Tsukikage Ran being iconic only for a little over 5 minutes
108we shall see how long this stays up without getting a Content ID.
long incoming ramble. i'll just paste what i personally wrote upon finishing the show:
yeah this show sucks lmao. I only wanted to watch and finish it bc the website I use recommended it on the side of (video subject I am working on rn). I saw that it was only 13 episodes, I've never seen an anime be that short so I figured I could knock it out. It’s a Studio Madhouse show from the year 2000. Yeah, that's a double-take. It looks to me like it could have been 10-20 years older. That's not a bad thing, just surprising, as if it really is trying to be "old-fashioned".
It's supposed to be a parody of old chanbara movies; samurai films with Westernized action. That's all I know right now. It does seem "Western", it wants to be flashy and Ran, while she is controlled and elegant as a person, is unorthodox and brazen with her sword slashing style. She isn't a reckless fighter, but she does use her katana one-handed and (at least to me) it looks like she is all over the place, with wide swing arcs and quick flurries. The fights are just as quick too. I think samurai combat is supposed to be short-lived, but in this case it was especially lackluster since this show has a small OST, so the same songs for every type of occasion, sometimes it even looks like they recycled sequences (this show does appear to be cheaply made), and it is completely sanitized of any blood or extreme graphic content.
These clips of Ran are only a glimpse into a fantasy better imagined compared to what we actually got. I respect Ran's aloofness, honesty, sense of justice, and her confident elegance, but my god the sake obsession came out of nowhere and is to a totally ridiculous degree that is extraneous to her character. It isn't funny, there is no struggle or story around it other than her struggling to get money from Miao, it ruins her. But maybe it was intentional for some reason, I don't know. I like her better in my head.
Miao (Meow?) is insufferable. Completely stupid and annoying, she would have gotten herself killed many times if Ran was not there.
She is introduced to us DRUNK and while her voice actress is a good ACTRESS, the voice is likely directed to be especially annoying. I don't like her. And neither of them change or develop naturally, but it is a 13 episode series so that might be a bit much to ask.
Ran's actress, Mona Marshall, is fantastic and actually better than the Japanese actress imo. But she can still be... is misanthropic the word? Ran will run in first if there is danger or a threat to the common folk, so she doesn't hate people. She just likes her alone time and gets roped into it one way or another being a rōnin (which btw is where the name of the show comes from, it's an episodic show that has no overarching plot. Yes, it is very formulaic and repetitive).
She gets really bad toward the end of the show though. It's like they just didn't want to write her in anymore and focused more on Miao whilst giving Ran barely any more dialogue. And when she does get dialogue, she's even more of a cold bitch than usual. We don't even get a glimpse into her past beyond a... former boyfriend? It did not register to me at all watching the episode that she had a relationship with that man. Maybe she discovered she is asexual. I wish LMAO
This show also waited until episode goddamn 9, or whichever one it was with Mei before it injected ANY real plot or glimpse of Miao's background. And it was shallow at best. But hey, maybe it is all intentional, for reasons that elude me behind research and years of exposure to anime and Japanese culture through time. I know people like this show too, although any positive review I saw was from almost 20 years ago...
And it does the thing where it makes me realize what I typically take for granted in WELL-WRITTEN stories. And to keep my expectations low so that it doesn't take much to please or interest me.
Well, at the very least, this show is part of my path down samurai anime. I will be watching Sword of the Stranger, Rurouni Kenshin, and Trigun (Madhouse, 1998) hopefully soon
and the thing where I want to upload random shit. yeah. im a huge perfectionist but I've been trying to reign it back a bit. it's okay to not have a perfectly polished image. this channel is a reflection of what I was spending my time doing and who I was whilst I posted content, so I see it as a time capsule. my little corner of the internet for me to do dumb shit lol. I do what I want
I hope I get better ideas than this tho lmao