Take a healthy dose of many popular shows over the years, mix, and pour into Battle Girls.
What They Say:
The Present Day. There’s a middle school girl named Hideyoshino who loves fashion and cell phones. Her nickname at school is “Hideyoshi.” Just before her exams, she realizes that her only hope is divine intervention, and goes to a shrine. There she is whisked away by a mysterious light…The next thing she knows, she is surrounded by female bandits who proceed to attack her! She is saved by a general with a gigantic sword. The general calls herself Oda Nobunaga…
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
Directed by Hideki Okamoto with animation by TMS Entertainment, Battle girls is a new thirteen episode series that deals with time travel. Okamoto is a veteran anime director with lots of work over the years with a variety of shows as an episode director and a couple as a showrunner itself. Okamoto knows how to tease as the show starts off with a trip to the past where we see feudal Japan as a village is being burned in an attack and in the middle of it is a cute schoolgirl with pigtails talking about how this is where everything probably started going wrong for her. It’s a nice juxtaposition of things, even if familiar, and it gives us a bit of an insight right from the start about the style of the show.
The series focuses on Hideyoshino, who is often called Hide, and is your basic archestype at the start here where she’s a good girl, not terribly good at school or studying and wants to do her best but lacks the focus and motivation to do it. Her ties to history are part of her nicknamed as she’s called Hideyoshi by everyone, though it’s not a term of endearment by most. Being your average high school student facing difficulty with her tests, and a very important set of them coming up, she goes to the shrine to pray in hopes of some sort of divine intervention. Of course, she gets something not quite the same when she discovers someone inside the temple that seems to be actually using magic, which sends her into klutz mode. And that’s just the right ingredient for a time jump as she and the mysterious woman and transported back in time to feudal Japan.
Hide’s time in the past has her coming across a woman she calls Akerin, but she has no idea who Hide is and just brings her back to her camp. Where the leader is an incredibly large breasted and scantily clad warrior with a ferocious attitude who claims to be Oda Nobunaga. And armor that moves far too easily along certain areas. The disconnect for Hide is pretty obvious as she can’t wrap her head around the idea that something significant has happened by ending up there and the complete lack of reception. It’s a little surprising the others actually let her live or keep her around for any length of time, but it’s a sort of game for them in a way, though there may be more to her in their view because of local events going on there.
The show starts to open up the path to the storyline as it progresses and we see that Oda may have a use for Hide as she wants to acquire pieces of a crimson armor suit. Of course, Hide being a typical high school girl, the idea of collecting something puts the idea of shopping in her mind and she readily accepts. There’s a strange disconnect in how all this unfolds with Hide in that she doesn’t quite put together the position she’s in nor the place, even when she sees the elaborate building when she gets outside and wonders when something like that was put up near her house. I hate to say it, but she feels like a slightly toned down Usagi from Sailor Moon more than anything else and her designs don’t help to avoid that image either.
While the opening episode of Battle Girls didn’t exactly thrill, though there were some decent elements to it and some average but generally problem free animation. The story idea of a young high school girl being sent back in time several hundred years certainly isn’t a new one, but it’s one that can be well used depending on how you have them interact with history. Shifting Hide back to the time of Nobunaga Oda certainly isn’t bad, though I wish they’d start doing things even further back to give us something new, but shifting Oda to a busty redhead wearing only some minimal armor kind of makes me sad a little. It’s admittedly a standard idea overall, but sometimes you just hope that they’ll break the patter a bit. At least they get her out of the school girl uniform and gym clothes pretty quickly here as she goes local. Not that she actually wears them much though.
Hide does actually act a little smart as she uses her history book that she has to read about Oda, which reveals that the Oda in the books is a guy, which makes her wonder if they’re just historical cosplayers. It at least makes her seem a little smart. She does have her fish out of water moments though, such as when she and Oda ride to a village that was attacked recently and Oda tries to get them to swear allegiance to her in a way by calling them to her, but they’ve lost everything so they’re not even registering anyone nearby. Hide shows her the way through kindness to reach them, but helping out and playing pop idol music from her cell phone (which will never run out of power, right?). It’s a grand old time as everyone plays and works together to rebuild the village as Oda watches on. It does get Oda’s attention pretty well though as she observes how the villagers all become drawn to Hide and her style of doing things, since it’s hopeful and inspirational. It is hard to believe that a slacker like her would put in a full days hard work in rebuilding a village like this though based on what we saw of her in the present.
Battle Girls does spend some time on an unusual piece of the puzzle as she comes across the dog in the headgear again and learns that his name is Shiro. He does provide some useful information in addition to that as he tells her that she has traveled back in time, but also to the side in a sense to a different world, which is what explains the gender bending aspects that we’ve seen so far. And it also explains how a small dog can talk since he’s from a different world himself where that’s the normal thing. Shiro doesn’t provide an info dump, but there is some nice dialogue between the two as he explains things out and Hide starts to understand what her situation is and to start thinking about how to get back to where she belongs. The eternal optimism of youth is in full display here.
With word that Oda is on her way to gain the Crimson Armor, there isn’t exactly a lot of fear on Yoshimoto’s part as she’s actively looking forward to being able to play outdoors, as she put it. With Hide fully behind Oda at this point and gaining a few moves as she settles into life in this strange past where famous people are all women, and nary a man seems to be seen, she’s at least adjusting fairly well, unless it comes to riding a horse. I continue to be very glad to see she’s ditched the school uniform and is wearing what I guess is more traditional clothing for the time period, though unlike all the other women, she doesn’t have a chest to show off. Oda’s continues to be pretty in your face for a fanservice draw, but it’s largely pretty much expected.
Explaining where their journey will follow to Hide is the first order of business though and getting her on the same page and getting her to accompany them is fairly easy, though the journey doesn’t take too long before they run into Yoshimoto who is pretty dismissive of ODa’s plan. That said, she’ll certainly let her try for it but it’ll be one that will be a challenge laid down between them. When it comes to the actual battle, which is largely set up through a misunderstanding since Hide throws out an English word, it turns into a series of games between the two that they must use to achieve victory. Admittedly, you want to see some action going on between these two generals, but the parlay of words and ideas isn’t that bad either since it shows some level of smarts on Oda’s part that may not always be apparent.
The games that get picked are pretty varied and juts keep going and going, like bowling, swimming and other physical activities. The whole thing just wears everyone out which is pretty adorable as it works towards the last match. The ever impressive kite fighting. Actually, there is something to be said for this as it’s visually an interesting approach as Ieyasu and Hide are tied to the large kites with heavy ropes in order to be flung around in the air against each other. The Crimson Armor is at stake, so Hide has to go through with it. It’s a good bit of comedy overall, especially where you have Hide panicking so much in comparison to the calmness of Ieyasu, but there’s also something neat about it as it unfolds, making you grin when you least suspect it.
In Summary:
With quite a few parts to go, Battle Girls could have a bit of a run to it, or it could be fairly rushed, but it continues to defy expectations with how much fun it’s turning out to be. The first episode wasn’t a keeper but as it’s moved on, it’s managed to explain itself decently and to start moving forward with the full storyline. Normally the majority of these characters would annoy the hell out of me, but something here manages to click just right. There’s a lot to like here and the episode feels like it goes by pretty quickly, leaving you entertained and looking forward to me. Though I’m not quite sure I have a favorite character here, I’m enjoying the situation and the fanservice as it’s all good natured, light entertainment.
Grade: B
Simulcast By: Crunchyroll
Review Equipment:
Sony KDS-R70XBR2 70″ LCoS 1080P HDTV, Dell 10.1 Netbook via HDMI set to 1080p, Onkyo TX-SR605 Receiver and Panasonic SB-TP20S Multi-Channel Speaker System With 100-Watt Subwoofer.
