Anime: Shenmue the Animation

My introduction to the story was through watching this series, I'm not sure how it compares to the original it does feel like the format of the episodes are broken down the middle with the protagonist searching and then growing no real succinct connection between the two.

As far as the overall story overall i enjoyed it the beginning felt a little slow like running around aimlessly, second half became more interesting with a more intriguing cast of characters. It finishes on what feels like a cliff hanger with promises that this is merely the beginning, promising, from what I gather, much more than this series could hope to deliver via sequels.

Pacing felt right with story progression not too long winded and the animation didn't throw me off, there were sections that might have been a little bare but other aspects were just as robust, style is not what is commonly used in anime giving it an older feel.

Overall I liked it.

It's probably OK to skip this if you are not a die-hard Shenmue fan (I am one, for the record).

But putting aside my fanboyism, the animation was okayish (perhaps leaning on the cheap side), not terrible, but definitely nowhere near Ufotable level, the story so-so, and the music/voice acting good, but not great - to sum up, not a particularly bad show, but nothing special either.

Additional info for Shenmue fans:

The game covers the first two games, episodes 1-5: Shenmue 1, episodes 6-13: Shenmue 2.

The following characters have their voices acted by the same seiyuus as in the games: Ryo, Shenhua, Lan Di, Ren (the one from Shenmue 3)

And yes, there is a short fork lifting scene too ;)

The real story of Shenmue is how hard it has been for Sega to tell the story of Shenmue.

This series in particular took many years and financial support from fans to even see the light of day. So this is basically as complete as it's ever going to be.

The most charming thing about Shenmue was that it was a breakthrough in video game immersion way back in the late 1990s. It paved the way for open-world games like GTA, Yakuza, and Persona. Just the story by itself is pretty okay. And being coupled with solid but generic animation, makes this a hard sell for anyone who wasn't already a fan of the franchise.