Sengoku Youko: Yonaoshi Kyoudai-hen

Aspiring samurai Shinsuke Hyoudou's world is turned upside down when he witnesses hermit Jinka Yamato and fox girl Tama Youko slay a brigands' lair in the blink of an eye. Tama happens to be katawara, a magically gifted species, who can share her powers with Jinka through a special ritual. Together, they travel the world as vigilantes to stop evil beings, be they katawara or human.

As Shinsuke learns more about this new world, he discovers that monks perform inhumane research on spiritually gifted civilians, in the hope of creating human-katawara hybrids that can fight against monsters. Soon joined by Shakuyaku—a girl they manage to save from the monks’ experiments—and other allies, the group embarks on a quest to achieve their respective dreams.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

Hyoudou, Shinsuke Main

Kimura, Ryouhei Japanese

Youko, Tama Main

Takada, Yuuki Japanese

Shakuyaku Main

Kurosawa, Tomoyo Japanese

Yamato, Jinka Main

Saitou, Souma Japanese

Senya Supporting

Nanami, Hiroki Japanese

Douren Supporting

Inada, Tetsu Japanese

Mountain God Supporting

Takagaki, Ayahi Japanese

Jinun Supporting

Nomura, Kenji Japanese

Resshin Supporting

Miyagi, Kazuki Japanese

Higan Supporting

Satou, Rina Japanese

Iwasa, Gaku Producer

Matsui, Yuuko Producer

Usukura, Ryuutarou Producer

Usui, Hisato Producer

Reviews

Jun 22, 2024

moozooh

Recommended

I bid you good day, tired adventurer. Have you grown weary of the endless deluge of isekai and reincarnation in your fantasy? Have you yearned for characters that have empathy and compelling motivations? Perhaps you would be partial to stories that don't rely on familiar tropes and instead seek to subvert your expectations?

Give Sengoku Youko a chance.

I know, its current rating of low 7 isn't exactly a great sell in the age of inflated scores, but hear me out. It's the kind of story that starts off in a very modest fashion but continuously picks up momentum as it goes. With nearly every single episode, ... you're watching its best episode yet. What starts off as a road trip turns into an epic tale of love, friendship, and camaraderie.

The author, Satoshi Mizukami, has earned his cult following for a reason. His works showcase a very particular style of storytelling focused on creating a diverse cast of unique characters with compelling motivations and letting them figure out the story based on what these motivations are. In his worlds, there are no truly good or truly bad people; rather, there are people who care for different things and finding themselves in misfortune or conflict with each other. You could say it's kind of like Game of Thrones, except not edgy or cynical; quite the opposite: the character interactions in Sengoku Youko and Mizukami's other works are remarkably warm and soulful—to the point where you end up loving the entire cast, and even antagonists can be empathized with.

This adaptation by studio White Fox isn't breaking any records in terms of production values and cuts corners relentlessly where it can afford to, but it's clearly crafted with passion and is honestly much better than I would've expected for a very niche manga from the late 2000s, showing respect to the original work and enhancing it where possible. The early episodes are the weakest episodes as I've alluded to earlier, mostly due to the source material's somewhat haphazard pacing and the need to fit six volumes of manga material into a single cours of TV runtime, but once it finds its stride mid-season, it's all smooth sailing from there. The soundtrack by the famed Evan Call is fantastic as usual and helps set the tone for the action, and the opening by MindaRyn was one of my favorites from the winter 2024 season.

Overall, the first season tells a compelling story by itself, but in the grand scheme of things it merely serves as a setup for the main bulk of the narrative. And trust me: the second half, coming summer 2024, will reach much greater heights. I, for one, cannot wait.

Reviewer’s Rating: 8

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Sep 10, 2024

Sir_Zedmore

Recommended

As I write this review, Sengoku Youko has over 8,000 ratings - and yet the score is exactly 7.00. Does it deserve this figure of widespread agreement? Should it be higher or lower? In my opinion, it's exactly right.

STORY: 6 (Fine)/10
I was about to put a higher rating - but the story is quite basic until the end. My main problem with this show, something that holds it back from an 8 or even a 9, is the first few episodes. I almost dropped the show - twice - because of it's incredibly dull start. The progress is very slow and nothing very interesting ... happens until around episode seven. The reason my rating is 6 is because it's quite a simplistic story, and lots of it is setup. However, I think that the second season (and I believe third, which will come out if the next season does well enough) will be much better, getting that 8 or 9 I mentioned.

ART: 8 (Very Good)/10
The artstyle of this show is my favourite - with lines and borders of various thickness and great shading, so it might just be my opinion, but I thought it was great. The choreography was pretty good but the moves themselves were not half bad, and the transformations were beautiful. It definitely adds to the vibe of the show and fits the setting.

SOUND: 6 (Fine)/10
I might go back and change most of my 7s on sound to 6, because I am yet to see a cast that sticks out as particularly bad, let alone below average. For the original sound track, I enjoyed the music played during the show, but as for the OP and ED, I think they were just average, but I have seen a handful of reviews describing each as a masterpiece, particularly the opening.

CHARACTER: 7 (Good)/10
The characters were like the story, but slightly better - they start out appearing quite basic, but they get more interesting and complex as the show progresses. Once again, my rating is held back by the slow start - so I'm definitely hoping for a good season 2. The character development was definitely good, especially with two characters in particular. I also enjoyed the antagonist because most modern shonen nowadays that I see have antagonists like Shigaraki and Sukuna, forces of chaos and destruction. In Sengoku Youko, the characters remind me of the World Government in One Piece or the (if you've watched, you'll know, this is a twist so I won't say it) of FMA - they appear to the public as heroes and allies, and many of them believe they are, but there is darkness in their core.

ENJOYMENT: 7 (Good)/10
Here, I will use the expression 'high highs and low lows' because that's pretty much sums up this show. To mentally illustrate it, if it was a graph, it would rise slowly, shoot up a bit around episode 7 and then rise slowly again. I did enjoy this show a lot, particularly the fights and episodes 7-10, but I also think the first 6 episodes really drag this down.

I recommend this show, especially since you no longer have to watch the boring start over 6 weeks, and can breeze past it in a day or two. But, I don't really recommend it for the show itself, but so you have context for future seasons that I can imagine will be great.

Reviewer’s Rating: 7

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Apr 3, 2024

KANLen09

Mixed Feelings

Sengoku Youko - The 1st arc of 2 for a renowned author, and it still has a lot of cooking to do.

If you have been in the AniManga scene for quite a while now, you would recognize a famed mangaka by the name of Satoshi Mizukami. This prolific author's stories are a mishmash of unorthodox proportions, but yet creative at the same time that you'd be wondering how someone like him is able to be so gargantuan at his many notable series. From the likes of the famed series of Spirit Circle (which is the mangaka's greatest work that hasn't got an anime adaptation yet) ... to the rather lukewarm adaptation of Fall 2018's Planet With (which J.C. Staff did decent where the "original" anime came first before the manga's release), and the abomination that was Summer-Fall 2022's Hoshi no Samidare a.k.a Lucifer and the Biscuit Hammer (which the anime was the series's biggest sin by way of poor and lackluster production values), the anime counterpart definitely needed a lot, and I mean, A LOT of time in the oven to cook.

All of this, leads us to the other ironic side of the coin, which is this Winter's season's Sengoku Youko, which covers the 1st part of the manga: the Yonaoshi Kyoudai-hen a.k.a World Reform Siblings Arc through the first 13 of its intended 37-episode series for a "complete" split 3-cour season. And for an interesting fact (if you want the TL;DR critique) of the show in general: Sengoku Youko is Satoshi Mizukami's weakest work, but given the most competent AniManga adaptation thus far from a near-far-gone, returning renowned studio.

In Sengoku Youko's fantasy world, there exists 2 factions of creatures: ordinary human beings, or monsters in the form of Katawara, experimental beings who are laden with power. The latter is true for a girl named Tama Youko (yes, which literally means fox), whose only goal is to like Jesus Christ (if he was not a human), correct the people in their evil and sinful ways and guide them back on the proper path of goodness and justice. However, what is said truer to her, doesn't apply to her brother Jinka, who is a human, and still hates humans in both bone and flesh, with his grudges unknown. Their journey to reform the world is met by Shinsuke Hyoudou, who's a samurai, but a coward by the main fact, who vows to become stronger to protect his loved ones. Together, the trio may have their separate ambitions, but the goal is one and the same to explore and reform the world as they deem fit. But enemies stand in their way, not to mention ruthless, and a ploy to experiment on humans and transform them into the aforementioned Katawara creatures, set them onto a path where dangers lurk at every corner, fighting against people that will give them quite the challenge on the road to purification.

At first, the trio are faced by the Dangaisyuu: a group of monks who're just as they look, innocent monks. But its leader, Yazen, is one that has a quench of power, and the people that serve him, serve the Katawara side of the community on their path towards evil, so much that they have power unabashed to trample on their opponents with much katawara power. But then again, this is the sibling duo of Tama and Jinka they're facing against, and the trick about them is that while Jinka is the human, Tama is the Katawara source which provides him powers to be transformed into a powerful Katawara, much like Tama's namesake of being a Youko to give Jinka fox powers, which the more tails, the more powerful Jinka is. The more colourful characters that follow thereafter, say, from Shakugan (saved from being a Katawara), to Jinun, Douren and Resshin, these are the true masters of their craft who also sides with the Dangaiyuu to push Yazen forward in his world-conquering quest of transforming humans into Katawara, which does not bode well with Tama's philosophy, while testing Jinka's limits of becoming a human-Katawara hybrid to the detriment of his thirst for power.

If you ask me, Sengoku Youko's a pretty wild story of the standard Satoshi Mizukami style that is really Mizukami levels of unmistakable both from the manga and anime standpoint, though Part 1 of 2 here of the Reformed Siblings Arc that covers the manga's first 6 volumes of 35 chapters worth, it does take some time to get used to, especially if this is your first time watching a Satoshi Mizukami show or have been burnt by Hoshi no Samidare a.k.a Lucifer and the Biscuit Hammer, and wanted an exoneration in his name in the animation department. Well, we finally got that treatment.

Well, well, look who's back. I did not expect to see the famous Re:Zero studio come back from the grave, especially since the studio's massive undertaking to complete another season of the Utawarerumono series. Taking a year apart to get back to the Re:Zero groove coming back this Fall, studio White Fox may have an episode of their fall from grace, but that doesn't NOT give us a chance to praise their ever-so-consistent production, even if this is kind of a re-start for the studio before the famed series will take up most of their time, leaving the 2nd part of the show after Season 3 (which I'm totally fine with). Finally, Satoshi Mizukami gets the name recognition along with good production values to boot from White Fox, albeit with director Kagetsu Aizawa who had a misstep with 2018's Hakyuu Houshin Engi modern reboot.

The OST by Evan Call, really helps liven up the atmosphere of the show greatly, even if the show does kinda wobble from time to time. Still though, that does not stop the theme songs from being great songs, of which MindaRyn has a song that I finally can say that her OP song "Hibana" is her best Anisong thus far. KEIKO's ED song does the job following the show's historical and mythical fantasy, which is great since it's famed composer Yuki Kaijura, showing that her craft is still unmatched.

Despite all the praise I can really give about Sengoku Youko as a whole, the story unfortunately is still the weakest link tying everything together, and it will not be until it's latter part of the double-length, 24 episode-long Senma Konton-hen a.k.a Thousand Demons Chaos Arc, is shown that has the story explode in terms of mythical lore. Again, I can only judge the show by its completion one-third of the way, which is decent overall.

Still though, this is your best chance to experience a new Satoshi Mizukami anime, and trust me, things in the future will look better once Part 2: The Thousand Demons Arc arrives later in Summer...just not now, not yet.

Reviewer’s Rating: 6

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