Ancient warriors – in school!
What They Say:
It is said that power can corrupt and absolute power often corrupts absolutely, so when Principal Nobunaga of the Basara Academy was distracted by duties elsewhere, student council president Toyotomi took advantage of the opportunity to wage a campaign of terror against other rival schools. Toyotomi was subsequently suspended, but the resulting lack of a strong leader has left a vacuum at the Academy’s center, tearing the student body into opposing factions.
Who will show the courage and fortitude required to take the office of council president? Baseball captain Masamune Date? Soccer star Yukimura Sanada? Opposing council members Ieyasu Tokugawa and Mitsunari Ishida? Or any of dozens of other strapping young students? The challenge is on as the best of the best (and a few of the worst) compete to reign supreme!
The Review:
Audio:
The audio presentation for this release brings us the original Japanese language track only in stereo encoded using the DTS-HD MA lossless codec. The show is one that works a familiar style of mix to it where it’s mostly dialogue-based with some physical comedy elements thrown into it as well while providing some action in each episode that works the forward soundstage well. The bigger sequences play well with the comedy and the dialogue handles all the shouting as you’d expect. The dialogue itself is solid throughout with some minor placement here and there that helps a bit while the overall design brings everything through in a clean and clear way with no problems such as dropouts or distortions during regular playback.
Video:
Originally airing in 2018, the transfer for this TV series is presented in its original aspect ratio of 1.78:1 in 1080p using the AVC codec. The twelve episodes of this set are spread across two discs with nine/three format to give it all plenty of space. Animated by Brain’s Base, the show is one that hews towards traditional design elements of the franchise with its color style and the character designs so it has a bit of a throwback feeling to it while coming across smoother with the fluidity of the animation. The colors work a solid palette overall with some really nicely vibrant elements as needed to give it the right feel. The transfer is a solid one that’s clean and solid throughout it where the shading works well as needed. Though the series may not be a standout in terms of design and detail, it’s one that looks good and will definitely please fans of the show.
Packaging:
The packaging for this release comes in a standard-sized Blu-ray case that holds two discs inside. The front cover works with the very familiar piece of key visual artwork that was primarily used ahead of its broadcast debut. It’s not a bad piece as it gives us a look at our two leads in their high school form with them set against the cherry blossom trees. It hits all the right notes for this kind of project, right down to their expressions, which highlights just how polished of a work this is. The logo retains the same look as the Basara part of the overall franchise and goes fiery fun with the Gakuen part while providing a clean English adaptation version. The back cover gets nice and busy with two rows of shots from the show spread across it and the fun tagline in the middle. The episode and disc counts are clearly listed and the summary of the premise covers things well. Add in a clean look at the extras along the bottom just above the production information and the clean and accurate technical grid and you’ve got a cover that gets all the right work done. No show related inserts are included nor is there a reversible cover.
Menu:
The menu design for this series is kept simple where it goes for the static image design layout. We do get a good one where the right side features a good set of pairings of the characters that are near full-length images but has the logo going across their bottom halves on the right. The left side goes for the episodes by number and titles as the only piece (the second disc has the extras) as there is no language setup. It’s done in a nice geometric style with good color design of the gold and blue with black and white mixing in. It’s a simple release in that there’s little here on the main disc so it’s just popping into episodes and the pop-up menu itself just lets you hop to another episode. Everything loads quickly and smoothly and we had no problems with either the main menu or the pop-up menu.
Extras:
The only extras included with this release are the clean versions of the opening and closing sequences as well as some of the Japanese promos.
Having watched I think all of the Sengoku Basara anime material that Funimation has brought out I wasn’t surprised to see the property re-imagined like this. I was surprised to see that it ended up with Sentai, however. That said, It’s a familiar trick to milk a property in a new way but it can lead to some really fun stuff. I like the original work overall even if I’m admittedly a bit tired of the actual period and the characters because it’s been done so many times over the years, though done well. With this incarnation, bringing the cast into the high school realm with a good budget production under the idea of a “power vacuum” being created thanks to the suspension of student council president Toyotomi Hideyoshi is a kind of ridiculous one. But it’s one that works well in allowing for Masamune and Yukimura to take up against each other once again in battle while realizing that they’re not the only ones seeking power.
Taking place at the Basara Private Academy, the cold open gives us tension of a student election going on with most students in normal garb and the name ones all in their own ridiculous outfits that often don’t make sense in the modern setting but are things that you run with for the silliness of it all. The general idea is that we do get two large competing groups in that problematic teenage boy way with Date and Yukimura each wanting things, such as the baseball field and getting into some real competition over it. It sticks to traditional red and blue coloring for each side and Date even comically retains his eyepatch. It’s all ridiculous over the top aspects such as throwing the ball around to determine who gets the field and it causes all sorts of problems, even taking out a moped group of students along the way that just incites more school competition and violence.
All of this leads up to the reveal about Hideyoshi and the kind of competition that’s about to burst into a new level thanks to the suspension. The show throws a whole lot of crazy competitive elements into it quickly from here with the various sides pushing hard for votes down the line, which has some like Yukimura just wanting to sit it all out anyway because he doesn’t care for this kind of stuff. It’s just as big and silly as you’d expect with “overacting” the main theme of it. There’s some fun comedy mixed in along the way as well, often with those not directly involved in the competitive aspects getting taken down such a when they start hitting baseballs all over the place, but there’s an infectious kind of energy about it because of how the characters act. They all love a good fight, which resonates from the Sengoku Basara personalities, and it unfolds well here to show it all off as the afternoon wears on.
The problem is that this largely becomes replicated across the bulk of the run. The rivalries are all things we know from the basics of the past works and any dip into history class from this period and they embrace that as you’d expect. But each episode essentially sets up for a big fight to happen within a different setting or situation and it progresses from there. The fights are well done as you’d expect and playing it for comedy whereas the games and the prior anime works dealt with it a bit more seriously (albeit with some humor), this more comedic approach does work. But the problem really is that it just repeats over and over. And I’ll say that this may be less of an issue on a weekly basis because if you’re just tuning in for some comedic hack and slash fun with a familiar cast, sometimes in the classroom, sometimes on the “sportsball” field, you’ll have a lot to like. There’s no grand continuity or storyline going on here, it’s just episodic fun and silliness. And you can have fun with it but if you binge it, it’ll turn into a blur. Which in its own way is fun but it bears out my initial feelings well on it that it’s just entirely too predictable.
In Summary:
I won’t say I had high expectations for this series because I knew exactly what it was going to be like and the set essentially shows that. Part of it is that we’re all so “trained” for serialized storytelling that when we do get episodic works like this it’s hard to shift into the intended mode for it. Transplanting the cast to a school setting and building the competitive narrative that carries us through the series works well enough. You can see all sorts of school elements, especially sports, being used along the way – along with some cooperative moments as well. It’s not a work that has the grandeur and strong visual color design of the original work but it embraces the right kind of look for a comedy-action series of this nature and delivers it well, especially with all the scenery-chewing and overacting. Sentai’s release is solidly put together with what it includes and the encoding of it all, but I do wish that it had been able to keep up with the dub cast as we had with the prior works in the franchise.
Features:
Japanese DTS-HD MA 2.0 Language, English Subtitles, Clean Opening, Clean Closing, Japanese Promos
Content Grade: B-
Audio Grade: B+
Video Grade: B+
Packaging Grade: B
Menu Grade: B
Extras Grade: B-
Released By: Sentai Filmworks
Release Date: December 10th, 2019
MSRP: $59.98
Running Time: 300 Minutes
Video Encoding: 1080p AVC
Aspect Ratio: 1.78:1 Widescreen
Review Equipment:
Sony KDL70R550A 70″ LED 1080P HDTV, Sony PlayStation3 Blu-ray player via HDMI set to 1080p, Onkyo TX-SR605 Receiver and Panasonic SB-TP20S Multi-Channel Speaker System With 100-Watt Subwoofer.
