Series Review: Busou Shinki (5/10)


Instant Summary: These Figma-like action figures are actually sentient and possess real destructive powers.

Being a title that base itself on a line of action figures and primarily meant to boost sales... I guess that instantly puts itself out of everyone's radar. Titles like these got a bad reputation of using nobodies to create an extremely simple show with bare minimum story and graphics. Although, if you're already a collector, it won't matter to you anyway. I guess nobody seriously expect any boost in sales to be significant enough to put in a serious amount of budget in titles like these.

Well, I'll start by saying that it wasn't as bad as the premises made it out to be. At the very least, I didn't have to force myself to finish the title.

I actually enjoy the combat segments a lot. While there are room for huge improvements, the fairly fast-paced duels between Shinkis of different combat styles and capability managed to get me excited every now and then. I actually found their armors and weapons pretty interesting, although I don't know why they didn't get rid of the ball joints altogether. Do they actually regard it as a moé attribute?

Aside from that, a huge part of the show is actually slice-of-life, meant to feed the fantasies of people that would pretend that their Shinkis are sentient. They do stuff like cooking meals, laundry, cleaning, etc... various household chores. I'm a a fan of the genre, but these segments bore me. Not completely, but more often than not. They do went on a bit of adventure every now to mix it up a little with a bit of drama, but it never helped.

The weakest part of the show is that the owner of the Shinkis (Master) is the most boring character that would ever exist in anime. He's a goody-goody, soft, super nice, useless, and otherwise nondescript character that probably didn't have any friends, or life at all aside from his Shinkis. Though I must admit it would be pretty cool to have fiercely loyal and cute flying companions, these Shinkis are like slaves to the owner's boring-ness.

This would be a pretty good show if it has greater emphasis on action, but I guess it was never meant to be.

Plot/Concept: It could be kind of interesting...
Story Style: Boring outside of the duels
Audio/Visual: Flat; Plain, and uninteresting
Value: 5

1 comment:

  1. An anime based on figma, from the premise alone, I already had the nagging feeling that it will somehow fail, and I guess it kinda does. The only reason I heard of it because I see Danny Choo mentioning it before on his blog.

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