Ah, of course: for the conclusion, the creators didn’t just try to focus on the relationship between Claudio and Nicoletta, but also they’re going to try and give a conclusion to Luciano and his dead wife. This episode was much more about the latter, while the final episode next week will probably focus at the former, especially considering that next-episode preview: we now already know how it’s going to end, but I’m curious to see the context in which it’s going to happen.

I loved how in this episode, both Nicoletta and Luciano tried to encourage each other to pursue a bit of romance, but neither of them really got anywhere. Luciano just stubbornly ignored the advances that the woman in this episode tried to make on him, while Nicoletta, who was supposed to invite Claudio to a concert that they were all going to attend, ended up chickening out and invited Vito’s wife instead. I also liked how a bit of extra attention was given to the rest of Luciano’s family. It really makes his back-story more complete to not just focus on him, but also his offspring.

At the same time, this episode also built up the fact that Claudio really doesn’t want to forget about his old marriage, and he still hasn’t properly gotten over the divorce. As a conclusion, it definitely makes sense for this series to wrap up that part of the show, but like with every series: pulling off a good conclusion is hard, and probably one of the things that’s the easiest to screw up in, or to become lackluster at. Let’s see whether this show can pull it off, though I’m confident for now: the director has pulled off great conclusions before with Saikano and Crystal Blaze, which both closed off their respective series pretty nicely. Let’s hope that he can do the same here.

And overall, I don’t think that David Production could have hoped for a better debut in the anime scene. It smartly chose not to go the way that’s been travelled a thousand times already, but instead they went with their own style, and it pretty much worked, and they put down a pretty good series without any major flaws. The artwork also looked really good, with hardly any screw-ups. Now all that they need more is the ambition to continue to produce new series, instead of to simply give up.

Rating: * (Good)
Pretty quiet but solid build-up for the finale, and it’s good to see that even with the finale this close, this show doesn’t forget what it’s good at.

Game adaptations are of course notorious in how they tend to fail more often than not, but Sengoku Basara at first sight looked like it was going to be among the good ones. It was full of manliness and great fights, but along the way it didn’t really manage to fully live up to its expectations. Sure, there still is potential for that second season in January, but when taken a look at this series individually, it isn’t really worth the time you invest on it.

So yeah, Sengoku Basara is based on a game which is very, very loosely based on the Sengoku Era of Japan, when the country still was populated by a number of smaller countries, all looking to become the sole ruler of the island Honshuu. Its trademark is manliness: lots and lots of it. The dialogue is extremely exaggerated and passionate, full of righteousness, justice and inner conflicts. This isn’t a show about a bunch of teenagers; this is a show about true men.

Unfortunately, the rest of the execution falls short a bit. The characters… really are nothing to write home about. There is some small development in a select few of them, but none of them really make an impact. Also, for a show that aims for entertainment, this series tends to get side-tracked into angst too often. It feels that it’s in its own identity crisis at times, not knowing what it really wants to focus at.

In the end, there’s just one reason to watch this series: the battles. This series is animated by Production IG, who really are the masters of realistic animation and character-designs, and here they use them really well in combination with the incredibly unrealistic nature of this series. There are two fights that really were worth the watch: the ones from episode 2 and episode 12. These battles really kick ass and are really fun to watch. Aside from that though, this series simply remained overshadowed by better productions: in terms of entertainment and manliness, the new Mazinger this season is doing a much better job at it, and for manly historical supernatural swordplay there are shows like Bakumatsu Kikansetsu Irohanihoheto which really surpass this show in nearly every single way.