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I'll admit I wasn't too impressed with the show at first, but it gradually drew me in, and the finale was devastatingly well executed. I wouldn't recommend it to many people, simply because it is very gross - violence, sex, sexual violence, violent sex - it has all of these in larger amounts than I liked. Still, if you think you can handle it, I say definitely check it out.

@Ausdoerrt:

Actually, I thought there was more substance than met the eye. On the surface, it is a simple double-revenge story about two people who hate each each other. However, the way the characters develop and the way the audience's (or at least my) perception of them changes is very interesting. Instead of there being a 'good guy' and a 'bad guy', both leads (and everyone else, for that matter) is heavily flawed. As my mind tried to deal with each new revelation and determine who was currently the 'good-est', it made me think about morality and how inadequate many of our ideas about it can be. Just my 2 cents.

^ True that. It's just that I felt that the effort spent on the story was not anywhere close to the artwork. There also were lots of plot holes, not to mention that it was pretty hard to follow due to constant time leaps.

It's a really cool show, but not really what I'd list among my favourites.

Shigurui is definitely a style-over-substance story, though that never hurt anime cult favorites something like, say, Baccano!, FLCL or Mind Game. Cinema -- live-action or real life -- is more dependent on presentation. Plenty of conceptually great stories (or original novels) are ruined by sub-par or awful direction. It takes far more talent to render a simplistic tale into something compelling and nuanced. (Obvious, popular examples would be the less-grandoise Hayao Miyazaki films.)

Plus, at its heart, Shigurui is as much an absurd Greek tragedy as it is an indictment of the period and its attitudes. (It's like a hyper-violent Harakiri, really.) It delivers perfectly in the type of story it wants to tell.

My favorite part of the anime is likely the building of tension through silence and inaction. Movements from those duels can and will be decided based on one single mistake in a slight move -- that a person can lose their head if they move too early creates a sort of believable and gripping atmosphere that few other anime directors can barely even dream of.

Ausdoerrt wrote:

There also were lots of plot holes...

Uh, no, there aren't.

that depends on if you consider Shigurui an anime. i personally thought it was a slideshow. seriously, did anything ever move? i mean i admit the storyline was really good overall (except for the ending), but still that style was so odd...

v1cious wrote:

that depends on if you consider Shigurui an anime. i personally thought it was a slideshow. seriously, did anything ever move?

Uh, yes. There's a lot of great animation in 2s during the series. Lot of subtle movement with hair, robes, faces and muscles. Just because it's not obvious and flashy doesn't mean it's not there.

And given that the ending is more satisfying than most attempts at closure in anime, I'm somewhat confused as to why this is an issue for some. There's still material left to be told, true, but it's as fitting of a climax that I can think of. Then again, I'm one of those who was satisfied with the ending of the Fullmetal Alchemist series (before they screwed around and made that movie).

HellKorn wrote:

Plus, at its heart, Shigurui is as much an absurd Greek tragedy as it is an indictment of the period and its attitudes. (It's like a hyper-violent Harakiri, really.)

This.

I honestly got a Japanese New Wave plus ultraviolence feel from this series. Granted, I thought I was half-crazy reading Harakiri into an anime title (and equating Kogan to a kind of more literal version of the samurai armour from that film); but I disgress.

I'm the philistine who does not like this show.

I was feeling it up until about midway through; the pacing was just agony from then on. I cared less and less about those retarded people as the story progressed, I didn't like the execution of the action scenes, but barring those issues the biggest letdown for me was the ending. spoiler[I felt like that show betrayed me; I put up with it for so long and it didn't even deliver the duel from the beginning.]

By my judgment, the bottom line is that this seems to be a love letter to Japanese aesthetic - it conveys the yearning, the sorrow, and follows a regimen of minimalism, so my accusation that it doesn't deliver is simply a personal frustration with it. My criticism of the content is ultimately one of it's run time. I think I would be more approving of this if it wasn't so long.

Oh, and FLCL is both style and substance; it spins a wonderful yarn about coming of age in addition to it's wonderful audiovisual content.

valondar wrote:

Granted, I thought I was half-crazy reading Harakiri into an anime title (and equating Kogan to a kind of more literal version of the samurai armour from that film); but I disgress.

Interesting. I've yet to re-watch it, but doesn't Kogan actually don a similar type of armor at some point in the series?

dewlwieldthedarpachief wrote:

I was feeling it up until about midway through; the pacing was just agony from then on.

Huh. I recall that the pacing actually becomes faster once episode six arrives. Many of the complaints about the structure (which I slightly share) is that the first half is predominantly a study of aesthetics rather than cutting to the exact core of the issue (i.e. it starts out very slow and picks up steam).

And "retarded people"? Really?

Quote:

Oh, and FLCL is both style and substance; it spins a wonderful yarn about coming of age in addition to it's wonderful audiovisual content.

It has substance, but it's primarily driven by presentation. (And I wouldn't describe it as a coming of age tale, either, unless one loosely defines it as simple acceptance of one's self. After all, part of the message is that one shouldn't try to force themselves to become adult -- or, rather, what they believe "adult" means.)

Maybe pacing isn't the best way to describe what I didn't like; it was just that I became fed up with the exposition at that point. And for all the steam it picks up the train doesn't take me where I wanna go. And yeah, I thought they were retarded; I didn't sympathize with anyone, except maybe that poor daughter. Maybe.

If that was said about FLCL the first time that would have been fine; it's not the same as saying that it is style over substance.

Well, all you really had to do to get me to give it a shot was to mention, Madhouse, and I'm there. Sounds like Kemonozume...without the romance or the humor. Razz

dewlwieldthedarpachief wrote:

Maybe pacing isn't the best way to describe what I didn't like; it was just that I became fed up with the exposition at that point.

Hm. I can see that being an issue with some, though I pretty much dug it (particularly considering how "quiet" the rest of the series is). The manga itself has a lot, lot more "exposition," though that's more befitting the nature of comics.

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And yeah, I thought they were retarded; I didn't sympathize with anyone, except maybe that poor daughter. Maybe.

Unsympathetic/unlikable characters don't equate to being retarded.

Quote:

If that was said about FLCL the first time that would have been fine; it's not the same as saying that it is style over substance.

I wasn't really saying that the series doesn't have substance the first time, either; it's just one that values form (style) over function (substance), which is the case for plenty of great stories.

Kruszer wrote:

Well, all you really had to do to get me to give it a shot was to mention, Madhouse, and I'm there. Sounds like Kemonozume...without the romance or the humor. Razz

Or anything else at all.

Both are worth watching, obviously, but they're radically, radically different.

You must be mistaking my meaning; I do not mean to imply that these are all people with mental conditions. Rather I choose the colloquial usage of the word, in meaning that as these characters make poor decisions and are frustrating they are lacking in intellectual faculties.

^ ... Yeah, but that's point. If you are going to depict Nero, it's hardly believable to present him as an exclusively bright and sensible character, right? Shigurui is a snapshot of the degraded stagnation and the engrossing, underlying, madness in which the struggle for power, and the absolute one among other lesser derivatives, hits the bottom in every caste. In this sense, I admire the attempt to present it in this uneditted, uncensored manner. (Additionally, the long panoramic shots and "slides", give a feeling as if watching those decorated panels about stories and events that are in accordance with traditional Japanese art forms, so aside from being magnificently drawn, I think it was intentional).
However, what I find trully refreshing about the series, comapred to the numerous sugar-coated and annoyingly shallow shounen anime with swords, is the interpretation of what lies beneath the "officially" highly praised swordsmanship. Kogan's techique is horrifying in terms of power, decisiveness, precision, impact, but would it be possible to be invented (or derived) without his merciless, primitive, ... voracious personality? Such personality knows no measure and limit, it's a dark force blended with insanity, it is indiscriminate towards everything and everybody, and, in fact, as much as it raised him to his position (spoiler[where Irako's greed failed him]), it also spoiler[destroyed the dojo's future boiling it down to his two former crippled students performing a death match for equally total nuts for a ruler].

Yeah, five years ago I might've been in that boat too. I think it's the pointlessness of it all that the show depicts, perhaps by virtue of it not having an ending that I care for, that rubs me wrongly. Something like Ninja Scroll is succeeds on my end because it gives a final satisfaction...Shigurui is like the anime that wears a miniskirt and gives you some a wonderful tease but never gives up the goods. But whatever guys, I'm just as happy FUNi's pimping blu.

I never even heard of this until I started seeing ads for it here and I'd like to see it but I honestly don't know when I'll get the chance.

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