Hello everyone,
Let's go ahead reviewing a new visual novel/anime that got well three anime adaptations, but for some particular reasons I'm considering it a wasted potential. This series is named Koihime Musou and is based over an visual novel by BaseSon.
Let's start with a quick synopsis :
After losing a family to bandits during a night raid, Kanu swears she will not let others share the pain she experienced that night. She quickly becomes a well-known and feared by villains bandit hunter. During her journey she comes across others, who wish to join her in her cause. One of them is a girl named Rin Rin, who had similar experience with bandits in the past.
Ok, this is mainly the anime synopsis as the visual novel is a little different in a good way. The anime by itself delete the presence of Kazuto Hongou that is for me one of the main negative point of the series.
The original work all revolve around Kazuto and his adapting to this old world based on the "Romance of the Three Kingdoms" novels, the girls (actually fearsome generals in the real world) he gets to know and the story he is able to change by supporting one or another faction with his knowledge of the future.
In the anime instead opted to remove the male presence and exclude most of the plot driven value of the original work to leave plenty of fanservice of each girl/general.
I'll be honest, there is nothing wrong with that. I liked all the three seasons, it's just that I wonder how much better it would have been with the Kazuto presence and with some of the real plot adapted.
The characters are mainly likable and the cast is literally infinite. (the visual novel sports a number of heroines almost never seen in any other works)
My favourite characters are the Hawawa Strategist "Shuri" and the deredere leader of the faction Ryubi Gentoku, but to be honest there is a so massive number of characters that it's difficult to make a choice.
The graphical quality is pretty high even thought in some episodes you can see some evident graphical screwup by the animators resulting in a consistency loss during the three seasons.
Opening and ending animations are beautiful and I think the second season OP was the best of all with all the Ryubi focus.
The sound quality is high, but there are no big names for the main characters of this series that can be showed as example. (Maybe a little Mai Goto in Ryubi's role, but nothing exceptionally famous)
I loved most of the songs feautured in the anime, especially the opening of the third season named "Renka Tairan" and performed by Masami Okui. (We will return on this in a future post)
By looking at this series as a whole, it isn't a bad one by itself. It has some nice comedy relief and abundant fanservice and this can be appealing to most of us.
It is just such a waste this nice setting and idea was not fully developed into a more solid plot especially giving the three season long adaptation that could have maked a nice and interesting story.
I suggest this series to anyone looking out for some fun experience, and if you are familiar with japanese to play the game also as it's a nice one. (it's pretty long to be honest so be prepared)
That's all. See you soon,