Ikki Tousen

Title:Ikki Tousen
Battle Vixens (manga title)
Ikkitousen
Strength of a Thousand
一騎当千
Overall:Rent
Keywords: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Notables: ASANO Masumi
Animation - JC Staff
HINO Satoshi
IIJIMA Hajime
INOUE Kikuko
KAIDA Yuki
KOBAYASHI Yumiko
MORIKUBO Shoutaro
NAMIKAWA Daisuke
Production - GENCO, Inc.
R1 License - FUNimation
WATANABE Akino

In the Kanto Plain of Japan, high schools in the area are little more than fronts for what appear to be nothing more than gangs who all wear a strange earring. Within these schools, students fight to be the top-rated fighters in order to represent their school at the very unofficial Great Fighter's Tournament. However, what appears to be nothing more than thugs fighting street battles is in reality ancient Chinese history coming back to replay itself in modern times with students having names of various warriors from that time.

Into this world comes the idiot Sonsaku Hakufu, who's just transfered to her cousin Koukin's school Nanyou and she and her mother move into Koukin's home. She arrives at school looking for a fight, only to be taught a lesson by powerful figher Gakushuu. But while her only interest is to fight stronger and stronger people, others see her as a threat and the order is put out to kill her and her cousin vows to protect her. Why is Hakufu so feared when she doesn't seem that great a fighter? Will these high school students be able to break from their destiny?


Based on a manga series with the same name, which in turn is loosely based on a 14th century classical Chinese novel.

[13 TV episodes based on the manga of the same title (known as Battle Vixens in the U.S., released by TokyoPop). Title had been licensed by Geneon (with Enoki Films, USA) but that license has now been transferred to FUNimation (also with Enoki Films, USA).]

GONG (the US-R1 licensing company) has posted thirteen (Eng dubbed) episodes to HULU.
click here to link to HULU and see the first episode

[edit] The ↗Ikkitousen franchise:
Episode Details 
99
OverallArtAnimationCharacter Design MusicSeries StoryEpisode StoryReviewer
Avoid 6 5 6 5 3 3 Ggultra2764 [series:706#1552]
Egad, I see where this turkey led to the modern ecchi craze that a decent number of recent titles love milking. Ikki Tousen was the forerunner for future ecchi-action titles like Queen's Blade and Maken-Ki! in featuring some tournament or battle school gimmick as a cheap excuse to show off revealing attire and perverted antics involving the female cast of the series. In the case of this series, it uses the famous Chinese novel series, Romance of the Three Kingdom, as a stupid excuse to explain why you have several high schools brawling for one another without any adult authoritative figure stepping in to settle the situation. The characters are hollow archetypes who get no development or depth what-so-ever with their characters with a narrator making a half-assed attempt to try connection the current predicaments of the characters to anything that transpired in Three Kingdoms. Female characters in the series regularly have their panties or prominent cleavage on display from their skimpy attire, their clothes regularly tear away from damage inflicted in battle, have bath scenes where their bodies are on full display and some get entangled in some sort of sexual act that is either consensual or involves molestation and rape in some form. The combat scenes in this aren't even worth checking out either as shortcuts are employed quite often with cut shots, speed stripes and still frames whenever a submission hold or attack gets connected. Unless you're into this series just for the show's mindless efforts at T&A, Ikki Tousen's a tasteless waste of time to watch.

Last updated Saturday, March 29 2014. Created Saturday, March 29 2014.
Buy Xenoknight [series:706#2967]
review coming after I rewatch the anime...

Check out my award list to see some of the best anime titles in the world!

Never forget Xenosaga.

Last updated Friday, December 05 2008. Created Friday, December 05 2008.
Rent 8 8 8 10 8 8 Big Fire [series:706#2441]
Ok, i know that everyone seems to not like this flick, but hey it is what it is...Just like City Hunter has a place for all of us, so does Ikki...I actually dig how they turned the 3 kingdoms saga into some sort of high school fighting story...If you are looking for chicks in uniforms, that fight, that might show you alittle extra hey this is a show for you...the 10 on the music was because MOVE did the opening, and i am a bigfan :-P I haven't checked out the other fighting shows, so this is my rating for now...I was able to dig some characters...NOT Hakufu, she was too stupid for me...but I liked Ryofu...and i wished there was more Kanu...Maybe In Ikki 2, she looks to be on the promos...

Last updated Thursday, February 22 2007. Created Thursday, February 22 2007.
Watch 7 7 7 6 6 AstroNerdBoy [series:706#436]

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."



Last updated Sunday, December 31 2006. Created Wednesday, November 29 2006.
Watch 7 7 8 7 0 0 KBanger1 [series:706#1694]
This series I thought was going to be great. It ended up being ok. To cut to the chase, the girl (Hakufu) is a descendant of a powerful fighter and yet she posesses the brain the size of a pebble. A very, very, small pebble. More like a grain of salt. That's how you should take this review about this series. Let me break it down to show you why I chose watch. The animation and art isn't to bad. There was some decent fight scenes but not as detailed as I would have like to have seen. The story was kind of confusing because even though the premise was that a bunch of schools were fighting against one another for total dominance it lacked continuity. The present story was compared to feudal Japan where various factions would war against each other for control. Between the past and present lies the confusion. The story lacked focus because the girl being a moron and then changing during the heat battle was just too weird. I don't mean it didn't make sense since that's the way the series went. It was weird because the protagonist's mind is so scattered that the story didn't mesh well. Even though it was funny at times and the fan service was good, there was just too much of the fan service and not enough story. Now this review can be construed by me saying avoid, but it was just something in there that made me buy it. Probably temporary stupidity or lack of reviews. In my case, the latter.

Last updated Wednesday, July 19 2006. Created Wednesday, July 19 2006.
Watch 7 6 8 5 6 5 Playful Otter-san [series:706#2104]
I picked up the manga before I watched the series, and I'm still reading the manga. With that said, if you happen to be somewhere where people are watching this show, go ahead and give it a view. If not. . .don't worry about it, you won't miss much. Unless you are a real fan of attractive women ponding the snot, urine, spit, puke, bile, you name it out of each other. Or if you're a teenager going through puberty and animated girls are your thing. Now don't get me wrong, really did love this series, but I liked the manga better. The manga takes longer to tell the story, and the story is well worth the wait. The anime feels rushed, like they knew they only had 13 or so episodes to tell a remake of the Romance of the Three Kingdoms story. Now the "RoTK" is an amazing story about the people of ancient china in and around the later Han Dynasty, and it spans over 50 chapters and 2000 pages, thankfully the story is broken into two books. The anime, however, is broken into 13 episodes all 30 mins long, not enough time to tell the whole story, or even begin to scratch the surface of the story. The manga however, is much longer and does do justice to the original story. This all being said I really did love this series, but mostly because I really like watching girls fight, other than that I can't honestly recommend this anime to anyone who doesn't love watching girls fight. Now the guys do get into the fights, and there is comedy in the series, a lot of comedy, but when the series tries to get serious and dark it just feels forced. It was a noble effort, but in such a small amount of space to tell a grand tale, one would think it was doomed to mediocrity from the begining. In my heart it pains me to say that, because I really wanted to love and recommend this anime to everyone, but I just can't lie to complete strangers. I still enjoyed it, maybe you will, but watch it before you spend the money.

Last updated Sunday, October 30 2005. Created Sunday, October 30 2005.
Rent 9 9 7 9 7 SummonerSupreme [series:706#2060]
I decided to pick up this anime after reading most of the manga, and while it looks great and is a lot of fun to watch, I was a little disappointed to see that by reading the manga I spoiled quite a bit of the anime. Although there's plenty of fanservice, namely lots of panties & exploding skirts, it also unintentionally obscures the good-sounding storyline, namely how this is essentially a modern take on monumental battles and heroes of Feudal Japan. That and back then all the key characters probably were men, and they've been resurrected in the form of girls with huge boobs for high-schoolers and punk guys with crazy sexual fetishes, although moreso in the manga-the anime is toned down just a little bit. While it's enjoyable and good if you like violent girls and panties-a-plenty, if you've read the manga just rent this one instead as there are too many similarities to justify buying it if you're a casual anime fan. Plus the manga has more fanservice.

Last updated Tuesday, July 26 2005. Created Tuesday, July 26 2005.
Watch Devil Doll [series:706#752]
Well, I was rather hesitant whether I should actually review this. I watched this series some time ago (yes, the AYA-like drawing style was what attracted me to this one, like it did with Triangle Heart as well). Yet, I didn't get much value out of it. So I'm not bothering to give detailed ratings because that's probably not the point here. (I looked up all the names in a fan site right now - don't think I would have remembered all of them myself...)

My biggest disappointment was Sonsaku Hakufu who never appears to get anything right, despite her legendary talent. Her mother Goei was confusing (you wouldn't possibly guess that her seiyuu voiced Belldandy before!); cousin Syuyu Koukin had very little influence on the story, getting beaten up again and again. Kannei I considered plain annoying. And this girl Ukitou who wants to "awaken" Hakufu, well... talk about one-dimensional characters.
What I did like was a number of side characters, such as the girl with the eyepatch (Ryomou Shimei) whose attitude turns around 180° during the series, and the green-haired girl of the Toutaku team (Ryofu Housen) who at least is aware that there's more than just one alternative. Both leaders of the most relevant teams (Saji Genpou and Toutaku Chuuei) were interesting as well, knowing the nature of the events and trying to rewrite the script; without these two actually nothing would have happened except for an ecchi variant of an elimination game. As for the mere magatama fighters, two of them impressed me, the boy Kakouton Genzyou because he was funny ("It's all about the basics!"), and the girl Kanu Untyou because she showed an extreme attitude (her fight against Ryomou was the most interesting one for me).
Both the "chinese history lessons" and the surprising ending I consider okay. During the whole series they made me wonder what would happen next, and although they did this by introducing ever more new characters they made me watch this series to the end, and I don't regret it. At least I found this story development more interesting than most of the fights. And the ending did work for me - I wouldn't have liked a mere elimination game with that stupid brat on top.

Giving this series a rating is difficult, basically because I share Jan-Chan's opinion about the possible target group. It isn't really hentai, although two scenes come close; I can imagine an "Avoid" would do for many people. Then again I did watch it myself and wasn't mentally hurt too badly... ;-) So let's give it a "Watch". (By the way, I removed "Romantic Comedy" from the category list - there's nothing even close to "romance" in this series.)
But if you'd like a better story (without fighting then) of a similiar degree of silliness and ecchiness you should watch Hanaukyo Maid Tai and Hanaukyo Maid Tai La Verite first, which I consider a lot more interesting.

Last updated Sunday, June 19 2005. Created Monday, December 27 2004.
Rent Forbin [series:706#1573]
Drama : Low
Comedy : High
Action : High
SciFi : None
Ecchi : High



First off this is an extremely low rent. And to think I rated this a buy at first.

Oh why oh why did I watch Episode 13. This had such incredible potential especially #12 when Hakafu goes up against Tonkasu.

Hmmm... Take the Characters of Ai Yori Aoshi (Especially Tina and Aoi), the drama of Fighting Spirit Ippo, add the underwear artists of Gainax fresh off Hand Maid May, and tell them to do a Hentai that doesn't have any sex at all, and you have Ikki Tousen.


Sonsaku (Tina complete with Fangs) shows up at a fighting school that has rivals in 7 other schools. She then joins in the fighting to prove she is the best. In the Drama Side, there are 7 famous samurai that are reincarnated and are refighting all their battles over and over again. In the HMM side, there are TONS of panty shots. In the Hentai side, the shots are VERY detailed. So much so I thought all they did was paint on the underwear after drawing in all the hentai details.

If you like fighting such as Ippo or Yu Yu Hakusho, watch this. Don't be surprised if you learn a bit of history as each battle ends with a lesson in history.

Take a look at the graphic. That's Tina on the left and that's Aoi-chan on the right! The eyepatch does throw it off but that's her. The head of another school is a Miss Miyabi clone and the head girl of the current emperor is a Mayu with Green hair. (Edit : Well it was until someone updated the Screen Shot )

Edit : I lowered my rating after comparing this with Tenjo Tenge



Just listen to me when I say only watch up to episode 12. Then STOP!!!!! Whomever made 13 just went Hey we ran out of money so lets put Episode 24 into Episode 13 and cut and paste the last 4 characters with some screen shots! (I'm not kidding).

They end it by introducing 3 characters, bringing in a 4th (Ikitsu), who has NO PURPOSE in there except to fight (not even any drama issues on why she fights), killing off 3 others, introducing a spy and POOF! The anime is over. Who's the emperor now? We don't know because that character wasn't even introduced properly. What happened to the king of Nanyo? What about the dude who likes to fix the walls after a fight? What about the girl who single handedly kicked the crap out of Nanyo? What about the build up to the tournament that Tonkatsu 'just went FU it's over ok?' WTF!

Owell, watch it for the fighting , the character buildup and the Panty and Boobie Shots. Do NOT watch the last episode. You have been warned.

Last updated Tuesday, March 15 2005. Created Monday, December 27 2004.
Buy 9 9 7 9 9 8 manganime [series:706#1633]
Let me just say this is much better than the manga version. The only good thing about the manga version is that it has more fanservice otherwise don't bother with it and go straight to the anime. I dunno it may just be a bad translation on Tokyopop's part as sometimes you have to struggle to understand what the hell the characters are on about.
For action fans you must see this one. It is actually really good and exciting with a little hint of ecchi.
The major thing that lets it down is the tasteless ending which is a bad end to a great series. What made it worse they didn't show what happened to my favourite character-Kannei.
But overall this a very enjoyable series.

Last updated Monday, October 25 2004. Created Monday, October 25 2004.
Watch 7 7 5 5 3 Jan-Chan [series:706#967]
Ikkitousen is thirteen episodes of what I can only call ?teen-boy-anime?. While this is a very entertaining series at a fighting-&-fan-service level, it does not seem to be bothered by the absence of a few minor story requirements?.such as a plot!! Or even perhaps an intelligent story-line or even a series-conclusion !!

The basic story is that certain high school students are reincarnations of the lords and leaders of ancient past, and they are back to re-fight their long past battles and recapture their historic glory. (I never did quite understand why o how these series of events came to be! But whatever) One of the strongest lords has been reincarnated in the body of an absolute ditz of a full figured teenage female, who is this series showpiece for reviewing the female anatomy. Through out this series, she becomes disheveled, disrobed and over exposed at every opportunity.

I am going to have to complain about many things.. err.. one thing in this story, at one point a female student is assaulted (off-screen, of course). And I was left wondering how this event had any impacted or significance to the story line, which I do NOT think that it did, other than to titillate a distinct minority of the male viewing audience, and perhaps, to offer a few more fan-service panty shots! (Yep, my impression was that the crew of Ikkitousen were really trying to make up for an absence of a plot!)

And in the last few episodes, at chance when a series can summarize up and conclude the past episodes of viewing time, this series just drops everything flat, leaving the viewer with a sense of ?. WHAT A CHEAP SHOT ENDING!!! ??..(My response was ?Right!?Whatever!?.. Thanks?. Bye!!)

If you like this type of bouncy martial arts type of anime violence, then you might enjoy this series?? (are you under the age of 14?) ?.. if not, then lets please agree to not to waste our time and avoid this series??..

Last updated Sunday, November 09 2008. Created Saturday, July 31 2004.

Other Sites
NameURL
Official Ikkitousen Page http://www.ikkitousen.com/
The official page for the anime series.
Ikkitousen.de http://www.ikkitousen.de/
A german fan site, including character descriptions with images

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