![]() ![]() It feels almost like a cheesy JRPG story. Japanese people are presented as peaceful people that are easily mind-washed into becoming frenzied killers by a dead guy’s head… Yeah, right! Realism aside, the story is full of ideals such as fulfiling your destiny, maintaining your honor, questioning your loyalties, giving the chance to rule the world… and turning ancient ruins into Doomsday devices. Which is quite ridiculous as a concept, since it presents the wars of that era to be the result of a curse and not of power struggles amongst greedy merchants and feudal lords. STORY SECTION - The story is about this cool-looking warrior, with the funky name of “The Eternal Assassin”, sent to save feudal Japan from a civil war, invoked by a cursed skull. ![]() For fans of samurai tales, there's a lot better out there, but it's worth a look-in, if only for the animation and travelling actors. Our lead character, the wandering swordsman, feels too generic, however, to really entertain, and is more an amalgamation of generic wandering samurai tropes than a really interesting character in his own right.īKI has some interesting ideas, but it undersells itself, and amps up the action and the magic when it could be something really special and give us an insight into the political situation of the late Shogunate. The best elements of BKI come in the moments between the supernatural - the political organisation of the Ezo Republic, the interesting use of the travelling actors, among the best characters, to frame the story. The magic adds nothing, and seems merely to exist to provide over the top set-pieces. Compared to a show like Rurouni Kenshin, set a few years later, BKI's characters lack the inner conflict and acknowledgement that by taking sides either for or against the nascent Meiji government, they are cutting themselves off from old comrades. ![]() Not only are the supernatural elements of the plot ill-explained and confusing during the early episodes, but they remove agency from the characters, and reduce what could be conflicted, complex characters to stock good versus evil stereotypes. However, the show largely missteps by introducing supernatural and magic elements to its plot. Well animated and researched, the show looks well, and gets the look of the period right, evoking the wider political conflict by presenting the incursion of Western fashions into Japan during the period. Dealing with the Bakumatsu era, or the final years of the Shogunate, BKI is an interesting, if unsatisfying anime - based largely on actual historical events such as the secession of the Republic of Ezo and including fictionalisations of its leaders. ![]()
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