Since the Edo periods of Japan, gladiator arenas exist in certain areas. In these arenas, wealthy
business owners and merchants hire gladiators to fight in unarmed combat where winner takes all. Toki
Taouma, nicknamed "Ashura", joins these arenas and devastates his opponents. His spectacular ability
to crush his enemies catches the attention of the big business owners, including the Nogi Group
chairman, Nogi Hideki.
(Source: MangaHelpers)
I've never written a review before, and will probably never do so again, but because the other review on here is pretty much just a comparison to the manga I decided, just for this one single time, to make a review for an anime I really enjoyed. I'm not going to write down the synopsis here because I am extremely lazy, so let's dive right in. # 1. Story There's not much to talk about when it goes in term of the story. Its just fighting with some background stories thrown in the middle of them. That's not to say it isn't fun though, the story of every character is unique. Sometimes it's silly and funny, and the other times they are serious and maybe even touching. You go into the fights knowing nothing about the character and get out of the fights satisfied with the conclusion. I never know where a fight will go, it might be over in 30 (anime) seconds or its a long drawn out fight where endurance is important. The author always surprises me with what he comes up with to make the fights interesting, and does it really well too. Everyone has their own special 'ability' but, apart from some, they feel very grounded and 'realistic'. # 2. Characters There's a whole abundance of unique characters in this show and they're all so interesting that I never know who to root for in the fight. Even outside of the fight there are interesting characters that you will see often, be it eliminated fighters or just spectators. Because of the story focusing a lot on all the other fighters, you don't see a lot of Kazuo and Ohma, which makes them a bit shallow. Ohma is getting there, later on, but Kazuo is just a pawn with no real character development going on. # 3. Animation Animation includes animation and art style. Honestly, I don't really _like_ the art style that much. It's not a pleasure to look at like say, Houseki no Kuni, is. I don't think this distracts me from the experience as a whole though, unless it's the 2D scenes. Whenever the 3D characters switch to 2D it's jarring enough to notice and I don't think it looks that good. Scenes outside of combat are rarely ever good looking, but thankfully this is a battle anime and combat is mostly what you will see. And oh boy let me tell you, the animation in this anime is spectacular. I don't think I would have this anime in anything else other than CGI anime, because I really don't think it would work all that well. There's a lot of speed involved in the movement that would just be way too hard to capture in 2D. People think that they use 3D to save money, or time. But this is bullshit. Anime like these take as much time and talent as 2D anime does. The animation here is all hand animated, no motion capture is used, and it was worth it. Instead they used reference videos from real MMA fighters. This makes combat extremely satisfying to watch and because of the cg bad/awkward art is never a problem. # 4. Soundtrack and effects The music here is nothing to write home about. I actually think it fits well and it does have some satisfying tracks I suppose, but it's nothing you would listen to after completing the anime. The sound effects are very good, they feel gritty and have a lot of punch to them. I will also include voice acting in this topic as well, and damn, there's some A+ voice acting here. # Conclusion goood good anime. Definitely try it out if you like fighting. Here I _will_ start my manga comparison (I have not read it, though) and say that it feels like this show misses a lot of slice-of-life type stuff, like people just chilling and talking to each other instead of it going straight to the conflict like the anime does. The show is funny, so if you want more of that and less cut content, make sure to check out the manga, because I know for a fact it has more of that stuff.