Kengan Ashura

Business deals are usually made through meetings and contracts; but in the world of Kengan Ashura, businesses resort to other means to make their decisions: by hiring gladiators. Yabako Sandrovich's Kengan Ashura depicts a world brimming with action, violence, and martial arts—one where powerful gladiators have fought in grand arenas since the Edo Period to settle the disputes of wealthy businesses and merchants.

Ouma Tokita, who is nicknamed "The Ashura," is a fighter trying to prove himself as the strongest. Hideki Nogi, a member of the Nogi Group, hires Ouma to fight for him and makes Kazuo Yamashita, an average middle-aged man, his manager. The duo is thrown into fights facilitated by the Kengan Association. Their journey will be full of ruthless battles with other fighters aiming for the same goal. Do they have what it takes to be the best?

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

Tokita, Ouma Main

Suzuki, Tatsuhisa Japanese

Yamashita, Kazuo Main

Cho Japanese

Wongsawat, Gaolang Supporting

Tsuda, Kenjirou Japanese

Kure, Karla Supporting

Kurosawa, Tomoyo Japanese

Imai, Cosmo Supporting

Enoki, Junya Japanese

Sekibayashi, Jun Supporting

Inada, Tetsu Japanese

Kure, Raian Supporting

Matsuoka, Yoshitsugu Japanese

Kanou, Agito Supporting

Ootsuka, Akio Japanese

Gensai, Kuroki Supporting

Genda, Tesshou Japanese

Hanafusa, Hajime Supporting

Ishida, Akira Japanese

Maeda, Toshihiro Producer

Kinoshita, Tetsuya Producer

Ishiguro, Tatsuya Producer

Sasaki, Reiko Producer

Reviews

Aug 31, 2024

JJMFREAP

Recommended

Cute girls doing cute things? NAH NAH! This is BIG MEN DOING MAN SHIT! Come on over and put some hair on your chest. If you thirst for a return for the bygone era of manly battle anime, this is one series for you. Punchfighting, martial arts and ridiculous techniques galore, Kengan Ashura is a must see.

(P.S. This review is for the whole season, not just this half. I refuse to conform to Netflix' stupid release schedule)

Right, have you seen or read Baki? Well, if you have, this is basically the guy that copied his homework from there. The overlap is significant and if you ... enjoyed one, there's no reason not to experience the other too. Thankfully though, Kengan Ashura is more than different enough to stand on its own muscular legs. Because you never skip legday, ya pansies! Here, the ridiculousness is much more subdued and it's more focused on straightforward martial arts. It's also centered around a singular lengthy tournament arc that takes up pretty much the whole season here. Also, unlike Baki, the female characters aren't just walking "woman moments" and are actually interesting and engaging. They're also really sexy and what is a good action series without some eyecandy, amirite? The setup and worldbuilding is alright, nothing to write home about, but then again this isn't trying to be anything deep. The main goal is to have amazing action every episode and that much is done wonderfully. Set a clear goal and motivation, establish some awesome fighters, give them a ring to fight in and let them have it. Pure awesomeness distilled to the core.

A good reason for the quality of action and one of the most recognizable things about this anime is the use of CGI. Normally anime fans recoil at the mention of this, but here I think it works great. Almost the entire anime is CGI, so it feels more like a stylistic choice than a budget cut. It makes sense, since Kengan is 90% action and by using these graphics, it allows the fights to be much more fluid and dynamic without burning money. Every hit is fast, fluid and impactful and it's very refreshing to see an anime where the attacks per minute is higher than the words per minute. Just straightforward brawls that are always a joy to behold. During flashbacks and other such moments, the artstyle also loves to shift into various artistic modes and this is really cool too, gives each flashback its own feel and adds great visual variety. Overall, I think only some snob would have an issue with how the CGI is used here. We've come a long long way from the Berserk abomination. Oh, and the music is really solid too, especially the wrestling style entrance themes for each character. The voice acting is super over the top and energetic too, makes every character stand out and become memorable.

Granted, the anime is not perfect. Firstly, it is just a straightforward tournament, so if you wanted something deeper go watch some artsy fartsy shit like Death Note or something, idk. This is a fighting story first and foremost. The other thing is the use of some characters. Tokita Ohma is a great protagonist imo and I find him very interesting, but because of the format of the series he gets sidelined for a vast majority of the season and that kinda sucks. He feels like a side character in his own show. The other thing is because these first brackets need to be gone through to get to the bigger meatier fights, some showdowns end way too quickly. It happened a couple of times where a character with a very interesting design, backstory and fighting style would show up, I'd get excited to see what he does and then he'd get demolished with just one or two attacks and are never seen or heard from again. Just feels disappointing. I get that the creators wanted to put some special sauce into every character, but please don't go through so much effort to make me care about somebody just to one shot them and dump them forever afterwards.

Overall, Kengan Ashura can best be described as a ton of fun! It's some oldschool action that doesn't pretend to be more than it is. The main goal is to get big muscular men to beat the crap out of each other for grand entertainment and boy does it work. A worthy entry into the BIG MEN DOING MAN SHIT genre and a must watch for any fan of good fighting. It really Kengans my Ashura.

Reviewer’s Rating: 9

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Aug 18, 2024

masterfantastic

Mixed Feelings

First the stuff i didn't like-This has to have some of the worst writing and characters. It was really damn cringe .In episode 4 some creeper comes out and says something like " I can't wait to get over beating you so i can spill my seed". And the characters just all said generic tropy shit like they all knew they were trying out for a movie. The fighting was actually pretty good. I just don't like 3-d. it doesn't look aesthetically pleasing to me. EVERY damn thing has to be explained to you like you are an idiot. It was as bad as ... in Inuyasha when every one saw the 1000th wind scar. Except here they explain about breathing, why you need to do it to stay up, pro wrestling superiority, and the basics of human movement.

As for how the characters looked. For a 3-d animation i thought they actually looked pretty good. Some looked really goofy but for the most part... yeah good job. The fighting and choreography was really good. I was kind of disappointed that the story and dialogue was so bad.

The music i thought had some of the best opening and outro OST. Even the the fight music was pretty good. Sometimes though it would play sad music during a scene that seemed comedic and stupid to me so i would be confused how i was supposed to feel.

If you asked how to rate this on just fighting and music id say 6.5. if you asked me to rate it on character dialogue and story id say a 3. It was just hard to watch when it wasn't the main man on screen. ( What was with fight against Rick Sanchez's long lost son at the beginning? AHHAHHHa that shit had me rolling. "my pinch strength separates me from humanity!"

Reviewer’s Rating: 5

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Aug 15, 2023

SuroAsura

Not Recommended

Have you read the manga? read it before reading this review. Have you read Berserk? do you know about Berserk (2016)? Search about it before reading this review.
I have created an account here on MyAnimeList just because of this abomination that is sorely called an "anime", imagine reading the most epic history in the world with artistic choices worthy of an award, getting hooked on it and then discovering there is an anime for you to watch, all those scenes come back to you as you imagine the thrill of seeing everything unfold with top-notch animation making justice to the beautifully drawn pages of the ... manga, then you see it is only available on Netflix, it is the most gut wrenching feeling you have ever had, you let that aside because you really like the manga, it couldn't possibly be done wrong... IT'S. 3D.
Well you only had one other passion as of manga, called Berserk, you recall how they destroyed it, it hurts. But with Berserk they chose an horrible studio who only had 3D experience with small bits in anime, only animated comedy shows and such, and you think: "well, Netflix wouldn't make this mistake." they did. Studio Larx was a bad choice, they have ONE complete show under their belt and it is awful, the 3D is so bad it makes your head hurt, i do not recommend that you watch this BEFORE reading the manga, have your first experience as God intended. READ. THE. MANGA.
Maybe by some sort of divine intervention someone will make a good adaptation of this amazing manga, but not yet.

Reviewer’s Rating: 1

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	Poll: Kengan Ashura Episode 10 Discussion Vipek - Aug 3, 2019	14 replies	by Slmanxxx »» Nov 16, 8:29 AM
	Why this is ONA? kiritofo - Sep 17	3 replies	by wizdom224 »» Sep 17, 4:54 PM
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	Poll: Kengan Ashura Episode 1 Discussion FMmatron - Jul 31, 2019	29 replies	by PettankoLover »» Aug 16, 3:46 PM