Common Name: Katsugeki/Touken Ranbu
Score: 7/10, 5/5
Length: 13 Episodes
Genre: Action, History
Summary: Pulled from the annals of history, a small organization of Japan's greatest blades given human form have been tasked with protecting the flow of history from the sinister Time Retrograde Army. Guided by the precognition of their master, Saniwa, these personified swords are assigned to teams and tasked with thwarting the efforts of their enigmatic foe. New to the role of team captain, Izuminokami Kanesada must work to fight the Retrograde Army, keep his team organized, and prevent his personal feelings and desires from interfering with those duties. After all, if he decided to veer from his assigned tasks, he would become no better than the enemy.
Review: A few years ago, a show by the name of Strike Witches proved a rather distressing point that I have always argued wasn't the case. I believed with all my heart that art alone couldn't carry a show and make it worthy of note, especially when the show suffered from hindrances like a blatantly offensive premise, dull characters, and a plot that never actually mattered. Unfortunately, with its great art and animation alone, Strike Witches is generally accepted as a pretty good show even though it suffers from every single one of those black marks. Well, now that stubborn belief of mine has been utterly shattered. Katsugeki/Touken Ranbu proved that point, dipped it in solid gold, and then put it on display in a national art museum. In other words, this show is so gorgeous to look at that I seriously considered giving it a much higher score even though it is a shameless cash grab for what is already one of the most popular web browser games in Japan, next to its female boat-based equivalent.
At least this show had the decency to prove its point without being nearly as offensive.
In case the jab wasn't clear enough, Touken Ranbu can be functionally described as Kancolle but with hot/cute dudes who are also swords, instead of hot/cute girls who are also ships. In fact, the premise of the show makes just as little sense and similarly defies any and all attempts to rationalize the nonsense born of this ill-conceived series. To elaborate, Touken Ranbu hinges on the premise that the Government of Time's sages, known as a Saniwa, have the ability to draw out the hearts of physical objects. Tasked with the role of protecting history from the Time Retrograde Army, the Saniwa manifest the hearts of the most notable blades in Japanese history, giving them human form and a mission to kill the TRA's forces wherever they appear. Rather than being an ambiguous and unseen figure that serves as a shoe for the player to fill, like the Admiral in the Kancolle anime, the Saniwa (simply named Saniwa) ends up being an actual character in the show, guiding the Sword Forces and the plot forward whenever necessary.
Can't say I've ever been inclined to call a walking Deus ex Machina "cute" but I also wasn't initially inclined to call this show "good," so I guess all kinds of preconceptions are going to fly out the window today.
For any other show, I'd call this kind of nonsense premise a problem but there's something about the effort put into the show that makes me willing to buy the beefy, blade-filled goodness it's selling. To be fair though, the show makes an effort to distract from its lackluster premise by focusing instead on the lives and personal intrigue of the Sword Forces. More specifically, the show spends the vast majority of its time focused on the Sword Forces's Second Unit, composed of Izuminokami Kanesada and Horikawa Kunihiro, the katana and wakizashi owned by Hijikata Toshizou of the Shinsengumi; Mutsunokami Yoshiyuki, the katana of the imperial loyalist Sakamoto Ryōma; Tonbokiri, one of the Three Great Spears of Japan; and Yagen Toushirou, the tantō owned by Oda Nobunaga. That list alone probably offers a pretty clear idea of who this show and the game is meant to appeal to, alongside all the fanboys/fangirls who just like the idea of collecting sword boys. Getting back on topic though, the show actually does a pretty solid job as a character drama that addresses concepts like the loyalty of samurai, the cost of blindly following that loyalty, and the emotional strain of forsaking one's own feelings and desires for a greater cause. Most notably, the captain of the Second Unit, Izuminokami Kanesada, struggles to come to terms with the worth of defending history when so many innocent people end up dying in the process, proving that he has pledged an oath to something that lacks any solid or consistent sense of right and wrong. Needless to say, a cause with that kind of ambiguity would normally be antithetical to a samurai's code of honor. So, this show takes great steps to express Izuminokami's pain and emotional turmoil throughout the show while he slowly grows into a respectable and personally driven captain in Saniwa's Sword Forces.
Granted, all that really means is that he just goes back to obediently following Saniwa's orders.
The unfortunate downside to this kind of story, however, is that the story doesn't really matter. It is made clear fairly early on in the show that members of the Second Unit mean very little in the larger scope of the Sword Forces organization since a member could be added or removed from the party at the drop of a hat, so long as Saniwa wills it. More than that though, their efforts are dwarfed significantly in comparison to the sheer power and destructive force of the First Unit, capable of wiping out a literal army of Time Retrograde forces with just six members. While this might have served as an attempt to show the kind of power Izuminokami and his team might wield one day, I saw their inclusion in the series as little more than a distraction and a less-than-subtle plug for the game's fan-favorite characters.
To be fair though, that distraction did offer some pretty kickass scenes in the end.
So, in spite of how much I absolutely adore this show's art and CG effects, I have to take a more critical attitude toward it and the critical conclusion I've come to is that Katsugeki/Touken Ranbu is basically a gold-plated pile of garbage. As good as it might look, the show's premise and execution undermine the whole experience--invalidating any character development, intrigue, or general worth of the plot for the sake of showing off. Had this show actually put forward some interesting or compelling story, I might have been able to hold in in the same high regard that I hold Brave Witches but it never quite reaches that level of accomplishment. While I might be inclined to turn some of the screenshots from the show into a wallpaper, that doesn't make up for the fact that the story is pointless and the characters barely pass muster when all is said and done. In other words, it's a pretty mediocre title that is propped up to the level of being "good" because of the art alone, and that fact bothers me more than anything else. Would I recommend it? Begrudgingly, but yes; if for no reason other than to enjoy the artistic spectacle of the show, I'd say it's worth a watch. Just don't go into it expecting anything but the art to be worth your time.