Ikki Tousen

After seeing a "school battles" parody in School Rumble Ni Gakki, it began to be in my mind that maybe I should investigate the school battle genre of anime. Then I saw Muteki Kanban Musume, which while not the same genre, does have that "battles" aspect. Finally, the announcement of Ikkitousen: Dragon Destiny made me think that I really should check out Ikki Tousen. The results were mixed at best.

Lets start with the bad. First, there is an insane amount of fanservice in here. There's the jiggling breasts, sure, but then there's lots of cleavage shots. Ryofu and Kannwu don't wear bras, so you can imagine the cleavage opportunities there. All the girls wear short skirts, combined with plenty of low up-angle shots, we get to see panties all the time. Finally, most female fighters wear school seifuku and other clothing which shreds at the least hint of an attack. If the girls wear a bra, those hold up pretty well as do the girl's panties. Fortunately for the men in the series, their seifuku are made of stronger stuff and never appear to even get a scratch.

Next is the ecchi content. There are several scenes in the series, Ryofu seemingly in the majority of them, where the content begins to turn hentai. Indeed, one would beging to think that things would go hentai, only for things to cut off and the obvious sex that started to happen off screen. One of the two rapes in the show (where a female fighter rapes her defeated female opponent) was clearly done for sexual purpose and to get the male audience (and maybe even some of the yuri audience) all excited. Every last bit of it was uncalled for and the time should have been better spent on character development.

That leads me to the next problem with the series -- character development. We have precious little development in characters, and certainly little history. From time-to-time, the writers tossed us a bone, but usually nothing big. So we got to see a bit of background on Hakufu and Koukin. We got a bit of background on Ryofu and her childhood female companion (who refers to her as "Ryofu-sama") Chinkyuu. Unfortunately, there are just WAY to many characters for 13 episodes to give much special time to, and that time is reduced further with the ecchi content mentioned above. So while Ryomou grows from a character who loves to defeat opponents because it makes her iku to one who is willing to defend Hakufu is nice, because no real time was spent exploring her character, her growth didn't come off as well as it could have. And I would have loved to have seen and learned more about Kannwu, who shows up for a couple of episodes, then disappears. And I was never keen on how Ukitsu's character was done and Koukin's constant beatings were sad as well.

Still, I liked Ryomou in the end despite the lack of background. I liked Hakufu, who despite being "baka," and not liking being called such, is smart enough to understand that she's not a brain and never will be. And while I never like Ryofu, I did understand her in the end. Everything would have been better with more character development, and I wonder if that's in the manga.

The thing that kept me coming back was that the story. It was just interesting enough with its ties to ancient China and the story of the Romance of the Three Kingdoms to make me want to see more. Further, since three of the characters were looking to break the destiny of their names, that aspect was also of interest to me. Having schools as little more than a front for the various factions (think "gangs") also interested me for some reason. And I even liked Hakufu's idiot ways and the comedy moments those provided. Indeed, I might have given this a "Rent" had the ecchi content and fanservice been dropped.

Bottom line: If you like ecchi content, I'm thinking you'll like this more. However for me, too much fanservice and ecchi content combined with too little character development and story focus only rates this as a "Watch."