Shigurui: Death Frenzy: Series Review

With a name like "Shigurui: Death Frenzy" and a cover image like the blood-spattered one to the right, I knew this was going to be a bloody one. As it turned out, this 12-episode series was . . . surprisingly boring and hard to finish. As in, I couldn't finish it. It was just too boring.

Storyline & Characters

The story is intriguing. Two master swordsmen are dueling at Sunpu Castle. One is a blind cripple; the other is a one-armed man. Theirs is a long, twisted, and violent history going back to their battle to become the successor of the Kogan sword style. It was an interesting premise, which was what drew me to the anime in the first place. Unfortunately, the storytelling style was impenetrably minimalistic. (See below...)

The characters were all abominable and disgusting human beings. There was nothing to like about any of them, really. Flawed characters can be fun to watch, but these characters were a little too flawed. For example, the Kogan sensei? Drooly, senile misogynist rapist who slices off nipples and wants his daughter to conceive a successor in front of him and his men? Really? You couldn't have any more nuance than that? The anime had little to offer in the way of human characters, which meant I found myself not caring enough to want to know what happens next.

Animation

The animation in this anime was . . . minimalistic to say the least. A lot of still scenes, low frame rate, surprisingly little movement, extraordinarily slow pacing -- even in the action scenes. The anime was done in a certain style, trying to evoke beauty of some kind, but it really didn't work for me. I know what the director was trying to do, but he made it extraordinarily difficult to know what the hell was going on, and eventually I just lost patience. I like dark colors as much as any other gal, but this anime took dark and completely stripped it of color, which made everything extremely confusing.

First off, all the characters look very similar. Because of the lack of color, everything was gray, so it was hard to tell who was who. To make matters worse, the anime interlaces past scenes with distant past scenes. And everyone still looks the same. And the narrator, who at times is The Omniscient Narrator and at other times is one of the characters, sounds the same. So the viewer has pretty much no idea what is going on, who just chopped off whose head, etc.

I also did not care much for the fight scenes. There was no fluidity to them. I understood that, again, the scenes went with the atmosphere of the whole series. The action often ended after one or two moves. That's fine with me and is probably more realistic. But . . . at least show what happens. The over-art-ing of the action scenes was just . . . annoying after a while. Yeah, yeah, he draws his sword so fast that the top half of the woman's head falls off. Okay, yawn, whatever. Nothing to see here. Yawn.

Sound

There was no music in this anime, which is all well and good and goes with the minimalistic art style generally. But good golly, the lone drums, the cicada calls, and the random plucking of strings got extremely annoying after a while. With the extraordinarily slow pacing of the series, the anime could really have used some movement on the music end. Instead, we got slow minimalism all around, which really put me to sleep.

Gore & Nudity

Many reviews of this anime commented on the unnecessary gore. I like my samurai action flicks nice and bloody, and I don't mind gore, and yet I still tend to agree with others who have said the gore was unnecessary. Did we really need to see a retainer tear out his intestines in the 1st episode? Did we really need to see the assistant master eat a woman's sliced off nipple? How did that contribute at all to the story? The answer is "it didn't," which means it was pointless gore for the sake of being gory.

There were also a lot of pointless sex scenes, or implied sex scenes. Did we really have to see a random rape scene in the mill with the not-so-subtle mill-grinder-as-male-organ imagery? Did we really have to see the twin brothers butt-rape some random servant boys? Did we really have to see the Kogan sensei grope his own daughter's breasts? Again, what does it add? Everyone is already a deplorable human being. How much more deplorability actually adds to a character's characterization? While I appreciate that the women in this anime were not high-pitched annoying brats for once, the anime was showing breasts for the sake of showing breasts, and I just got fed up.

Overall

I was disappointed in this anime, which was recommended by several anime blogs I frequent for those who liked Ninja Scroll or Basilisk or samurai anime generally. Some reviews said it starts off slow, so give it a chance. Well, I forced myself to watch 6 of 12 episodes. I really did give it a chance, but I really can't see myself wasting another 120 minutes on the rest of this series. I just don't care enough.

And that's saying something. I hate leaving things unfinished. Even with Afro Samurai, I made myself finish before reviewing it and tearing it to shreds. But Shigurui and I really just did not mesh.