| about
trismugistus.com
and digital-bondage.net
are my web sites.
trismugistus.com
is where I upload my anime, manga and tv&film reviews,
and also where I occasionally post short stories and longer
works I've written.
digital-bondage.net
is my wallpaper site and provides anime, manga and other
desktop wallpapers in a variety of resolutions. I also
have a few tutorials and some resources, such as psds
for you to download.
I also run a site called scan-city.org,
which provides scans from the latest japanese anime magazines
for you to download and use in your wallpapers.
You can also read my blog here
or check out my anime list here. |
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| ikki tousen (battle vixens)
review |
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| details |
| The Genre: Fighting/Fan-service |
| The Format: 13 episodes across 4 DVDs from Geneon |
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| The plot: Once again blood flows in the streets
of Kanto. The eternal fate that has been handed
down for over 1800 years is now being fought by
ancient warriors who have been reincarnated into
the students of the seven top schools. One such
student, Hakufu Sonsaku, arrives on the scene and
is rumored to be the legendary Shou Haou (The one
who is said to be the one to defeat many in battle).
But can this blonde air-head with the overly-endowed
assets actually be the legendary Shou-Haou? |
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to top |
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| opinion
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| I recently reviewed the Battle Vixens (originally
Ikki-tosen) manga. The basic thrust of my review
was that it was very heavy on the fan service, but
that it also had a complicated and intriguing plot
that kinda kept you coming back for more.
If I’m honest, I’m really quite enjoying
the manga. We’re well beyond what I read in
scanslations, and it’s definitely keeping
me coming back for more. It seems it’s also
quite popular in general as the title is selling
like hot potatoes from what I understand. All this
despite the negative press it has garnered from
a rather interpretive translation. |
I won’t go over those issues again
here, but suffice to say Geneon has been quick
to pick up and distribute this anime version
of the manga. My understanding also is that
the anime happened pretty soon after the start
of the manga, which is fairly long running,
especially for the type of manga it is. Sometimes,
these rapidly released jobs tend to bugger
about with the original because, well, the
manga hasn’t really gone anywhere. Being
a comic book isn’t conducive to reeling
out lengthy material in short periods of time.
What I’m getting at with this long-winded
pre-amble is that very soon after the manga
hit the shelves in the US the anime was making
a play for the remainder of the cash in your
wallet. Rapidly released licences often lack
a certain degree of polish, as the team is
rushing to get them on the shelves.
Unfortunately, the anime has definitely suffered
a bit on the former, though not so much on
the latter. |
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The DVD package is a very good one. There are
plenty of bits and bobs and bells and whistles for
you to feel like you’re really getting your
moneys' worth. Possibly the only issue is the episode
count which is spread a bit thinly across 4 disks
with only 13 eps to go round. However, by way of
compensation, we get double-sided covers, mousemats,
and all the usual gubbins on the disk such as galleries,
clean opening and ending songs, promo spots and
there’s even an interview with the Japanese
director.
Oh yeah, speaking of which, you really have to
watch the interview. It’s ... creepy. It starts
off with the camera walking down a corridor and
then we enter a room where men are photographing
a young woman dressed in a school uniform lifting
her legs up in a mock kicking fashion. |
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However, the photos are being taken from some
quite intimate angles, if you see what I mean. Yes,
that’s right (those familiar with the manga
will have figured this out already) they’re
doing research.
It’s very, very creepy.
Only in Japan.
However, I think this probably illustrates what
it is that’s actually wrong with the anime
itself. It’s vaguely creepy.
I don’t really know why this is, but it just
is. I mean, there’s nothing substantially
different tone wise from the manga – lots
of camel toes, random nudity and bouncing booblies
– it just doesn’t feel quite as wholesome
in a way. |
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It’s like the charm has been sucked
out. We’re now not just happening to
catch a flash of knickers; we’ve set
up a camera and got a girl to lift her leg
at us. There’s also too much fan-service.
Ikkitousen falls squarely into the trap of
Najica Blitz tactics and throws so much fan
service at us it’s almost impossible
to cope with it. We’re presented with
so many panty shots and bouncing boobs, they
loose their risqué feel. There’s
no eroticism to it and it feels more like
porn. And not very good porn at that.
However, part of the lack of charm may actually
be due to the changes made to the story. It’s
all basically here, but a lot of it is re-arranged
and some of the characters roles are altered.
This of course has been done from a practical
point of view – with the manga running
on for a while, they needed a much more solid
story arc. As such, the first six or so volumes
of the manga have been tweaked in order to
generate this script.
This is never more strikingly apparent than
in the plot of the Toutaku character. In the
original manga, Toutaku breaks his fate by
killing himself. He throws himself off a cliff,
denying Ryomou the chance to kill him. |
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In the anime, this doesn’t happen. Toutaku
is very clearly the bad-guy in the anime and remains
so throughout. However, the idea of one of the characters
killing themselves to avoid their fate is most definitely
maintained – only it’s applied to a
different character.
For those familiar with the manga, then, things
could become even more confusing. Only they’re
not, it’s actually a hell of a lot simpler
in the anime than it is in the manga. Which is part
of the problem. There’s no intrigue; no suspense.
At no point whilst watching the anime do you end
up thinking “wtf is going on?” It’s
all pretty damn obvious and easy to follow.
Magatamas are possessing these young fighters and
causing them to replay the events of ancient China’s
past (it’s sourced from the Romance of the
three kingdoms novels if you’re actually interested).
This person betrays that person; this other person
is evil; she’s got some hidden evil; she’s
a lezzer and she’s bi. Really, it’s
pretty simple, overall. |
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| So, having sucked the interest out of the story
and made the fan service creepy (and maybe a little
boring) what about the sole remaining element of
the story – the fighting. Well, I personally
thought this was the element of the manga that really
benefited from animation.
I’m not sure why it is, but the fighting
is always quite poorly done in manga. It’s
not like it isn’t possible to show great fighting
in comics – we need only look to their American
counterparts to see well defined fighting with strong
narrative and choreographing – it’s
just manga fighting is never particularly clear.
The Ikkitousen manga does have about the clearest
fighting I’ve seen, but this is partly due
to the employment of some clever tricks.
Fights are often broken up so that we see the beginning
half and then we see the character later on and
return to the fight in flashback form. This really
does help with the flow of the story telling and
allows descriptive speech to take over the role
of hanging things together. |
In animation of course, fights are easily
displayed. The addition of movement and dynamic
cameras means we don’t need any of the
visual tricks and it’s very easy to
follow. Overall then, the fighting for me
is what kinda hangs the Ikki-tousen anime
together.
Overall, this anime is not very good. It’s
not bad as such, it just looses your interest
very easily. It almost feels like a chore
to watch more than two episodes in any one
sitting.
I have some other complaints too. Primarily
these centre on the character designs, which
have been heavily altered from those of the
manga. They’ve been made almost plastic-like
in a way, with the girls seeming like they’ve
been taken from the “my big book of
anime body stereotypes”. They aren’t
as unique and distinct as they are in the
original manga, and Hakufu especially looks
really quite different. |
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I also, as mentioned, didn’t really like
the way the story had been messed about with. Some
of the main players (such as Sousou) from the manga
are included, but they don’t end up doing
anything. I think it would have been better for
them to have been excised completely, and for the
story to focus squarely on the main plot and characters.
My other huge complaint is the English dub. It’s
appalling. Seriously- it’s stilted, badly
acted, voice selection is inappropriate and there’s
no passion to it. I honestly couldn’t watch
more than 5 minutes of it at a time without breaking
out in rage-induced fever. It’s just plain
bad.
Unless you’re a fan-service junky and you
thought Najica was the greatest anime ever made,
this a bit of a disappointment all things considered. |
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| summary |
| The Summary: Lots of bouncey-bouncey but not
much else. |
| The Score: 2/5 |
| The Pictures:
(click for larger versions) |
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