So many people recommended this show to me saying that it was good and full of fan service. Well me being one to enjoy the occasional fan service gave Ikki Tosen a whirl... big mistake there. Ikki Tosen is a 13 episode action anime loosely based on the Romance of the Three Kingdoms Chinese novel. Pretty much there's a city where all the high school students wear megatamas (earrings resembling a half of the yin yang symbol) that possess the spirit of an ancient Chinese warrior (from the novel no less). Their fates are tied with the spirit in their jewels so if the soldier died in the past its gonna happen to this kid. You see this town has a serious problem with its educational systems. first of all there are no teachers at the schools, second all the schools are constantly trying to conquer the other, and lastly every single kid is an expert fighter, oh and on that note this show is so unoriginal that they actually decided to call the kid's "destined" to fight "Fighters". So these kids end up fighting each other left and right with their apparent parental consent as seen with one of the only adults seen in the entire season. Hakufu's mother which brings us to the main character Hakufu Sonsaku who is blessed to be destined with the spirit of Sun Ce a super powerful Chinese warrior who apparently killed the current big baddie's spirit warrior long ago. God I'm done with plot summary because frankly thats about as deep as it goes, afterwards people fight panties are shown and nonsense is spoken. Ikki Tousen is a show that revolves around 2 things: Fighting and soft core porn. Heres how a fight scene will pretty much always carry out if it has a girl in it: fight for 5 seconds, invisible attack, girl loses 95% of clothes, keeps fighting, someone wins. fan service is acceptable and sometimes encouraged for comic relief but in this case it is literally used to boost the ratings up. The producers knew that this show would suck monkey nuts so they decided long before that no fight would be devoid of its excessive panty shots and covered breasts. The fights themselves are also underwhelming mostly involving random kicks, punches, and throws, anything to flip the girl upside down or get her leg up to show her rump. Then there's the other half of the episode, which involves a lot of taaaaalking and trust me this is some boring talking, why? because they talk about the story plot which doesn't make any sense and is just stuck up its own poop shoot to realize it. Then there's that one green haired girl who is a bad guy sort of. OK she is the epitome of an anime slut and thats an understatement. she has sex with just about everyone making her not very likable already but the director decided to give her emotions all of a sudden. This is the girl that paralyzed the side-kick girl and then proceeded to fondling her underparts then had sex with the guy she was keeping captive, beat him up had sex with the main bad guy went back to the prisoner guy and then had sex with her lackey then her lackey gets offed and then she sacrifices herself... so we're supposed to feel what exactly for this character? Then there's the utterly useless cousin of Hakufu he says his job is to protect her and some characters say hes stronger than he looks but in actuality he loses just about every match he fights in. O speaking of matches this show's second half degrades itself into a tournament anime show (you know? fight after fight leading up to big boss man) and lo and behold something happens to distract the main character from the tournament (just like DBZ or G Gundam or Naruto chunnin exam arc). The point I'm trying to make here is that this show is bad, like Kappa Mikey bad like Bobobo bad except it isn't trying to be funny. The characters are cardboard cutouts (i.e. the main character is a ditsy hot anime girl who has spontaneous brain farts of wisdom) the story is terrible (we've already see the Romance of the 3 Kingdoms plot in all 868 Dynasty Warrior games), not even the intro or closing music/credits are good. The dub is also bad, although Hakufu's dub made me giggle a bit. There is a 2nd season currently but don't hold your breath, the first season ended with only a few incoherent questions about the future. God I hated this show, the worst part is that I actually waited 13 episodes for something even remotely interesting to happen but I never saw it. This show is bad bad bad BAD! 1/10 I sleep now
Review of Ikki tousen
