Customer Reviews

Samurai Deeper Kyo: The Complete Series

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Four years have passed since the battle of Sekigahra. On that day a legend was born....Demon Eyes Kyo.."The Thousand Man Slayer"
Since then he has lain dormant inside the body of a medicine man..a healer named Kyoshiro Mibu but now Demon Eyes Kyo has awakened and the future as it was meant to be will now be forever changed. <--Intro
As for myself this was a good series 3 1/2 or 4 stars. This series comes in a "Lite Box" which is all 6 discs inside a normal sized DVD case and a single divider, each disc overlaps the other. The format is an anamorphic W/S transfer & the voices are well done except for Benetora who reminds me of a bad George Bush impersonation. The outakes are somewhat comical just do not watch them before watching that disc as they are clips from what is about to come.
You will not be blown away by the animation as it is several years old but still it is very well done...deep blues..rich greens. I did not notice any CGI to speak of I would classify them more as "Special Effects".
The story itself is nicely done..to start with Kyoshiro is being hunted by a bounty hunter because he ate and ran leaving behind the bill. Just as the bounty hunter catches up with Kyoshiro so does a warrior whom begins to beat on Kyoshiro and not until severly beaten does Kyo's personality come to the surface. That is when you find out that Kyo has his own body to which he must find in order to return to it. While on that journey others join him and they learn that there are 5 legendary weapons, weapons so perfect that a Master can only produce one in his lifetime. Only when all 5 are joined together can history be restored to its true path.
I will not break down the whole story for you but having the name "The Thousand Man Slayer" you have made alot of enemies.
There is a lot of action but not tons of gore. This has a dark feel to it and while you are solving one problem it leads to another...who is pulling who's strings yet all the time it is part of the underlying plot. Characters are well developed and almost everyone you meet plays and important part.
As I said I found this a very entertaining Samurai tale set in the 1600's. There are monsters...magical weapons. Kind of Fantasy/Samurai. The story moves forward and does not get bogged down at any point and the sound is nicely done...you do Not hear the sound of a gong (thankgod) when someone gets hits on the head only once or twice did I see the "Noodle Arms" effect.
I have seen it twice and for me the replay was good..I still found myself interested all the way through on the second viewing.
This is something I would suggest if you are interested in a serious story. This is not slapstick nor stand alone episodes it requires a persons attention. So if you get bored because there is not 20 minutes of action out of a 22 minute episode then this is not for you.

During the great battle at Sekigahara in the year 1600, Kyoshiro Mibu and "Demon Eyes" Kyo were engaged in fierce combat when a meteor crashed in the battlegrounds. Neither of them are seen for four years until bounty hunter Yuya Shiina captures Kyoshiro, who is wanted for skipping out on a restaurant bill. With Kyoshiro acting the fool, Yuya doesn't expect to have much trouble with him. That is, until she discovers that Demon Eyes Kyo has somehow been trapped in Kyoshiro's body.

I have seen this series three times now. I don't know why I like it so much, as one reviewer pointed out, the story is rather sloppy. The first half goes nowhere, then things get interesting and - boom! The series ends in a confusing battle and then an ambiguous epilogue sort of thing.
But I do like this series. Enough to see it three times. I think that the premise itself is lots of fun- demon killer trapped in bumbling idiot's body. But is that really what it is? The other thing that I really enjoyed was the historical aspect. It is not very accurate, but it has the names of many famous historical figures and even some of the historical events (though adapted to fit the story). Before watching this series I hadn't known anything about this time period, and when I found out that the characters were based on real people, it inspired me to learn more about the history of Japan. That I was also associating historical figures with animated characters, made it easier to remember names and facts. One of my favorite characters in the show, Sanada Yukimura, is a very interesting person to read about historically.

The characters in this show are just fun. They aren't particularly developed or deep, but Kyoshiro really grows on you, and Kyo is kind of cool, thought rather single minded. The fighting is kind of silly, but not too long and there are a wide variety of opponents who are quickly dispatched. The ending is confusing, but creative and weird and entertaining.
This show is based on a manga of the same name. The manga series is 38 volumes to the anime's 26 episodes, so the anime isn't very true to the source material. I enjoyed that anime, so I tried to read the manga, but it is much more "adult" then I could take.
I watched this series in Japanese, because the English voice actors weren't all that good. They weren't bad, just the Japanese dub was much better. However, the English outtakes are great.

All in all, if you want a historical fiction fantasy story with samurai, this is the show for you. You might not love it, but you will be entertained and possible educated :) (if you didn't already know anything about Sekigahara)

At the battle of Sekigahara, the infamous Demon Eyes Kyo fought against Kyoshiro Mibu. Then a CGI meteor hit, samurai turned into monsters, and Kyo and Kyoshiro ended up being roommates in the same body.

Unfortunately, the adaptation of Akimine Kamijyo's "Samurai Deeper Kyo" doesn't really improve after that. That the scriptwriters threw out most of the manga's storyline, shuffled around what was left, and threw in a bunch of ugly shapeshifting monsters. The result is a bizarre, strangely scattered anime that's riddled with plot holes and bizarre action scenes (porn nurses? Space ninjas?).

Four years after Sekigahara, bounty hunter Yuya Shiina nabs a minor criminal, the harmless wandering medicine man Kyoshiro Mibu. But she soon finds out that Kyoshiro has another personality inside him -- Demon Eyes Kyo. And though Kyoshiro is usually the dominant personality, it doesn't take long for Kyo to come out (seemingly for good).

Oh, and unsurprisingly Kyo wants his body back, but doesn't know where it is. He and Kyoshiro also seem to have a connection to a young woman named Sakuya.

But it turns out that there are a lot of people (and monstrous shapeshifting kenyou) entangled with Kyo/Kyoshiro as well -- along with the femme fatale Okuni and ambitious ex-general Yukimura Sanada, Kyo and Yuya venture into the deadly Sea of Trees to find a mysterious man known as "His Majesty," but must fight a group of superpowered kenyou who guard him. And from there they set out to attack the powerful Mibu clan, who have their own plans for Kyo's powerful body.

For the record: an anime adaptation doesn't have to be slavishly faithful to the manga for me to enjoy it. But it DOES have to make sense. And unfortunately "Samurai Deeper Kyo" doesn't make sense -- it's like the writers crammed the manga into a blender, threw in a bunch of generic monsters, and never bother to actually make one thing logically follow another.

The first half of the series is downright lazy -- everytime something interesting happens, it turns out to be the fault of the kenyou. Then suddenly the entire focus shifts to the Mibu clan... just in time for the series to get hastily wrapped up in the most absurd manner possible. As a result, the series is a surreal, clumsy mess, full of gaping plot holes, hit-or-miss fights (a deadly fighter just STANDS there while Yukimura sprints several yards and stabs him?), and half-baked political tangles. Even the humor is wrong -- funny moments like Yukimura's gleeful "the plan... is a secret!" are always a beat off.

It also seems like the animators were either clumsy or lazy -- the episodes are crammed with still shots (especially for simple stuff like talking and walking) and dismally obvious errors. On the other hand, the outtakes are brilliant -- Dan Green is especially fun ("I gotta pee!"), but almost everybody produces some hilarious stuff ("Mizuchi is blowing from inside you..." "Excuse me, I just had a burrito")

Even the characters don't work, though they're fascinating in concept. Kyo is introduced as a bloodthirsty, terrifying man... but not only does the "thousand man slayer" hardly ever kill anybody, but he becomes a sentimental mushball at random times. The same thing happens to the fight-happy goofball Benitora (I thought he hated his dad?). Yukimura is a far more interesting character -- a laid-back nobleman who always seems cheerful and flirtatious), but can be as deadly as Kyo.

"Samurai Deeper Kyo" had plenty of promise, but for some reason the writers went out of their way to squander every shred of it.