Anime Review: Ikkitousen

Review IkkitousenWritten by WarpshadowRating fair

Fan service can be two things, either icing on the metaphorical cake of a good show or a crutch. To apply that statement to Ikkitousen it would be easy to say that this show has broken leg.

In the Kanto region of Japan there are seven schools who battle each other for dominance. The students that participate in this system are known as fighters who are recognized by the magatama beads they wear. Hakufu Sonzaku is a girl who just transferred to Nanyo academy, one of the schools that participate in the tournaments. She is a bit dense so doesn't understand how a 1800 year old fate hangs over all the fighters including herself.

While it is true that many anime shows have fan service in them few are as blatant about it as Ikkitousen. The most obvious example of said fan service is the fact that you see women's underwear aprozimately every 15 seconds in this show. This is probably an attempt to cover up the weaker aspects of the show, namely everything else. For example the main character is an air headed dunce who is accompanied by the usual wimpy harem anime lead (no other girls for him though). This is supposedly based off of the Romance of The Three Kingdoms but with all the names in Japanese the references are incomprehensible even to people to people familiar with original story. The fights don't feel all that exciting and are usually an excuse to tear women's clothes off, even by blunt objects much to the chagrin of the laws of physics. Unless your brain melts at the site of bouncing boobs you can skip this show.