Hyakka Ryōran Samurai Girls (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Let me say straight up, Samurai Girls is fucking garbage. Dirty, trashy, guilty fun. It is NOT a good series, it really is crap. But that doesn't mean it's not fun to watch. I sometimes like to joke that Samurai Girls is a failed Hentai, with the best bits inexplicably left on the cutting room floor. No, seriously, this show walks the line between a fantasy epic Anime and a Hentai like a drunken hooker taking a roadside sobriety test before being hauled off to jail. It would've honestly made for a better show if it was just a straight Hentai without any pretense of actual fantasy storytelling.
It's like Sentai Filmworks had a look at FUNimation's seasons 1 & 2 of Sekirei (セキレイ, lit. Wagtail), the quintessential so-called "FUNimation Boob Show" and said let's top THAT and make it even TRASHIER. And they succeeded in reaching that objective at the very least.
This show is so embarassingly trashy that ALL of the English voice cast use stage names rather than their real names (though seasoned otaku know exactly who they really are). It has some decent action sequences, but the story itself takes itself a little too seriously and collapses a bit under its own ridiculousness. It'd be fun to rent this one but I'd skip out on buying it. It was fun to watch the screening of the first four episodes on the big screen at Alamo Drafthouse, and yes, I did actually buy this title for myself to finish at my leisure, which I did a few weeks back. Meh. It was okay, I'm glad I got through it, but it was fairly disappointing. Really mediocre storytelling at best. Not very emotionally compelling characters either except for the main ditzy red-head with the split personality. She tries to be for Samurai Girls what Musibi is for Sekirei (セキレイ, lit. Wagtail) but it really doesn't work as well.
If you're short on time or money you can give this one a pass; You're not missing much. If you mainly want to see cleavage and lots of jiggle, then pick this one up without fail. I was drawn in by the weird WW2 "revenge fantasy" imagery in the first episode...it's difficult to place the narrative in time until much, much later in the series, and there's a lot of seemingly anachronistic high technology that seems out of place until you understand the unfolding chronology better.
