Tenka Hyakken: Meiji-kan e Youkoso!

The tales of humanized swords and their daily hijinks...wait are we talkin' Tenka Hyakken: Meiji-kan e Youkoso! or Touken Ranbu?.

Tenka Hyakken: Meiji-kan e Youkoso! is an anime short advertising the mobile game of the same name and it takes it's advertisement to the comedic non plot direction. As an actual player of the game though, this anime short more or less is trying to bring in players through the new characters of Joizumi's group's trainees trio as the focus of most of the hijinks as well as the more popular characters in the game.

The comedy hijinks are your typical stuff as well as nudging references ... to the mobile games' gameplay. The problem is that if you haven't played the game, nor know Japanese, then your sheath outta luck in getting the references, which was like half for LA (though vaguely in LA's case) and thus the comedy is kinda 50/50 in landing...most of the time...just...meh.

The animation done by LIDENFILMS was mostly chibified but with the few instances of going fully detailed or changing style because "reference", much like an comedy anime short, the animation range is all over the place in a nice way at the very least for LIDENFILMS.

The voice cast is pretty ok in all honesty, a bit of moeness from the majority of the cast and LA predicts that the mobile game characters VA's reprises their roles in this anime short.

Tenka Hyakken: Meiji-kan e Youkoso! for an anime short trying to advertise the mobile game it's tied to...did a pretty half-assed job in doing so what with nonsensical plots UNLESS you've played the game, references from the game and the comedy revolving around it, so yeah this anime short without a doubt is for those people who have played the mobile game and want to more content and that in a way isn't bad, but in terms of trying to advertise the game which is what the anime short is trying to do, Tenka Hyakken: Meiji-kan e Youkoso! went down the route of the Ongiri anime short of non plot related comedy hijinks and thus made a an almost half hearted attempt, scattershot direction in advertising itself (though in Onigiri's case it's non plot direction hijinks was MUCH worse).

Tenka Hyakken: Meiji-kan e Youkoso! to be blunt (HA) wasn't a complete waste, nor outright horrible but it just does the barest minimum in what an anime short based on a mobile game adaptation and to this end...Tenka Hyakken: Meiji-kan e Youkoso! is just...

Ehhh

100% a game tie in.

Let's get this straight. If you don't play the game, you're not going to get any of this, and you shouldn't watch it. I didn't play the game, and I shouldn't have watched it.

It's (from what I've gathered) based on a mobile game featuring, well, the story written in the synopsis. Well, this anime doesn't do anything with said plot, instead focusing on the characters and showing the various hijinks they do.

There isn't really a story beyond "cute girls do X thing". If you weren't already invested, it'd be a waste of time.

Yet, I have to rate it according ... to its merits. While the story was non-existent (by design), and characters mostly unmemorable, it did have cute character designs, and *excellent* sound, to the point I'd say it's wasted on an anime like this. The animation was standard to above average.

When you talk about game tie-in animes, you can make it work. FGO Babylonia and Camelot exemplify this. Their stories stand on their own, and you can care about the characters in those anime without ever having touched the source material.

But those are without a doubt, the golden standard. What hamstrings Tenka even more is the 3-minute episodic format that takes away any potential for it to stand on its own merit. While the staff executed what they could do well, it simply couldn't compensate for the structural failings of an already hard to pull off category.

3 for story. (Given it's non-existent/uninteresting) 7 for Art. 9 for Sound. 5 for Characters. 4 for enjoyment. (Though I appreciate the fact this could be much higher had I had been a player of the game).

Overall, a 6.

On my hunt to find the worst anime imaginable I stumbled across this show.

I said, "this could be it". So I lit up a bowl and watched. After that... I truly questioned my life choices as I stared in disbelief on what is on my screen.

Each episode is like a spur of the moment idea someone poorly animated onto my screen. It's like "hey what if three girls had allergies.... kept sneezing breaking everything around them and we find out it was just someone pouring pollen and then it's over" and a studio is like "oh god keep going I think we have a show ... idea here."

I don't think that baffles me as much as someone rating this show a 5. How someone could sit and stare at this sober and objectively go, "wow that was definitely average".

The creators of this were higher than me and anyone rating this higher than a 1... good luck with that.