Ikki Tousen : A Review

I often tell people, to make a good story, you have to know the audience that you need to tell it to. You need to know two things about the audience: what they need to see, and what they want to see. Ikki Tousen is a perfect example of how you can go so right will being so wrong, when you take what the audience wants to see and take it to the next level by just whoring the entire anime out.

The story is about a girl arriving in a chaotic Eastern Japan where rival school gangs are all vying for supremacy. The girl's name is Sonsaku Hakufu and she's supposed to hold the spirit of a warrior from China. By brute streetfighting (Don't think too much of it), she's supposed to unify the region under her rule.

Actually that's pretty much everything you need to know. In two words, Ikki Tousen is a visual blowjob. Targeting the teenage boy niche audience, it has everything a typical adrenaline-driven guy would find interesting in any anime show: School girls, panty shots, pointless fistfights, and subtle hints of sex, and then more panty shots. Yeah, panty shots cover up around 30% of the animation budget for this show.

There is very little of anything else, like, oh I dont know, CRITICAL PLOT SCENES. If there's nobody getting naked, showing panties or breasts, or fighting, or getting naked while fighting in their panties, it's just the opening and ending credits.

I am not exaggerating when I say I've seen porn with better plot than this show. The constant allusion to the Romance of 3 Kingdoms, an ancient Chinese novel is nice, but since they stuck to using the Japanese names of the Chinese characters, even if you've read the 120 chapter Chinese novel, you'd still get jack shit. For example, I had to wikipedia Sonsaku only to find out that she's actually Sun Ce while all the while I thought she has the spirit of Liu Bei (a guy who is a the opposite end of the Chinese novel).

After seeing the entire first season, it becomes apparent that the writers never cared about 3 Kingdoms. It's just there to give people excuses to fight. Like, in 3 Kingdoms, Sun Ce and Yu Ji fought. Consequently, in the anime, another girl who had Yu Ji's spirit fought the protagonist because it was written in the book. I can't begin to show you how borderline retarded that sounds, accepting a deathmatch with a complete stranger because you think you're fated to die by his/her hands.

Just like any porn flick at the same level as this anime, the clothes are a joke. They get either ripped off or removed at the first punch and people seem to pay very little attention whether or not they are wearing them at all. You'd think they're made of 100-year old tissue paper and the story is set in a very liberal Japan. That's like having a racially tolerant America - eitherway is farce.

Speaking of clothes, I'm not even sure why people in this show are in school uniforms. In the 260 minutes of this show, not once did anybody enter a classroom or even talk to a teacher. Come to think of it, there aren't even teachers in this show (outside the mandatory lecherous old sensei who isnt really a school teacher).

The list of bad things about this show goes on and on. But as I have said earlier, it can go so wrong and still be right for bringing all possible elements that please to the audience. This show is very much like porn. There's very little plot or any of other story elements that usually matters but that sad fact doesn't really affect the show because it was meant to be appreciated in a whole different light - with a dim light and lots of tissue paper.

If you're looking for deep, look somewhere else. Ikkitousen is about as brainless as it gets. Take it from somebody who still thinks there's still hope for the other jackshit shounen title that is Bleach.

3/10

That is all.