Wow, this review ended up being way longer than I had anticipated, so I'll summarize it for you:
Shura no Toki basically consists of two distinct halves. The first half is a well done fighting show with great animation, fairly good character development, and interesting situations, even if the plot is kind of simplistic. Historical context and the traditional sounding music add to the enjoyment of the show. The second half tries to delve too deeply into Japanese history, without ever trying to get the viewer actually interested in it, and hence ends up being rather boring. The characters no longer develop, and events feel random and dragged out. The show suffers from stereotypical characters and extremely reptitive character designs, but does reasonably well given those handicaps. Overall, you should watch the first 14 episodes, and just stop there.
Being a fighting show, the fight scenes are animated quite nicely. Movements are fluid and the angles are effective. I especially enjoyed the scene that involved ninjas fighting in tall grass, but all of them were exciting to watch. Since the Mutsus fight barehanded, their moves are quite different from your typical swordfight, which certainly made the "choreography" more interesting. There is one strange thing in that, towards the end, the animators started "experimenting" with split screen effects such as having two characters walking toward each other, or one character charging while the other stands still. Sometimes this was neat, and other times quite disorienting. The show uses a lot of bright colors, which really seems to bring history to life, so to speak. Even the night scenes are quite vivid without seeming overbright.
The reason animation gets a lower rating is threefold: use of CGI, character designs, and episodes 21-24. The CGI, which mostly shows up towards the end of the series, was not well-integrated at all. In particular, there were many scenes of obviously-CG ships as well as one "running down an alley" scene that almost made me motion sick. I have a strong bias against CGI, so these stood out to me, but overall, there was very little CGI use, and never in important scenes.
Another major problem with this show is the character designs. Try watching the opening sequence. Did you know that those shots of that guy walking down a path are actually of three different people? I didn't. I watched the second guy for several episodes before realizing that he wasn't the first guy. Having all the protagonists look the same is almost forgivable; after all, they are descendants of each other, and they don't show up together, so there is minimal confusion. However, the reuse of character designs doesn't stop here. A lot of the side characters look the same as well. In the last arc, when there are a whole slew of important characters, it starts to get really confusing as to who's who.
My last complaint has to do with episodes 21-24. The show does tend to have "last time on ShuraToki" recaps at the beginning of each episode, but in those episodes the amount of flashbacks became excessive. I think they gave 4 versions of one scene, interweaving maybe 20% of new footage each time. I almost wondered if I hadn't accidentally started watching an episode I'd already seen. The problem with episode 24 was a bit different. It almost seemed like the animators had run out of budget: the first scenes were off-color in a weird silhouette style, and the rest of the episode was practically in greyscale. I'm guessing that the change in palette was intentional (the episode title is "Like Snow"), but the characters were also drawn much more poorly in this episode, which killed the effect.
SoundThe voice acting in this show was pretty good. Although the characters may all look alike, they do tend to speak quite differently, especially the three Mutsus. You can really hear each character's personality and attitude in his or her voice. The only complaint about voice acting I have is that Sakamoto Ryouma had the most annoying accent ever. I wanted to kill him every time he said "Cha cha cha".
The opening and ending themes were average: I enjoyed them while watching, but I'm not about to go download or buy the CDs. The highlight was the background music. It's quite traditional sounding and really adds to the historical atmosphere. That high flute with the drums is the epitome of tension, and it just sends chills up my spine. Occasionally, the background music sounds too modern, usually when they're trying to be majestic, and then it feels really out of place. However, this was relatively rare, and overall, the music is probably what kept me on this show, as it added suspense to what are fairly cliché situations.
Story (WARNING: mild spoilers.)
Shura no Toki is about a clan of people known as Mutsu, who, throughout history, fought barehandedly as well as the best swordsmen of the day. The story is divided into three arcs that each cover the Mutsu descendant in one generation. The first two are relatively similar, in which the Mutsus ultimately have a showdown with the two most famous swordsmen in Japanese history, Miyamoto Musashi and Yagyuu Juubei, respectively. Although this sounds quite cliché, I found these two arcs to be the more enjoyable part of the show. The first arc focuses more on the main characters, with a reasonably good attempt at romance for being a fighting show. There are some politics involved, but mostly it's about a carefree guy who doesn't want to get involved in complicated things. The second arc has much more historical context, being set right after the Warring States Period, and events are mainly driven by politics, but things still focus down on the individuals. This is also where we have the unavoidable fighting tournament, but it's handled pretty well.
The third story arc is quite different from the first two and takes place much later. It is deeply intertwined with the events of the Meiji Restoration. (After Musashi and Juubei, I almost expected that this generation's Mutsu would be fighting with Himura Battousai.) In a sense, a perfectly good fighting show started trying to be more than that, and this is where I got bored. The scale abruptly expanded from being about a few key figures to being about the whole of Japan. The show doesn't take enough time to explain the huge ideological upheaval that went on during this period, so the military battles don't have the same impact, and mostly you're left wondering what all these normal soldiers have to do with anything. Mutsu is supposed to jump into the battle unarmed and take everyone out by himself, isn't he? The third arc tries to cover a fairly long period of time (more than 10 years) by slowing down for key events and random "character development" and then fast-forwarding a lot. It ends up feeling both random and dragged out. Fortunately, the last episode manages to get back to the fighting show roots, so the ending is still quite satisfying.
The story rating is sort of an average score across all the episodes; for the individual arcs they would be 8, 7, and 5, respectively. The nice thing about this show is that the three arcs are relatively disjoint, so you can pretty much watch them independently. There is a bit of continuity between the first two arcs, but you won't be completely lost if you skip the first part. For those interested, the arcs are divided as follows:
Mutsu Yakumo - 1 - 7
Mutsu Takato - 8 - 14
Mutsu Izumi - 15 - 26
(As you can see, the third arc is almost twice as long as the first two, which should give you an idea of how much more long and involved it is.)
I found the characters in this show to be extremely stereotypical and repetitive. All of the guys are only interested in being strong and fighting other strong people. All of the girls are tomboys who try to be strong but nonetheless can't control their emotions and do little more than stubbornly follow the guys around. The show opened with a lot of promise in the first two episodes, when they started developing a really sweet romance between the two main characters. Unfortunately, after these characters were introduced once, everyone else was just a clone, and the novelty wore off. Of course, these are broad generalizations, and when you look closer there are differences, but, as with character appearances, the show really could have used an extra dose of creativity.
I did appreciate the differences between the three Mutsus. You begin with Yakumo, who is quite carefree and doesn't like to be involved. Then you have Takato, who is more serious, and has a bit more attitude, and cares about keeping his friends out of trouble. Then you end up with Izumi, who's completely devoted to his best friend and basically spends all of his time acting as bodyguard. Unfortunately, I found Yakumo to be the most likable of the Mutsus, so in this respect the show got worse as it went on. The major problem is that the Mutsus are all fairly static characters. They often cause other characters to grow, but they themselves hardly change at all. This is kind of thematic, as if emphasizing that the Mutsu clan has been an unchanging, hidden force throughout history. But you simply can't get around the fact that focusing on someone who's unaffected by events doesn't make a very good story.
The character development for the other characters in the first two arcs, while it takes a backseat to the action, is still pretty interesting. I especially liked Sasuke in the second arc, who probably has the most depth of any character in the show. In the third arc, it starts to feel like none of the characters are really changing, but rather events and the political situation in Japan are changing around them. This might have worked if the story was better put together, but the show just hit on a bad combination. What was very nicely done was the duality of Hijikata and Okita. When first introduced, they were pretty different, but as the series went on, they seemed to become the same in both appearance and personality, which bothered me quite a bit. However, the storywriters resolved this beautifully at the end, so I quite forgive them.
Throughout the show there are a lot of minor characters that come and go, such as various clan members and friends of main characters, which probably aren't worth keeping track of. It does cause the show to lose some of its credibility, though, because you see people acting in response to these nobodies with unknown motivations and unknown relationship to the main characters.
Value(First half score: 7. Second half score: 3.)
I would watch the first two arcs again, as they were quite a lot of fun. I wouldn't want to watch the mess that is the third arc again, though. I barely made it through the first time.
Like a lot of the other sections, the enjoyment score is really split between the two halves of the show. I really enjoyed the first half. The idea was simple, but it was handled well and kept my interest. The arcs kind of eased into the historical context, with a neat glimpse at the culture and political situation of the times, without making it overbearing. The second half just seemed to drag on and on and on, with all these random things going on that didn't really have anything to do with Mutsu anymore. The show really got bogged down in the details of the Meiji Restoration, but it didn't manage to make me care. The episodes literally felt twice as long in the second half, and I spent a lot of time wondering when they would be over. The ending was pretty good, though, and that always leaves a happy tint on a show, so I'll give it bonus points for that.
