Anime: Brave 10

After watching the show and reading the poor review by roriconfan who is clearly BUTTHURT by the show i just had to write this. I feel bad for him how his review is penetrated just like hi-*cough* :lol:

Anyway, into review.

Art was nice with good looking backgrounds and animation was done well too, which is crucial because this is an action show. All the action is very nice and enjoyable to watch which is the main reason to watch it, why? well because on sounds and plot it doesn't do that well... they work but are average or below.

Voice acting is just average and there is nothing good or bad to say about it, however the sound effects are quite limited which becomes apparent fairly quick in the show. There is no memorable music and i would just say that the tracks fit all the situations correctly and do their job but nothing more. OP&ED songs aren't very special either.

The story is very simple. There is something very powerful which all the power hungry evil guys are trying to obtain for their own greed, and then there is a certain lord gathering 10 various people to protect it from falling to wrong hands. You can say that the plot is bad but does it need to be more complicated than that? It has good action and is just 12 episodes long, making it anymore complex would have just ended ruining all the good action it has.

For characters there are wide array of various ninja (yes) bishounens. It's subtle but you can even see some character growth for some of them. I won't go spoiling anything more about them because finding out about them is part of the fun. You will learn about their past, not too much but enough to care what happens to them.

I didn't have high expectations for this particular show and was positively surprised, it was enjoyable and fun to watch when you aren't demanding anything the show isn't even trying to be. Sometimes you just don't need that epic series with genius plot or another ecchi harem. Good fights, some comic relief and even subtle message. Unfortunately there is not much a reason to rewatch it.

Oh, and for your information this review is by straight male and even while the male characters are bishounens there was nothing disturbing to see, so relax.

Don't know about roriconfan though... maybe he has a butt trauma or something? Homo phobia? :grin:

(Beware of spoilers!!!)

[Animation: 7/10]
The overall quality of the animation of brave 10 was quite nice. I used horrible subs 1080p rip to watch the show and it was really worth it compared with two other subs featuring 720p. Since I'am watching on a 5m video wall with 4K projector the difference was quite obvious. Each of the twelve episodes was drawn with the same quality, so there was no variability like sometimes seen on shows like The Third or the new FMA movie. Backgrounds as well as characters were clear, sharp and accentuated. Animation was definitly above medicore, but nothing emersed. Coloring was strong and lively but again nothing special and no artistic elements can be found.

[Sound: 5/10]
Neither OP nor ED catchs your attention and have a part which makes it memorable. Voice acting was done well, the whole cast seemd to be experienced. Looking at their names and previous done shows you can see a long history, anyway non of them is shining in Brave 10. You might say it fits the OP end ED very well - even if it sounds a bit harsh. Background music.. well, I don't remember hearing it explicitly, which means it was done perfectly in the context. The composition and effects during fighting scenes were clearly below average. The sound was dull, inconspicuous and everything else I don't want to see for a fight. Not that there were not enough chances to get it more lively, simply it was not done. On the audio part I'am not really satisfied, putting aside that I kind of expect more surround effects in a fight nowadays. Maybe I'am expecting to much, because of the budget issues on many of the recent anime shows.

[Story: 5/10]
Sanada Brave Ten. The concept of ten warriors around the historic person Yukimura Sanada collected a lot of mileage allready. May it be Sengoku Basara or Samurai Deeper Kyo, the principle concept stays the same with Brave 10. For Brave 10 Yukimura Sanada assembles ten brave and honest warriors with unique skills to conquest the forces of evil to change the world. Brave 10 features Date Masamune and Ieyasu Tokugawa as "the evil ones". One of the reasons I cound not stop thinking about similarities with Sengoku Otome. The plot of the whole show can be summerized with Sanada searching for ten warriors, gains a warrior nearly every episode and fights against an unknown foe. In an attempt to mix in some political aspects of the warring states period a great war all over Japan to change the foundation pillar of the world hides in the small shallow plot shadow. Also supernatural aspects come into play, like in many of the typical Shonen Manga styled shows, in a way that each of the Sanada Ten Braves represents a special element with their special abilities bound to it (e.g. water, ice, fire, etc.). This makes it really hard to find any special traits in this show and I honestly doubt that there are any. The only rare thing on the show is the appearance of the shinto goddess of death, because for some special reasons the five highest gods or goddesses are an unfrequent guest mostly. Again we have a shallow plot, a warrior / fight of the week and everything important seems to happen in the last 1.5 episodes. In my personal opinion the show has no climax, no arc of suspense and even worst a rushed semi-open ending. That is the pure definition of medicore!

[Character: 6/10]
The braves themselfs are a wild mixture of personalities and vitas. There is a monk enighted by buddha at first searching his non-blood-related sister which turns out to be allready one of the braves and over the top the shinto goddess of death. A blonde busty woman that controls ice magic and is revealed to be heir of a foreign contries crown (from her name you might deduce which country :) ). A ninja without a master denying to protect anyone, but constantly does it, with a mysterious blade holding a unknown kind of power. A young boy who plays with explosives of all kinds, creates explosive traps and even black-powder-powered boxing gloves. Two weird dudes, one wishing for the ultimate fight and likes to see rivers of blood (his own especially turns him on) and one ninja-decal animal whisperer playing with all kinds of dangours staff natur has to offer. A pirat captain that fires lighting at you. A water magician whos right eye is kind of a information store for various secret scroll contents and last but not least a gunman - don't ask me why a gunman.

A wide variety of shonen manga style characters in my opinion and we might even assign them properly to the so called elements. Aside the obvious there is a shrine maiden called Isanami (well, what could she be?) that was found as orphan outside of Izumo Temple which is right at the beginning of the show burned down by Ieyasu Tokugawa's forces leaving her as sole survivor. In additon there is Saizou Kirigakure, a ninja with nearly complete missing background that holds a strange-powered blade and is talked into being one of the braves and Isanamis bodyguard. Underneath all of the braves they are Ying and Yang, where Isanami holds the power darkness (unknown to her of cause!) and Saizou the power of light (would he silently accept such an insult as ninja?). This might have had potential to be interesting, but it was wasted in so many ways that it could make you cry out loud. Until the very end nothing happens to develop her character growing and even after the revelation that she is or reincarnates the goddess of death (in shinto also the of creation - remember Zorg's explaination from the Fifth Element^^) simply nothing happens. She damm just cooks dumplings for everyone in the last scene. All the other characters are not really memorable and seem nothing more than a way to fill the scenes aside the "main plot".

[Value: 2/10]
Oh well, this is as hard one. The show has no real value. It was just made to entertain the viewers, but conveys no message, artistic claim or any unique idea. You will learn the name of some historical persons and get a rough idea of sengoku concept in modern animes, if you don't allready know it all and even better. No explaination of the gods realm except that the goddess of death might be dangerous. No reasoning why it is needed to change the world except of just the wish to do so. No character backgrounds except some little snippets for Isanami. There is nothing you can really work with or can get in touch with. The only value you will have is seeing nicely animated backgrounds, buildings and characters. If you assume one of the characters attractive this might be the sole reason for watching it.

[Enjoyment: 5/10]
At first this show was not on my watch-list for the now ending season. Because of I also gave Sengoku Otome a chance and want to feed my new projector with 1080p material I decided to watch. Only for real epic fails I would ever stop watching a show until the end, so I continued. In the midst of Brave 10 I really waited for the next episode and hoped for some cool development. At the end I got disappointed how the show paced, how the characters where underdeveloped and how poor the plot was designed. Yes, I partly enjoyed it, I mainly watched to see how Isanami would develop and how they would keep up a group of such weird personalities and a girl that can kill off 10.000 people a day (nice catchphrase^^). Nothing happend and my enjoyment rapidly dropped around episode 10.

Brave 10 is based on a manga which is loosely based on the Sengoku period. One of the various fables of that era was the Sanada Ten, a team of powerful warriors who were formed by Sanada Yukimura in his efforts to rule supreme. The premise is the formation of the team and is shown primarily through the eyes of Saizo.

I can’t say the setting and the premise are that interesting. They are in fact quite basic and there have been several other stories based on the same period and people. The most famous example is Naruto but the relations don’t go beyond names as well as both shows being equally gay. Samurai Deeper Kyo (SDK) is another case, this one even centered on the exact same events and characters. The anime adaptation sucked ass but the manga was amazingly GAR for the most part.

You see the fail just from the intro song, which is nothing but a cameo parade of all the characters and their special abilities. Seriously, where is the interest in watching the show if you already know what they all do? And come on, is this show so shallow that they had nothing else to show other than a character selection screen?

Maybe the intro is bad and the plot is deeper (no relation to Kyo) than that. And nope, in just three minutes the story barely begins and WHAM we are already shown how the protagonist is uber powerful and the lead female is useless and in constant need of his help (it wasn’t like that with Kyo). So he comes here, he goes there, and he meets lots of weird guys he has to fight. Expected. Ok, maybe the action parts will be good. And boy, could they be any worse in battle choreography? The transition from one scene to another is completely random and anything could happen just because the scriptwriter said so and not because it followed some sort of actual strategy. They can be fighting for half an hour just to protect or kidnap Miss Pacifism (her name is not important because she is female in a male-oriented show, so I will be using nicknames) without any luck, and then a simple guy can just waltz in, grab her under their very noses, and move calmly away while they are spacing out. You also barely see the fighters move; they use the typical frozen images with a few simple visual effects to make you think they move. Adding to that the background music which is usually a random tune playing regardless of what is going on in the plot, and the directing which is completely lazy. Stuff blow up and people get killed and you feel absolutely nothing compared to, let’s say, Rurouni Kenshin. Meaning, the aesthetics are completely basic to the point of not caring to look at the screen.

Let’s move to the characters. For starters they all feel like filler characters from Naruto, which is bad because Naruto is gay, fillers suck, and a cast should feel special and not a rehash of a now decadent shounen. So what do we have here? Ah yes, Saizo, the protagonist who is repulsive right away for being constantly bored with his life. I mean, seriously, the only thing he is doing when not fighting is sleeping or running away scared from girls. How is he supposed to be macho if he can’t stand a few boobs? He must be gay (thus this really is like Naruto). And is this a manly samurai action series or a shitty harem? It sure doesn’t feel like the former if it has such a wuss main hero. If it was, he should have been constantly horny, molesting and raping anything that catches his eye (that is, everything), just like all normal men did in the good old chauvinistic feudal times. Kyo from SDK was one of them. But then again this is not really a manly show about gar super samurai from the actual Sengoku era but a lukewarm show with poser idiots who loosely plagiarize historical events, and who are hardly as cool as Kyo or the original historical Sanada. If the animators didn’t want to show rape or something that immoral, they could just make him not care in the least, like in the case of Katanagatari. The chemistry between Shichika and Togame was very unorthodox and thus memorable, but here it is totally boooring because it feels like yet another show aimed at boys whose balls haven’t dropped yet. I mean he is already bored out of his mind, so why is not being bored of girls that hard to think of? Because it wouldn’t be funny? IT WOULD BE FIFTY TIMES FUNNIER; HAREM LEADS ARE THE ONES WHO ARE NOT FUNNY!

Furthermore, are all these warrior dudes supposed to be manly, talking big in the middle of the fight while doing all sorts of acrobats and magician tricks? Well if they are so powerful then why are they owned whenever Miss Useless just gets fed up and intervenes? She is all “Stop fighting, hurting people is bad hurr durr” attitude and I just want to slash her in half just for that. This is an action show you stupid bitch, take your pacifism elsewhere. But then again she can do anything she likes because she is Miss Sunshine and the rest are a bunch of idiots who can’t just say “Shut up you broad, you only exist so you’ll be kidnapped every half an hour and we are the ones busting out butts trying to save you every time. We are the strong ones here so close that trap of yours and let us do what we know best.”

But they never do that and instead constantly try to protect Miss Kidnap Target Practice. So you never consider them to be that strong, or dedicated to their cause, or even good at what they are doing. Seriously, they are pathetic in their job since they always get ambushed in the most simple and obvious way possible. What kind of elite ninjas get ambushed twice a day? Even a baby can fool these idiots. And it’s not like they do a smart comeback to win every time they fall for it. No sir, it always gets resulted with some random super attack they had in store but never use from the very start even if it has no set back. Hell, even Miss Molest-Me-Now has her own superpower, which works anytime the scriptwriter feels like it and not every time she or Saizo are in danger.

You can’t even like the characters for their looks, since they all look like whores and gigolos. Seriously, they are all supposed to be sexy and with cool clothes, and then a baby appears and lures them to a trap without even trying. So much for character appeal. Especially for Miss Braindead, who gets completely fascinated with Saizo, although he constantly ignores her and runs away. HOW STUPID IS SHE?

The directing is terrible even in non-action scenes. The way everything works in this show is making your I.Q. drop to that of a lizard. Everybody is constantly unable to see someone standing exactly next to him, just because he was out of screen or wasn’t talking. But when the scriptwriter feels like it, he can jump in-screen to do or say something and everybody is acting all surprised. WOW, WHERE DID HE COME FROM? He was standing right next to you, you idiots. And then it’s the whole lousy way they try to make things more exciting. There is this scene where that stupid bimbo is completely scared of snakes and points at the place the snake is. So for reasons unexplained she also comes along with that wuss Saizo to find the snake. WHY IS SHE DOING THAT IF SHE IS TERRIFIED? And then they find the snake and guess what. She faints from fear. OF COURSE SHE WOULD; SHE IS TERRIFIED OF SNAKES! And wait a second, if many were ordered to find the snake, why didn’t they come along as backup? WHY DID THEY GO ALONE? And then guess what, the snake blows up in their faces, causing a small nuclear explosion. They are just fine for some impossible to imagine reason and nobody else in the valley heard of such a big bang. This is just a small example of how ridiculous the whole thing is.

So, after all this mess, why is the anime even called Brave 10? You mostly see what Saizo does and it’s not divided to ten side stories. The show could have easily be called Brave 1. Plus, why is he even called brave if he gets scared of a few boobs? The show should be called Wuss 1. Plus, he is a bored moron, so it should be called Bored Moron Wuss 1. And there is an even greater fail in all this mess. Despite all that I said so far about the show and the numerous comparisons to Naruto, this anime is not tagged as shounen (for boys) but seinen (for adults). HOW THE DEVIL IS THIS GAY SHOW SEINEN? Where’s the sex and the gorish splatter? Why is this placed on the same level as Berserk and above the far more violent, erotic, and GAR SDK? It doesn’t even have moeblobs in a high school, which is also what counts as seinen these days.

This show is a total fail! It is clearly more oriented towards little kids, chicks who like pretty gays, and people with really low expectations. Basic story, boring battles, lousy directing, gay characters, and lame resolutions.