The series enters its tournament phase, which essentially goes to the end of the series, and the fun begins as the matches get underway.
What They Say:
A ninja must serve a lord, and Recca Hanabishi has sworn to serve the person who can defeat him in battle. But despite his martial prowess, a penchant for traps, and his family’s fireworks, his battles amount to little more than schoolyard brawls. Ninjas died out long ago, and though he’s always felt a connection, it’s all just pretend. Or is it?
When a mysterious woman confronts him and tells him he’s the last survivor of an ancient clan of ninja – the chosen one born with the power to control fire – his whole world is turned around. A battle ensues, and he finds out just how true her claims might be when he summons flames from his hands. How much does she know, and what does she want with Recca? Is he really the last surviving member of the Hokage? And what about Yanagi, the girl with the power to heal any wound? Might she be the princess Recca longs to serve?
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
After months of training alone and in smaller groups, Recca and his team came together to show off a bit and figure out what their next move would be in order to take down Kurei. This doesn’t take all that long to go through though as Kurei has sent a group his folks to provide a personal invitation to the Underground Tournament where the most powerful fighters in the world will come together to show who exactly is the best.
The opening salvo in the tournament comes as the group has take down the people Kurei sent but this turns into a fairly minor little tussle that essentially lets everyone show off a bit before formalizing their approach for the Underground Tournament. This part feels a bit forced but it’s something that’s actually over fairly quickly and is left with the idea of being settled more when they actually get to the tournament. While only certain people are allowed to the Tournament, Team Hakoge is allowed naturally to bring Yanagi into it but also Recca’s mother, Kagehoshi. This keeps the whole team together nicely and allows for the two non-combatant women to provide commentary along the way and for Kagehoshi to reveal the nature of whatever madogu get discovered along the way. And one thing is for sure, there’s a billion of these things out there.
The Tournament brings in some of the things that have become familiar such as the cute girl referee with wings wearing essentially a Playboy Bunny outfit, the hordes of overly powerful people milling about and the audience that looks like rejects for background characters from the world of Fist of the Northstar. Taking place on a secret location where Kurei’s father has set about quite a line of defenses, the Tournament is well protected from any outside interference. The setup as it goes about is nicely done since we get a feel for some of the characters and the relationships that will follow, particularly between Recca and Kukai of the Team Ku. Seeing as they end up being the first group to fight against each other it’s only natural that the two team leaders end up becoming friendly and respective of each other.
Once the Tournament gets rolling, the fight between Team Ku and Team Hokage works out in a fairly standard manner. One on one matches showcase the strength of each side but it’s mostly to show how the Hokage folks have been training and powering themselves up while the Team Ku folks provide different and interesting challenges for them that you know they’ll mostly overcome. After all, very few series actually race through tournament sequences and this series is really designed just to do a massive series of tournaments. The opening fight sequence lets Tokiya take the stage as he brings out his ice blade against Team Ku member Daikoku who uses a steel rod in a really creative manner, doing the old hundred and thousand strike kind of attack. There’s something more to it of course but the fight between the two is fun to watch and seeing Tokiya keep to his calm and collected himself while everyone else freaks out is fun.
Domon gets to show off a bit as well as he goes up against Minamio whose body is nothing in comparison to Domon’s even though he’s obviously worked out a bit. Domon’s got that unruly ugly look to him and is ready for a great but easy fight but naturally it turns against him for awhile and he’s hard pressed to even get an attack in. Domon is the Kuwabara character from Yu Yu Hakusho of this series but unlike Kuwabara he doesn’t have quite the same charm. He runs through a similar arc though of ending as the least powerful of the group but finding a way to become more powerful through training and madogu’s that he’s picked up along the way. That’s one of the things I do like from this show is that some of the characters simply acquire more weapons or weapons that build upon each other as it goes along.
When Fuko hits up the stage, she goes up against Fujimaru, a rather scummy looking guy with claws attached to his gloves. Being that Fuko is the only female fighter on the Hokage team, it means she has to bear the brunt of the fanservice moments and when dealing with someone with claws, you can imagine what that means. She’s beaten down fairly quickly as the attacks overwhelm her and ends up leaving her with shreds of her jeans and t-shirt outfit left. It’s almost comical in how he whittles her clothes down to such skimpy remains but that’s part of what Fuko’s entire purpose is about. She’s certainly not one to be messed with though and she has more of the Kuwabara nature to her than Domon does as she, like Recca, continually finds ways to better herself and her powers so that she grows stronger and more determined in interesting ways.
The fight scenes are fun to watch and well done. Each episode is essentially given over to one of the team members as they work along in their matches while setting up for a nice cliffhanger for what’s to come. The shows animation is still fairly consistent which means it’s just slightly average in that it swings both ways a bit at times but never really turns into an outstanding moment. They do a good job with the budget they have though and as these characters continue to be enjoyable to watch as they grow and work together, the quality of the animation is an important factor but not the overwhelming one.
In Summary:
This set of episodes gets us on the track of the Underground Tournament and has several of the first round of interesting new characters show up, particularly the enigmatic Kukai and those working for Kurei. Everyone gets a chance to shine in their matches and shows just how far they’ve come with their special training sessions so we can see some good growth here in that regards as well as the way the group is growing together as friends. I love this show and just dig what it’s doing even with all that it struggles with in both story and development.
Grade: B+
Streamed By: Viewster
