Anime: Sengoku Basara Ni

Sengoku Basara Ni: Seasonal rot on steroids.

So, the second season to Sengoku Basara rolled around in the spring/summer of 2010. For those of you who missed the initial craze, Sengoku Basara is a series of button-mashing beat-em-ups made by Capcom that takes place in some bizzaro alternate version of the Warring States period of Japan. Although practically unheard of in the West, it’s fairly popular in Japan, and the first season of this show only helped matters by turning out to be a moderately huge hit and helping bring both the first season and the upcoming third game over to the West.

So, with the first season being a success and ripe for leaving a follow-up into more Sengoku era goodness, especially with a third game having been announced between seasons and looming right over the horizon, letting Production I.G. create a second season of this show seems like a sure bet. Well, the second season is now done, and I for one must say that if what Capcom wanted to do was to generate more buzz around their game series with this season, they got what they wanted. If they wanted a new season to top the first one… They didn’t.

Animation and Visuals: 8/10 – Still one of the better-looking shonen around

The animation and visuals of Sengoku Basara Ni is just about as good as it was in the last one, which is more for good than for ill. Spectacular special effects (by the genre’s standard) is still the order of the day and the overall quality is quite good, even though the graphics quickly deteriorate over distance and there’s still not enough of the little touches that would make this show one of the truly big scorers. The outlandish costumes and varied character design, coupled with various facial expressions and good character animation plus the frankly impressive special attacks pulls the score up, and the not-so stellar backgrounds and lack of character detail over a distance pulls it down. Altogether a great showing, but I’m not saying it couldn’t be better.

Sound: 7/10 – Half the soundtrack is gone and so’s many of the better voice jobs. Still deserves some accolades, however.

The audio standard of Sengoku Basara’s first season was one of the most impressive ones I’ve seen in recent years from shows this size and of this kind of production. Not only were the choices of and performances of the voice actors top-notch, the background music was well-chosen and underbuilt the events of the story and the nature of the characters very well. Sengoku Basara’s second season uses exactly the same voice actors and has similar music, so why do I let the score drop two points?

One thing that immediately sticks out in Sengoku Basara’s second season is the shift in story direction. Indeed, this shows up in pretty much the first episode when the new villain makes his triumphant appearance. And the keyword for Sengoku Basara’s second season is ‘more drama’ (I will take my time to blabber holes in your eardrums about this later), and this also leads to a shift in voice direction. Much of Sengoku Basara’s first season was built on the basis of light-headed, if a little whimsically directed, fun and action scenes. Consequently, the voice actors tended to deliver a lot more over-the-top, hammy performances because the characters they played weren’t played for that much seriousness. The second season, however, brings with it more downcast performances to fit its more dramatic style, and this just pulls down the score because it’s not nearly as fun. The villains’ voices, while fitting, also can’t stand up to the Wakamoto/Hayami dream team from the first season.

As for the music, it seems like whoever did the music direction for this show forgot to add the music properly to this season as well: Not only aren’t the music tracks nearly as catchy overall, but the music just doesn’t inter-mesh as well with the action any more. Once again, the main show-stopper and song you *will* remember from this anime is the villain’s leitmotiv. Like Nobunaga’s “Sixth Heaven Devil King” from the first season, Toyotomi Hideyoshi gets a song that shows up whenever he’s ready to come along to show the main characters who’s this season’s top dog. In his case, it’s a nice little Gregorian/operatic number called “A Fight to Change The World”, and it’s actually quite delightful to listen to.

Story: 6/10 – Has twice the focus, half the gags, twice the clichés and half the spine of the first season, and half the playfulness on top of this.

The story of Sengoku Basara Ni picks off where the last season left off: With the defeat and apparent death of Oda Nobunaga (who took with him about half the supporting cast of last season, including his sister Oichi and Tokugawa Ieyasu, the historical victor of the Sengoku era), the surviving clans have fallen back into their traditional pattern of friendly infighting, leaving Japan a divided country. Enter Toyotomi Hideyoshi, the man who historically united Japan after Nobunaga got killed, who has the mind to do much the same to this crazed-up version. He offers all of the main characters the traditional choice: Submit or die. The battle is on to save Japan from being unified and become a single nation under Hideyoshi’s iron fist.

Structurally speaking, Sengoku Basara Ni is a lot more focused than its predecessor: Hideyoshi remains in centre stage throughout the entire show, and his various military campaigns against the other clans remains the cornerstone of the plot, in contrast to Nobunaga who basically showed up twice, scared everyone crapless, and then sat twiddling his thumbs for eleven episodes while Masamune went chasing some dude for kidnapping his henchmen and whatnot. The running gags from season 1 are practically gone, barring Masamune’s engrish, due to a greater focus on plot and story. This, of course, solves one of my main beefs with season 1’s story. So, is there a new problem?

Well, yes. For one, it’s not entirely as ideal as I may have made it out to be. Again, the main focus in the story is Yukimura and Masamune, who in this case end up on opposite sides of Japan to deal with various parts of Hideyoshi’s forces, and their interplay, which formed the base of much of the first season, is practically non-existent here as the two deal almost exclusively with side characters instead. The mentor characters of Uesugi Kenshin and Takeda Shingen are practically dropped off the face of Japan. Much focus is instead given on Maeda Keiji, a somewhat inconsequential character from season 1 who it turns out used to be Hideyoshi’s best friend, and that story goes practically nowhere except to reaffirm that “yep, we’ll have to beat Hideyoshi, he is very bad”. Several characters from season 1 show up, most having risen inexplicably from the dead. Ultimately, there’s just so much plot that never really goes anywhere except for giving half-hearted justifications for some dudes to fight. Ok, sure, most of season 1 was like that too, but season 1 had a sense of whimsy about it which season 2’s dramatic focus lacks.

And of course the villain is defeated in the end in the traditional “I may have had the crap kicked out of me by you for most of the show but all I need is a last-minute infusion of Scrappy Spirit and ‘I Must Protect XXXX’” fashion, even more blatantly so that in the first season (Nobunaga took about *six* people to kill), and the whole thing ends up on basically yet another reset that leaves about 95% of the main non-villain cast of the original show still alive and free to continue their merry petty squabbles and now the show has run out of villains (until Oda Nobunaga inevitably takes over hell and invades Earth again, which he does in every Capcom game series he’s starred in so far).

In case you’ve been following the first series, this means that, yes, the second series ends up bringing back the majority of people killed in the first season for practically no justified reason whatsoever, other than the fact that they’ve yet to kick the bucket in the ongoing games series. It would seem that, rather than risk the series from developing their own continuity, Capcom decided to yank control of the reins and promptly shoehorn the events of this season into that of the game series, introducing a number of plot holes in the process all for the sake of their precious continuity. But that’s not even the real problem: The real problem basically boils down to “you’re no fun anymore”. Despite that, though, it’s a competent enough series – it’s still miles above Bleach and Naruto.

Characters: 6/10 – "They turned me into disposable C-list cannon fodder and killed me off!" "Killed you off?" "...I got better."

The characters from season 1 are mostly back, and they’re mostly the same. As I mentioned in the voice acting department, however, this season is more focused on drama and character exploration/development than season 1. Which would be great… If these characters weren’t already staking most of their appeal on being walking talking over-the-top stereotypes who used practically every waking moment doing something or other purely for the hell/coolness of it, rather than attempt to play to the audience’s sense of feelings for the fellow man. There is also a slight focus in area: Instead of focusing on more northern/eastern warlords like Takeda and Uesugi, who played central roles in the first season, the focus is now placed more on the southern/western warlords, specifically Chosokabe, Maeda and Mori. This also robs some of the cooler characters of season 1, and some of the funnier and more light-hearted character interactions. Lest you forget because it must have been, oh, four lines since I mentioned it last: This is a more dramatic season, and things must be more serious. Which is not necessarily a bad thing, but I can’t help but feel it’s more of a bad one than a good one.

The true show-stealer of the show is the main villain: Toyotomi Hideyoshi is a giantic gorilla of a man who plans to subjugate or ally with all the clans of Japan and forge a single powerful nation under his rule. Unlike first season’s Oda Nobunaga, this one actually gets to step out and take charge for most of the series and gets to pull off some quite impressive feats during his appearances. He also gets a backstory, which fleshes him out more as a human being and explains how he got that way. His voice is powerful, and his on-screen presence as he splits the earth barehanded and slaps incoming attacks out of the air as though they were nought but paper airplanes is impressive.

It’s just a pity he turns out to be so plodding ineffectual: Nothing kills a villain quicker as a threat than having everything he stands for and does onscreen be retconned and undermined by the *writers* the moment he steps off-screen again, which happens all the time to Hideyoshi. Unlike his extremely stereotypical, skull-stompingly, baby-eatingly, “evil latin chorus and thunderclouds follow where’er I go” predecessor, Hideyoshi is supposed to be treated as a human being, to fit in with the more ‘serious’ tone of the series: A unifying opponent, yes, but still someone who’s supposed to be more a harbinger of human drama more than some human-shaped malevolent force like Nobunaga. And that’s where it starts to fall apart, because Hideyoshi isn’t given nearly the treatment required to make him effective in this role.

Nobunaga was an inhuman monster that the entire cast feared and loathed, killed off most of the supporting cast and had to be put down before he turned Japan into hell on earth. He didn’t need characterization or anything: Merely taking one look at him would tell you he was bad news and had to go down. Hideyoshi, on the other hand, is a man. A man who wants to accomplish an extreme (and somewhat poorly thought-out) goal, and also a man whom neither cast nor writers seem to fear, loathe or in any ways respect. He never gets to deal permanent damage to Team Good. All the heroes smack-talk him and all his ‘allies’ betray him with no fear of reprisal. The man just can’t catch a break: He’s basically another (slightly more potent than average) warlord like the rest of the main characters, given a kickass leitmotiv and the chance to slap some of the main characters into unconsciousness before being unceremoniously killed off in the end because he can’t “play nice” with the other children. His second-in-command Takenaka Hanbei is similar: He is far more competent and loyal than first season’s Akechi Mitsuhide, but he isn’t nearly as fun to watch and never really gets to do much after the first episodes or so apart from standing around looking smug.

In the end, I ended up feeling more plight for Toyotomi’s goal of unifying Japan than I did for many of the main characters opposing him, who just seemed to be into it so they could go back to fighting standstill wars with each other and waste more men and resources on their petty squabbles. And as I alluded to in my earlier Valkyria Chronicles review, I know something’s gone wrong when I end up rooting for the empire just because they’re in many ways less annoying.

Value: 5/10 –- It’s a 13-episode game commercial. At least let me pretend season 1 did not aspire to this, but nothing can convince me that this season does not.

The main problem with the original Sengoku Basara’s value isn’t necessarily in its memorability or in its ability to break new mold – the anime is still a good example of a high-quality shonen production, and both characters and setting is plenty memorable even if you haven’t played the game – but the fact that it tackles subject matter that is squarely aimed at a Japanese audience and will probably miss most western audiences altogether. If the first season could compensate for its obscure subject matter with the fact that it worked well as a standalone, the second should be judged by the same criteria and found wanting.

The problem with the second season, most of all, is that it does not seem to want to follow its first season into original territory and instead becomes nothing more than a funnel to tie-in what the writers had made out of the first season with the game. As a result, the whole thing smells a lot more like a 13 episode commercial for the game series than the first series ever did. Most damningly, due to all the retcons and back-from-the-dead characters, the events of the first season may as well not have happened at all: People could start at the second season and basically miss frak-all in terms of plot and development, except of course that they would miss an introduction to all those lovable characters and their most defining and cool moments. And for those who saw the first season and expected this season to lead the anime continuity to establish any sort of finish: Too bad, you’re being dragged into the game’s canon now, and lots of the silly plot holes are introduced just for this reason.

Enjoyment: 7/10 –- I am still amused. But it remains to see just how much.

I started out with quite high expectations for this season, given the explosive fun I got out of the last season. As the series went on, it would be a lie to say that I maintained my amusement level: For some reason, the underlying sense of fun behind the show seemed to have disappeared, and with this sense of playfulness so did much of my own enjoyment of it. There is practically no HSQ (short for 'Holy **** Quotient') about the show any more.

I might sound a bit more disaffected with this show than I really am, in truth: It is still a very entertaining superpowered shonen fight show and would stand well, if not among the greats, on its own merits. But in losing the high energy and playful nonsense factor of the first season, something goes away that the series cannot really afford to lose, even if it is replaced with a more focused storyline and character exploration: If the first season is like the first 8 episodes of Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann, watching the second season is like jumping right onto episode 9 onwards without the first 10 – and we won’t get another attempt at going over the top like Tengen Toppa did in its third act.

Total: 6.5/10 –- It went from the most high-energy nonsense outside of Tengen Toppa to a blatant and plothole-ish video game tie-in in one season. Still a decent showing, but I think I’ve had enough now.

In summary, the main problem with Sengoku Basara Ni is that, unlike the first season, way too many elements are played as though they’re supposed to be taken seriously. Unlike the first season’s over-the-top run of high-energy nonsense, there are genuine attempts at character development, and a more downcast style, which is really the last thing this series needed. The retcons and plot-holes created by the blatant attempts to bring the show back in line as nothing but prequel advertising for the game does not help. Sure, there is something to be said for drama, characterization and stressing the importance of human values… But this really isn’t the series to tackle it. The sense of fun made this series what it is, and the second season's downplaying of these elements isn't doing it any favours.

Ah, heck. It’s still better… Worse?... Less bad than R2 and Gemini of the Meteor in terms of seasonal quality drop. Still worth a look if you're a fan, but don’t expect me to be on the lookout for the anime/game connecting film, Sengoku Basara Ekke Ekke Ekke Ekke Ptang Zoo Boing Zow Zing!.