Our anime-loving friends at Sentai Filmworks brings us a new complete collection release of Samurai Girls and its second season Samurai Bride. They had previously been released in separate older releases that are now out of print which is good news for anyone craving some super ecchi samurai harem action!
Yagyuu Muneakira is the new guy in town, a young samurai in a present-day alternate reality where the Tokugawa Shogunate still reigns and the samurai code is held sacrosanct above all else. Muneakira immediately runs afoul of the despotic student council run by his childhood friend Sen and her brother. After immediately getting into fight right as he arrives in town, a naked girl falls from the sky, kisses him and and transforms into the legendary Samurai Guardian Juubei Yagyuu. This sets off a chain of events that puts the entirety of Japan at risk of immense danger. Can Muneakira and his friends stop the impending evil from taking over the world?
This anime is all over the place in terms of themes and tone. It is essentially a kind of hybrid of ecchi harem comedy, shonen samurai action and magical girl tropes with fairly weak and cliche writing at times and a cast of characters that are largely pretty one-dimensional. Sometimes though, this kind of stuff is comfort food to a certain kind of anime fan. One area where this anime really excels though is in its very unique art style, employing a kind of traditional Japanese art style using heavy ink-laden outlines and punctuating battle scenes with splatters of ink. Looking at the original manga, it looks like this style was a decision of Arms, the animation studio responsible for it, so kudos to them for making an interesting creative decision. One thing Arms does have something of a reputation for is their love of bare skin. Having previously done series like Elfen Lied and Ikki Tousen and starting out as a straight up hentai studio before moving into more mainstream work with the breakout success of Kite and Mezzo Forte, it’s no surprise that this anime is wall-to-wall nudity (even in the ED animation). So for those who are sensitive to more ecchi anime, stay away from this one. It even gets into some icky tentacle territory in later episodes (not explicit but still… you know what those animators were thinking…).
On the technical front, the transfer here is nice and clean, showing off that creative art style (as well as the show’s other… assets…) and it includes both the original Japanese audio and an English dub for both seasons. Just FYI for those out there who do look for dubs, I try to check out both audio tracks and this one has some pretty bad acting for a couple of the voices, not Garzey’s Wing or Angel Cop levels of bad but bad enough to call out anyway. The extras here are actually a pleasant surprise compared to most Sentai releases I review. For both season 1 & 2, they include the extra specials (Japanese audio with English subs only but still!)! Both seasons basically include six 3-minute bonus episodes that tend to fall into even sillier territory than the regular episodes. For the second season, the bonus shorts tie in to specific episodes as well. The set also includes a set of narrated comics, basically short audio dramas with static comic panels to look at while they play, which while also pretty silly is another neat extra for Sentai to have included. For the more discerning fans of the… unsavory… content in the series, this release also includes uncensored production sketches to salivate over if that’s your thing. And of course, we also have the usual clean OP & ED animations along with some other Sentai trailers. Overall, great job Sentai on the extras!
To sum up this hot mess of an anime, I can’t say I unequivocally loved this. BUT I will say that I did really like the art style and appreciated the imagination that went into the visuals. For those who do like your harem comedies with a dose of action and loads of nekkid ladies, you’ll probably find this one right up your alley. And Sentai did a very solid job on the disc contents which I also definitely appreciated and encourage more of.