the story, you can tell why it's the best design for him.
Ibaragi Sōtetsu's character is one to look out for, although I don't need to tell anyone that because as soon as he is spotted, he will command your attention. I think it's very common for a character to be present whose true motives are unknown to the other characters, but very obvious to the viewer, but in Sotetsu's case he will keep you guessing about his real intentions until the very end. His character design is practically flawless.
Those two aside, even though a majority of the character designs aren't particularly intricate, someone will pop up every now and then that's quite interesting to watch.

So like I said, I enjoyed the story enough, even though it may not be extremely outstanding or addictive. I also can understand how the consistent 'history lesson breakdown' may easily be confusing and annoying to some. If you're interested about Japan's past, and a realistic view of Ronins and Samurai, you should really give this series a shot.

✪ Genre: action (swordplay, gunfights), contemporary fantasy, historical drama, seinen


✔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.

Basically this anime had a lot going for it at the beginning, but had to balance that with what it had going against it in the same timeframe. The scenes about the theater troupe and the writing involving Ibaragi and his plays was actually very engaging and made me want to see more. The very accurate portrayal of Japanese Kabuki theater was great and made me want to watch the show. I really liked the way they jammed a lot of plot into each episode and just expected you to keep up. But at the same time the anime was trying ... way too hard to push the "OP Shounen" angle with Akizuki and would have been much better off just focusing on the theater aspect than including the need for supernatural powers and deus ex machina appeals to "destiny".

The second leg of the anime descends into utter supernatural garbage without any real historical underwriting, losing all the value the first half had built up to push a supernatural Romeo and Juliet story. Gone were the accurate representations of urban Japanese life, the intrigue, and any real sense of enjoyment from the anime. I mainly finished it so that I would not have to say I dropped it. Altogether this anime was a trainwreck and sets up a lot of false expectations about the nature of the story in the first half, which it can't live up to at all.