For the sake of having something to watch and write about, I grabbed and watched the pilot episode of Senran Kagura. What did I see? Well, it’s an entirely new challenger to the shounen genre whose action contents and writing can make any shounen series, like Naruto and Bleach, blush with the kind of flattery this series gives. It’s time for those long-runners to resign and give the keys to this series — so I can have some good entertainment while enjoying the excellent production quality, hell yeah!

When you say excellent production quality, the expectation would be excellent audio-visual presentation; with great character design, animation, background art, colour sharpening, and detail polishing. It has to have no problems with character designs. Promotional videos and illustration should look the same with the ones presented in the broadcasts’ character designs. Background art should be detailed and properly contrasted from different objects. Animation should, at least, have no sudden pauses. However, it seems ArtLand is not a fan of following and appeasing expectations in their anime, that they decide to go against tried-and-proven best practices and standards. They made the on-screen character designs to be unflatteringly poorly-detailed and inserting little anatomical and proportional issues. They also animated it well that animating the entire series seems to be arbitrary and the focus is on the characters’ breasts. Background art has sparse detailing and sharpening. Thanks ArtLand for going against the standards, you definitely made a winner!

Audio presentation is definitely the worst thing this series has to offer. Yes, the opening and ending music themes have catchy JPop and Rock beat fusions. Sound effects also match the action scenes in the episode, and very much portray the setting and helps illustrate them. Voice acting has expected and unexpected voices, each of them in the proper pitches and volume, and are properly properly with the overall sound engineering. Indeed, audio is the worst aspect in Senran Kagura for they followed and did well in the standards for this aspect!

Last but not the least, the best among the best of these aspects is Senran Kagura‘s content. Watching this either in untranslated or translated video would point out to a single impression — it’s excellent themes, writing, and plot. Writing is probably the best for everything seen in the first episode was copied from the most shounen series. Introduction to the über-friendly protagonist and seemingly-innocent antagonist? Check! Introduction to their respective nakama? Check! It also has typical characters and interaction! All female cast but with all seriousness and beat-them-up action? Yes, this anime is definitely one, as you don’t get over-the-top fanservice sprinkled on it. You just get frequent camera focii on the characters’ bouncing big breasts, cleavages, wet clothing, dressing scenes, bikinis, panty shots, thighs, black tights, thighhighs, etc. What you pretty much get here is a unique anime that’s posed to promote the multi-media franchise range of beat-em-up games and manga. Exactly, a Naruto and Bleach beater.

And oh, I’m not watching this just because there’s no long black haired-ojousama character…

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