01-09-2013, 06:03 PM | #1 |
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Senran Kagura
Senran Kagura is the 2013 television anime adaptation of the Nintendo 3DS video game franchise of the same name. The story centers around Asuka, a 2nd year student at the prestigious Hanzou Academy, who leads a secret life as one of the campus's five students currently undergoing training as a ninja. |
01-09-2013, 06:03 PM | #2 |
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Characters: (descriptions lifted from TV Tropes, with slight edits)
Asuka: the main character. A 2nd-year student at Hanzou Academy, Asuka is energetic and willing to work as hard as she can. Her grandfather was apparently a great ninja himself, whose influence contributes to Asuka's earnestness about her kunoichi training. She uses two kōdachi, or short Japanese swords, in combat. Her ninpou is based on toads. Date of Birth: September 8 Age: 16 Blood Type: A Height: 155 cm Measurements: B90, W57, H85 Hobbies: Training Favorite Food: Grandpa's hand-made sushi rolls CV: Harada Hitomi Ikaruga: a 3rd-year student and the class representative. As a descendant of a prestigious ninja clan, she is formal and collected, but also a kind older sister character. Just don't make her angry. Her weapon is an heirloom sword called Hi-Tsubame. Her ninpou is based on firebirds. Date of Birth: July 7 Age: 18 Blood Type: A Height: 168 cm Measurements: B93, W59, H90 Hobbies: Reading Favorite Food: Kaiseki; Japanese tea CV: Imai Asami Katsuragi: A 3rd-year student who does thing first and thinks later. A tomboy through and through, she wears nothing under her school uniform, which she doesn't dress properly to begin with. She also loves girls, and is prone to deliver unwelcome sexual harassment upon them. She fights using kicks augmented by her metal boots. Her ninpou is based on dragons. Date of Birth: November 5 Age: 17 Blood Type: B Height: 165 cm Measurements: B95, W57, H90 Hobbies: Sexual Harassment Favorite Food: Ramen CV: Kobayashi Yuu Yagyuu: Although only a 1st-year student, Yagyuu has considerable talent for her age and school year. She exhibits a stoic, quiet demeanor, on top of her no-nonsense personality. Despite that, she is always looking out for Hibari. The Japanese umbrella she always carries around is also her weapon. Her ninpou is based on squids. Date of Birth: December 23 Age: 15 Blood Type: O Height: 158 cm Measurements: B85, W60, H83 Hobbies: Sleeping Favorite Food: Surume (dried squid) CV: Mizuhashi Kaori Hibari: A 1st-year student like Yagyuu, but quite the opposite in terms of personality. Despite good intentions, she generally ends up as an accidental troublemaker. Apparently weak in combat (of which she's well aware), she makes up for it with her wits. Her combat style is currently unknown. Her ninpou is based on rabbits. Date of Birth: February 18 Age: 15 Blood Type: B Height: 160 cm Measurements: B80, W55, H73 Hobbies: Video games Favorite Food: Any kind of sweets CV: Iguchi Yuka (May make future changes, as well as adding additional characters. Would like to get better pictures for all the girls as the series continues to roll along.) |
01-09-2013, 06:04 PM | #3 |
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OH. MY. GOD.
This is the harem anime I've been dying for. Shamelessly good fun with beautiful characters animated beautifully and each of whom I can really sink my teeth into. With many harems, you only get one or two girls you enjoy seeing, but with Senran Kagura, all five are incredibly attractive and all five are, while cliche to Hell and back again , interesting! This is a series made for lovers of big, bountiful breasts. You like flat chests? You're more of an ass man or a legs man? Then kindly GTFO 'cause there's nothing for you here! This series seems to be a love letter from a team of empassioned fans of well-endowed women to all the men out there who are like, "I wish every girl in real life was like this." It is a teenage fantasy that I'm sure bonafide teenage boys are going to cream their pants over, and for the adults of us in the audience, it's a throw-back to the good ol' days when harem anime were fun as heck to watch. Check out this image gallery to see what I mean: Spoiler: show It's hard to say only one episode in, but I think the reason this franchise might work so well is because of the utter lack of same-age male characters. Now I know: I'm always bitching about this same deficit from series like K-ON!. But hear me out. I think if you had this exact same series but you swapped out the main character for a boy, you'd basically get High School DxD all over again. It would be so incredibly off-putting to see all these girls just throwing themselves at this loser male who oh so magically just so happens to be the Chosen One. But by making the main character a girl, and by invoking some playful yuri themes which pair the girls off with everyone except the main character, it actually makes the show that much more palatable for male audiences. 'Cause now you don't have these girls throwing themselves at some loser guy. Instead, they've paired off with another girl in the series (Yagyuu with Hibari, Ikaruga it seems with Katsuragi). And you've got other various yuri relations hinted at (like Haruka lusting after Hibari, or Homura and Asuka being two souls whose fates are intertwined), but what you don't have is every single girl throwing themselves at the MC. And that's really refreshing. I think that had Oda Nobuna no Yabou done this it would have been much better. Another thing that makes this series shine is the gorgeous character animation for a harem series. While the background animation is nothing to write home about, the characters are truly top notch. No, we're not talking ufotable Kara no Kyoukai-caliber animation, but we are talking really fluid, really beautiful, really colorful characters. It's something I think pictures fail to capture, although the sample above is my best effort at that. You'll just have to watch the episode for yourself to see what I mean. All I know is, I had a blast watching this, even though strictly speaking it wasn't anything particularly special. The plot is insipid, the fanservice is everywhere, the characters are stereotypical anime harem cliches, ... but something about it was just really, really right. I really quite enjoyed this, more than any harem series in 2012. So here's hoping the rest of the ride is just as satisfying. |
01-10-2013, 09:44 AM | #4 |
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I'm very open to different sizes of breasts, but a girl has to at least have a DECENT ass. They can't use genetics as an excuse, because they can build one by doing heavy squats!
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01-10-2013, 01:43 PM | #5 | |
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Quote:
EDIT: Belay that order! This video sample here has your answer, I believe.
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01-11-2013, 08:14 AM | #6 |
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The niceness of an anime girl's ass is usually not relevant anyway, since they're almost always wearing skirts ... which is fine by me since I also enjoy legs. I just found it funny that you said, "If you're more of an ass or legs man, there's nothing here for you!" and those are indeed the two body parts that I enjoy the most!
I seriously doubt I'll watch this whole show, but I'll check out the first episode just for fun.
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01-11-2013, 06:49 PM | #7 |
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Someone of course made it into an animated .gif:
Spoiler: show Sad as it is, I will admit to F5'ing for Senran Kagura. I should find out when it airs. *looks* Sundays at 11:30 AM local time, hmm ... so basically this is pretty much always going to be a show that shows up Mondays or later. On the one hand, darn. ^^; On the other hand, hey, at least that makes for a mid-week treat. I also watched the first 20 minutes of a Let's Play of the game. TBH, the game looks way more gorgeous than anything I've ever seen on the DS before (no shit: it's a 3DS game! ) but it honestly looks a lot less awesome than the anime. ^^; The anime's really done this franchise favors. The colors. The prettiness. The scale factor / the zoomed in-ness. Doesn't mean I'm definitely not going to watch more of the game, but like, from what little I've seen so far, it seems like Senran Kagura's only chance for salvation as a video game is ridiculously fun gameplay. Take that away and I'd rather just watch the show and not even bother with the games that started it all.
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01-12-2013, 05:29 AM | #8 |
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This show is insanely silly, as expected. Not as big of a boob-fest as you made it out to be. No denying that they receive the most attention, but there was a fair amount of ass and leg shots as well.
Also, I love how their transformation outfits make no sense. They're ninjas, yet Hibari conjures up a school gym uniform, Ikaruga morphs into an admiral or some damn thing, and Katsuragi appears to put on some giant boots reminiscent of the Super Mario Bros live action movie, unbuttons her shirt then rushes into battle. I might actually watch the second episode, just because the villains look even sexier than the heroines, and I'm curious to see what that mysterious chick who was lurking in the shadows at the end of the episode is like (or lounging in the shadows is more like it).
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01-12-2013, 06:00 AM | #9 |
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I'm a legs guy, first and foremost...if BPK can advocate that there are copious amounts of it, I may be tempted to try this.
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01-15-2013, 08:00 PM | #10 |
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Episode 02 was cute but went by so quickly. Felt like only ten minutes had passed! A lot of shameless, over-the-top fanservice but tbh I thought it was toned down a scootch from Episode 01. Current ranking is Asuka > Hibari >> the other three. All are fine though.
Slight spoiler: Spoiler: show
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01-24-2013, 09:59 AM | #11 | |
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Quote:
Still haven't decided if I'm going to watch episode 2 of this goofiness!
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01-24-2013, 10:50 AM | #12 |
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Episodes 02 and 03 were a little less fun for me than Episode 01 -- novelty factor wore off, perhaps? -- but I still enjoyed them. The series is basically a mega-fanservice-ly shameless series. Episode 02 steps up the fanservice from Episode 01, and Episode 03 steps it up a bit further. What's fun about the series, for me anyway, is that despite being a harem anime, it's a harem without a male lead character. The only two mainstay males we've seen so far are Kiriya-sensei and {someone who shows up in Episode 02}. There have been other males, like the thugs in Episode 01 or this one dude in Episode 03, but none of them are recurring male characters. Only Kiriya and {the other guy} are, and neither of them plays the part of a harem male lead.
If we likened Senran Kagura to food, I would call it the McDonald's or Burger King (take your pick) of anime. It's low-grade as far as substance goes, but it tastes good still -- and sometimes you're just really in the mood for McDonald's and not a steak or a pizza or something better.
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02-02-2013, 11:46 PM | #13 |
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Episode 04 was fine. I think the magic spell has really worn off at this point, my huge initial infatuation with the franchise passed. But it's still par for the course as far as the most shameless of fanservice series go, so I'll stick with it. I haven't gotten to enjoy a fanservice series like this in a while, so it's fun for me at least for that if nothing else.
Regarding the mystery character introduced in Episode 04 ... Spoilers from doujinshi. Spoils beyond Episode 04. Spoiler: show As for Episode 04 stuff (safe to click if you've seen it): Spoiler: show
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02-09-2013, 10:29 PM | #14 |
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Whoops, I forgot to mention that I watched Episode 05! It was fine. The series is firmly established as vapid, silly, and shameless, but it's still fun enough to tune into midweek each week. I do wish the villains were more able to be taken seriously. They're pretty ridiculous with how evil they are right now yet inevitably, I am sure, how misunderstood and good-hearted they'll be shown to be later.
Also, the puppeteer is insanely hot.
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02-10-2013, 07:46 PM | #15 |
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Is "the puppeteer" the girl whose thighs I posted, or someone else?
I still need to watch episode 2 to get some closure on the umbrella girl ... and to check out the tanned chick some more.
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02-10-2013, 07:57 PM | #16 |
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There are two umbrella girls, Umbrella Good and Umbrella Bad (UG being Yagyu, UB being Mirai). The puppeteer is the one who looks Rozen Maiden's Hina Ichigo if she grew up, were an ufufu~ evil woman, and had generous T&A. A.k.a. the one on the right here.
If you're stretched for time, don't worry too much about Senran Kagura. It's a fun lil' timewaster, but it's definitely a timewaster. "Sexy ninjas with boobs Fukumoto manga" or "Sexy ninjas with boobs Romance of the Three Kingdoms" it is not. The plot is paper-thin, barely existent. "A rival school of evil ninjas wants to take down our heroes because their instructor has a beef with our girls' instructor." That's ... pretty much it.
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02-12-2013, 10:07 AM | #17 |
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Oh, I am well aware. Time is not the issue, it's working up the desire to actually see episode 2 of this silliness. But the tanned chick beckons ...
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02-15-2013, 02:51 AM | #18 |
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Episode 06 was fine. More boring first half, more entertaining second half. Lots and lots of scrumptious fanservice. Not too much to discuss sadly. ^^; I could summarize the events but I don't have much to say about them. I guess:
Spoiler: show
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02-26-2013, 05:04 PM | #19 |
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Episode 07 was fine. Not much to say really.
Spoiler: show I really wish the show were more substantial. But I'm glad it's not as offensive as some other series in the genre. Glass half empty or glass half full, hard to pick.
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03-02-2013, 10:04 PM | #20 |
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Episode 08 was a disappointing flashback episode. It was meant to establish a few things ... but we already knew all of these, so learning of their origins wasn't really all that rewarding at this stage. I'd much rather have had advancement of the main plot. There was some of that, but for the most part, it was a flashback episode.
Spoiler: show With only four or so episodes remaining, hopefully these final four episodes will be the series' strongest. I hate to say it but right now Senran Kangura is sitting squarely in "5/10 - Average" territory and that may be me being generous and showing some favoritism towards it. I can easily see a lot of people feeling it's "4/10 - Bad". If it's to have any shot of escaping 5/10 mediocrity, these final four episodes are going to have to be awesome. EDIT: One last thing I forgot to mention: strangely, we returned to ED1 this week. The endings so far have been as follows: Spoiler: show
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03-23-2013, 11:35 AM | #21 |
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I've delayed posting here long enough. Episode 09 was such a surprising upshoot in quality for this series that I felt compelled to roll out the red carpet for it (with tons of pictures and a lengthy post and everything). But then Episode 10 came ... and it too was excellent (for this series). And then Episode 11 came and I fell even further behind. And now we're here. When I go back to my apartment, perhaps I'll revisit these episodes in a summary post w/ detailed thoughts. Suffice to say for now though that I'm contemplating whether to upgrade the series, shameless fanservice show with a paper-thin plot though it was for the first eight episodes, to at least a "6/10 - Fair" rating.
Is this a series I'd recommend to anybody? Absolutely not unless you fit the original recommendation criteria. If you're a red-blooded man looking for boobs, boobs, and more boobs, or if you're a teenage boy looking for the same, then sure, check it out, because as far as fanservicey harem shoestring-budget animes go, this one is pretty decent. Unlike Sekirei, I didn't drop it midway. Unlike High School DxD, I wasn't offended by it. I think what really, really helps it out is the utter lack of a same-age male character in their midst. Everyone their age is female and that's all it takes to keep the series from devolving into yet another "harem of amazing catches aggregates around a total loser of a guy" harem anime. But if you are interested, then would I maintain the recommendation? Sure, just so long as you realize going into it that it is a timewaster. Aside from the fanservice and occasional close-up shots of their faces, the animation is nothing terribly special. Neither is the music. Neither is the plot. The characters are passably interesting but they too aren't anything terribly special. I mean, the series really does deserve a "5/10 - Average" from me ... but I dunno, the last three episodes are making me debate whether it deserves the tiniest of upgrades.
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04-25-2013, 03:11 PM | #22 |
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After putting it off for almost exactly one month, I finally went ahead and watched Episode 12, polishing off the series or, if they make a second season, the first season. The episode itself was fine in the first half though nothing particularly special; the second half would normally be expected to be the stronger of the two halves in this situation but sadly the resolution to the big finale was very underwhelming and left much to be desired. So much so was it underwhelming that I don't even really feel like talking about it more than this, and am ready to just write up the show's final scores. ^^;
Plot: 3/10 for the most part, but 6/10 or even 7/10 for a small bit from Episodes 9 through 11. This is a pretty brainless series with a pretty paper-thin plot. 3/10 might be too harsh, but 5/10's the nicest I could give it. Characters: 5/10. Pretty average. Bad for being chauvinistic and shallow, good for being sexy and colorful, and otherwise genuinely neither good nor bad, just plain neutral. I guess my favorite characters were Asuka (design), Hibari (design), and Adult Rin (design). Haruka (design) and Yomi (design) aren't too far behind. Nobody really struck me as my favorite personality-wise, I guess. Which probably serves to illustrate the problem with these characters. In fact, maybe I really should downgrade this to a 4 ... Animation: 6/10 overall, with 5/10 being its score for technical quality and 7/10 being its score for visual appeal (colors, eyecandy, etc). Music: 5/10 Replay Value: probably pretty darn low. OVERALL: 5/10, though that's mostly personal sentiment talking, I s'pose. I can easily respect scores of 4/10 or even 3/10 given for this series. 2/10 or lower though would strike me as too malicious. It's not that bad. And, like I said, it even really redeemed itself by quite a bit in Episode 9 and carried that through to Episode 11. The low overall score might seem paradoxical given my early enthusiasm, but a) how you feel about something one, two, or even eight episodes in isn't necessarily the same as how you feel about it twelve episodes in, and b) sometimes you just feel like having a Big Mac for dinner. That's what Senran Kagura was. A guilty pleasure, a pretty crappy anime but one which had lots of tangy appeal here or there. TBH, with a better plot and a better animation studio and/or budget, the series could've had the potential to have been a 7/10 or 8/10 affair. Hell, I guess with a statement like "with a better plot" the sky's the limit and even a 10/10 couldn't have been ruled out. Senran Kagura was a lot of little bits o' fun throughout most of its run -- the only episodes that really bored me were Episode 8 (the flashback episode) and Episode 12 (the finale). Nothing in the series was what I'd call "deep fun" or deeply entertaining, but there were just a lot of little smiles and pleasures throughout. I really did quite love the color balance between the five main girls, and just the colors in general. Very pleasant to look at, and not just in the sexual sense of the phrase "eye candy" either. I dunno. Maybe I owe it to the show to bump it up to a 6/10 ... but I dunno, I feel like that would be a bit insulting to all of the series I rated 6/10. ^^; We'll see. For now, I'll rate it a 5/10 overall -- dead average. The truth behind that though is that Senran Kagura had some things it did 6+/10 well and other things it did 4-/10 poorly.
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02-22-2017, 11:38 AM | #23 |
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So for some stupid reason, I have had this urge to play the Senran Kagura game. I found the PS4 one (Estival Versus Endless Summer Editions) on sale, so I picked it up. Sure, it's a game, but I would rather post here.
I'm about 70% through story mode. I'm guessing this is a sequel to where the anime is, since the characters seem to know each other, and Asuka isn't the clear main character. It's not fantastic, but it's entertaining enough. There's some nice moments here and there in story mode, but for the most part, it's just silly romping around. Some of the characters are pretty likeable. Some likeable enough to sadden me that they're stuck as fanservice blobs, such as Yumi. Actually Yumi's "Shinobi Heart" quest-line was really endearing. Sadly it ended with a CG of her tits being groped. I haven't done many of the other "Shinbi Heart" quests yet. Mirai's was funny. |
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