A little while back, I was breadcrumbed to a certain beat-em-up video game: Senran Kagura (specifically Burst Re:Newal, the re-remake of the first game of the series). It was aggressively fanservicey, but the button-mashing gameplay was fun enough and, like many before me, I found that the writing in the visual novel segments between missions was… better than it had any right to be. Don’t misunderstand, the game is not high art or anything like that, but for something that could have gotten away with the barest minimum excuse plot to get busty ninja girls taking clothing damage while beating up hordes of generic enemies? It went several steps above and beyond the call of duty to actually develop characters and a scenario that were likable and effective, so that most of the cast had more than one dimension and the conflict had at least a little meat to it.
And, as is the case with more than one dubious and fanservice-laden series, there was an anime of Senran Kagura. Actually, there are two seasons, but this time around I’ll be focused on the first season (Subtitled Ninja Flash!) since that covers the first game’s main storyline in terms of adapting the story.
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