There unfortunately comes a certain point where you watch enough media in a specific genre, where it becomes hard to get invested in a show that isn't doing anything more than what is expected. A show could be doing everything “right," like having high production values, great voice acting, and even hitting on certain narrative beats. But if it's not properly developing any of these elements or using them in a way that feels organic, then I feel like I end up watching something very shallow. It's like how there's a difference between baking a cake by following a specific recipe and throwing a bunch of those ingredients in a bowl, hoping for the best. One could turn out delicious, even if it's a cake that I've eaten numerous times before, while the latter could just end up like a mess.

The latter was unfortunately all I was thinking while watching most of Tougen Anki. A lot of what I found in this show was prevalent in every single shounen series I think I have ever watched. There's the hothead main character who vows revenge over the death of a family member. There's the edgy stoic character who wants to be left alone but constantly finds himself in the vicinity of the main character. There's the shy girl who thinks she's useless. There's the pervert. There's the stoic mentor character who secretly cares. There are special power-ups coming out of nowhere, and we have an evil organization for the good guys to stop.

I don't hate these tropes on their face. The problem with Tougen Anki is that it presents these tropes without showing why they work or why I should care about them. I don't care about Shiki's desire for revenge because I barely understood or got to see what his relationship with his father. I don't care about most of the extended cast because most of them just come off as simple character quirks with convenient abilities. I don't know what to think about the main villains because all I know about them is that they just really want to kill Oni and come off as almost cartoonishly evil. If the show was maybe a bit more tongue-in-cheek with these tropes, I think that could've been forgiven or sidestepped. The problem is that the show is so serious and so direct that it's hard not to imagine that the show really wants you to get invested in drama.

The death of a father figure is what starts the show, and almost everyone has tragedy act as a motivator for their actions. However, we either don't get to see a lot of the emotional weight behind why something is tragic, like in Shiki's case, or when the show does give us context, it's really poorly and awkwardly added. Later on in this season, there are finally legitimate attempts to portray characters as multi-faceted by showing backstory and character motivation, but this always happens either right before or right after major plot points. It almost feels like the show is telling its story backward or that it's retroactively trying to make you care about the events that you just watched. We could spend a handful of episodes watching a character be cartoonishly evil right up until he dies, but then THAT'S when the show will suddenly give us his backstory to show that deep down there was a lot more going on. We could have a joke character with one quirk, but when the show needs him to get a power-up to get out of a bad situation, I get frontloaded with a twelve-minute backstory to justify it, only for that same character to go right back to being a joke afterward.

The way this show delivers these emotional moments and exposition is also really bland and detached. I don't think you can get much more lazy than having the story legitimately stop just so the narrator can chime in to explain to you what a character went through before resuming. That happens at least three times, and by the end of this arc, I'm surprised the narrator didn't straight up tell me how I was supposed to write my review. I don't know if this is an adaptation issue or if this is how the story was originally presented in the manga. I can imagine it'd be a bit easier to swallow in written form. But here it grinds the pacing to a slow, almost agonizing degree.

I switched over to the dub for the sake of convenience, and I think this shows dub is a perfect example of actors trying really hard to squeeze emotion out of incredibly bland writing. I give this cast so much credit because almost all of them are acting their butts off to try to get me to care about what's going on. Zeno Robinson, in particular, brings so much emotion to Shiki's shouts and frustration at every unfortunate thing that happens. It really makes me wish that the cast had better material to work with.

This is especially the case when you realize that one of the main ideas of the show is that the Oni are being unfairly persecuted. Most of them have lived their lives either hiding amongst humans or hunted down like wild animals by the Momotarou. There's a dehumanizing element to a lot of these characters, and it's implied that all of them have led pretty distressful lives. But we barely get a glimpse into any of that. I don't know why most of these characters are fighting outside of survival. I don't know what the larger world looks like outside of the incredibly isolated incident that happened during these episodes.

Legitimately, the only thing I found interesting about this show early on was its animation. I'm not talking about the blood powers themselves, even though some can be pretty creative. No, I'm talking about the fact that most of the combat is done using CGI. I assume this was done to go for more involved and expressive choreography, but the character models will shift from 2D to 3D mid-combat. At first, I was scared because the CG was painfully obvious and poorly rendered early on to the point where it almost felt like I was watching an old video game cut scene. Later on in the season, it does blend a lot better to the point where there were legitimately some moments where I couldn't tell if the characters' movements were done using 2D or 3D. I also like some of the inserted songs that are used during the action scenes. The show tries to elicit this sort of punk rock style, but it never goes all the way with it outside of those moments. I think if it leaned into that loud, rebellious nature that the aesthetic of the show is already hinting at, then at the very least, I could say the show would have had a very distinct identity.

Outside of that, a lot of character designs are bland. Almost all of the guys look the same, except for different hairstyles, and all of the women have the same big boob figure. I'm not sure if that is supposed to be the show's attempt to be self-aware, but we'll see if we get more diversity in the next season. I will continue to watch the show because, by the end of this first season, the show seems to have finally started to give me the things that I wanted when I first started it. This story could've worked better if it were told slightly differently. If it manages to get a better grip on the execution of its plot points and leans more to character motivation, I'll feel more comfortable recommending it to people who are fans of this genre.