English Dub Review: Senran Kagura “Shinovi Versus”

Shinobi have never been more boring.

Overview (Spoilers Below)

The episode begins with a battle between Yumi and Asuka, who lecture each other about their moral belief systems while they fight. However, this is clearly a flashback since we immediately cut to the Shinobi Masters Tournament where we left off last week mid-fight. Gekkou and Yumi start to battle each other, with Gekkou taking an immediate lead; however, Yumi is able to use her ice powers to turn the tables on Gekkou, all while explaining how her Grandpa didn’t believe in a world of pure good as Gekkou believes, but actually a world of balance. Meanwhile, Homura’s ninja squad sneaks around through the vents.

Yumi’s fight continues. Gekkou keeps pressing her radical ideology while Yumi rebukes her blows. Yumi’s flashback continues, where we see her fight with Asuka gets interrupted by Yumi’s Grandpa, who stops them from killing each other. Back in the present, we learn about Gekkou’s past, where her and her sister discovered Kurokage’s teachings in their school library. Once they read Kurokage’s work, they fell in love with his “path” and have vowed to follow it since then. Yumi, upon hearing this tale, begins to cry and recounts how she has a similar story of Kurokage’s teachings since he raised Yumi and her friends since they were young. Then we take a break from the fighting to see what sexy shenanigans the girls in the locker room are up to.

Yumi and Asuka’s battles reach their endgame as Senkou and Gekkou try to turn things back in their favor, but both get taken down by their foes. All the while, we see the ending of Yumi’s memory, where he explained that a world of pure good “Was right in front of them,” the whole time, alluding to their friendship and respect for each other as rivals. With their fight over, Asuka and Yumi share their wisdom with Gekkou and Senkou, and the episode ends on a peaceful note.

Our Take:

You can’t really expect much from Senran Kagura, since its basically just a piece of colorfully animated smut, but you can expect it not to be as boring as this week’s episode is. Usually, there’s some kind of gimmick that, while annoying, creates some kind of “fun” concept for the episode to work with. It’s not much, but it plays to the show’s strengths to have its scantily clad characters bouncing around on the beach or in a water fight or some such thing. Unfortunately, Senran Kagura decides it’s going to try and be a big boy show this week and bring in some story to break up the pace, and their attempt at drama is nothing short of laughable, and not in a funny way. Get ready for a long, long episode of meandering dialogue and dull action, complete with plenty of sweet, sweet cringe.

This episode is remarkably simple in terms of plot. It’s basically just an extended fight sequence between Yumi and Gekkou with some flashbacks thrown in to break up the pace. Surprisingly, this isn’t very interesting to watch. Usually, fight scenes are the kinds of scenes viewers embrace as the exciting “good bits” of a show that might not be too stellar on its story. Yet, Senran Kagura feels like the exact opposite: its the “worse bits” in a show that has absolutely nothing working in its story. The fight itself is stiff and unimaginative, mostly consisting of Yumi and Gekkou standing around yelling at each other before their clothes fly off in ridiculous fashion. The nudity, of course, accompanies basically every aspect of their fighting, which makes you wonder why the showrunners though their viewers could take the story of this episode seriously. You can’t have a character’s panties exploding in mid-air right after they shed tears over their long-lost father figure.

The vocal deliveries are cringe-tastic, made worse by the shoddy, campy lines this poor cast is forced to deliver. Much credit should be given to the actors for being able to do these takes at all without breaking down in laughter at how completely normal they are. Rest assured that none of the emotional moments work here, both because of the tonal whiplash of their existence and the show’s inability to deliver them in a satisfying and entertaining way. Oh, but don’t worry, Senran Kagura can’t take itself seriously for too long since we get a nice and intrusive locker room scene just to break things up with some more lewd nudes.

It goes without saying, but this episode is a complete joke, in a show that is also a complete joke. I can’t expect much from a show like this, but if it could at least have the decency to stop being so damn boring I would really appreciate it.