Review: Samurai Girls

From its bombastic opening and stylised art, you know you’re in for a treat from the get go.

Samurai Girls is an action, comedy and fan service mixture, set in a version of modern day Japan, called Great Japan where they never adopted western fashions and styles, but remain ruled by the Tokugawa shogunate and largely cut off from the outside world, allowing the series to have a period look with the occasional use of high technology.

The plot revolves around Muneakira Yagyu who arrives to take over the dojo at Buou Academic School. The academy itself is run by the student council, the president of which is also the head of the shogunate, but who leaves academy affairs in the hands of his sister, Sen who is currently in the midst of a power struggle with the young Yukimura Sanada.

Arriving in the midst of an attempt by the student council police to capture Yukimura and her bodyguard, Matabei Goto, Muneakira accidentally ends up in the conflict himself and it is right in the middle of the three’s daring escape that everything is cut short, by a girl falling out of the sky and into his arms. The girl, Jubei, who apparently shares Muneakira’s last name, kisses him which reveals his ability to transform girls into Master Samurai with a kiss, as she suddenly transforms and demonstrates her immense power as Muneakira finds himself bound to the spot by ethereal chains.

The series initially revolves around the comedy and drama of the relationships that develop between Muneakira and the girls with various forays into battles against a small variety of enemies. The story arc behind this is only hinted at initially but builds through the final episodes. The end of the series does feel a little rushed, and an additional episode taking the count up to 13 could have helped pace the story slightly better in my opinion, however this is a minor point. Although it could have used some pace tweaking, the overarching plot is quite interesting and leads to some especially memorable moments and scenes in the final few episodes.

All the main characters are very well portrayed and the strong characterisation really helps with the comedy in the series. There are some bits and pieces of development in most of the characters, some of whom really seem to grow, even across such a short series. Jubei is particularly fun to watch due to her dual personality (quite reminiscent of the Nyu/Lucy dynamic from Elfen Lied), when completely normal she is a very naïve, somewhat dense and childish girl, but completely flips into a mature and brutal warrior whenever she becomes a Master Samurai. A lot of the development of the female characters is linked to them coming to terms with their feelings, romantic and otherwise to Muneakira and this is played realistically and leads to some genuinely tender and touching moments away from the more fan service heavy scenes.

The animation could best be described as luscious and highly stylised. The characters are defined by dark lines and distinct colour pallets and the series makes great use of inkblot style effects during transitions and elsewhere (I understand they were also used for censoring in the censored version, which this is not!). All the fight scenes have a fluidity that shines due to the quality of the animation and nothing is lacking in detail. The audio for this release is top notch, with an effective and fitting dub cast with David Matranga (credited as Ben Wabal, along with a lot of other cast members credited under aliases for some reason) dealing especially well with the comedy scenes and putting in a convincing performance of an honourable but considerably put upon man. There is some really nice background music throughout, along with particularly good opening and closing songs. Another OST I highly recommend seeking out.

There are a fair number of extras for this release, 6 mini OVA episodes where the fan service is turned up to 11 and a series of 6 voiced and animated comic panels, which are hilarious. The usual clean openings and closings (with enforced subtitles in Japanese or English) are present, along with a couple of trailers for the show as well as a promotional video (including animation not in the show) and a ‘video clip’ which is sort of a mini music video.

The following are a few minor technical notes for this release. On my PS3 the DVDs had a tendency to jump into the French menu, from which I couldn’t find any option to switch back and so had to use the controller to navigate through the titles until I found myself back on the English side of things (title 29). Secondly, there are only two viewing options, Japanese with subtitles or English without (on the English menu), this means if you’re watching the English version, you cannot turn on the subtitles, which is annoying if like me you do that if you can’t quite hear what someone’s saying due to accents/background noise/whatever. Good luck if you’re trying to watch this on a computer using VLC (which I use for screen-capping), although you can manage to set it to show subtitles during the dub, navigation can become a nightmare. Finally there’s a purely cosmetic issue where each DVD has animated episode previews for each episode on the menu, this is fine for disk’s 1 and 2, however disk 3 copies those of disk 2 rather than having ones correct for their episodes. Cosmetic, but something you’d hope the DVD authorers would have noticed.

Although the striking style, liberal use of inkblot’s for transitions and other effects and often heavy fan service may not be for everybody, there’s a fun (if light) story to be found here and a number of highly memorable characters. Well worth checking out.

Ratings
Story
A little slow at times and not especially deep, but has some nice characterisation and picks up towards the end.
Animation
Highly stylised and beautifully fluid.
Audio
A well matched dub and enjoyable score.
Extras
6 OVA’s, 6 voiced and animated mini comics, textless opening/closing and promotional material for the series.
Overall
Filled with frenetic action, heavy handed fan service and lashings of comedy, well worth watching.