Okay, it may seem like a strange idea to watch and review the Sengoku Basara movie of all things on Christmas Eve, but I really have to say: if you finished watching the first two series: just watch this movie and enjoy the fireworks. It’s one hell of an enjoyable way to spend an evening.
You can definitely see that the creators wanted Sengoku Basara to end with a giant bang. Everything here is just completely over the top. Every single voice actor is having the time of his life, hamming up his role. And it actually works with such a series that’s so full of manliness. The first two series already developed the characters, and this movie realizes that it only needs to work a bit on the new ones. The result is that a far bigger portion of this series is devoted to the action than the second season, and the action is far better and over the top than in the first.
The downside is that this movie throws away all pretense. While the first two seasons had interesting storylines, this one has just has one goal: being over the top. We’re done with the complex plot lines, here is just an over the top and emotional epic ride. So yeah, when you boil down the storyline they used for this movie, it’s full of cliches and overdone tropes, packed together in a very simple premise. It may not seem so at first, but yeah. At a certain point, you’ll understand why.
And yeah, this movie is pretty much fanservice. I don’t mean that it suddenly grew boobs or that the characters suddenly start stripping for no reason, but I mean this in that this movie is entirely dedicated to pleasing the fans. Because of that it’s in no way accessible to those who haven’t watched the other Sengoku Basara-series, but this movie took the things that stood out the most in the TV-series, and built a movie around them.
At this point, I had been exactly waiting for this series to go all out, which is why I’m very pleased with this movie. It definitely washed away the disappointment of the ending of both TV-series, because they just weren’t epic enough for what this show promised. This movie finally delivered on that promise. I just can’t take this franchise serious anymore after this, though. Especially after the ED, which was all kinds of awesome, but just doesn’t belong in a series that expects you to take it seriously. Merry Christmas everyone, by the way.
| Storytelling: | 9/10 – Completely over the top and it works. |
| Characters: | 8/10 – Makes good use of the fact that it already fleshed out its characters. |
| Production-Values: | 8/10 – Solid as usual. |
| Setting: | 7/10 – Please don’t believe that Sengoku Basara is an accurate portrayal of the Sengoku Era… |
Suggestions:
– Space Battleship Yamato Resurrection
– Tailenders
– Shin Mazinger Shougeki Z-Hen
