“Let’s watch helplessly while the plot resolves itself” is a kind of annoying problem. Once you’ve begun to notice it, you can’t unsee it.
And that’s largely what happens. The big silly monster is summoned around Rashomaru and the Shinsengumi make their way to the target location in order to fight it a bit. They beat it down, but it just regenerates, and even stronger as the main onmyoji villain sacrifices himself to power up his summoned giant. Before the third round of the battle can commence, though, Rashomaru seizes enough control of the Gestalt to stab himself with the sword. His death severs the link, and the monster dissolves. At the palace, the spirit weapons of the Choshu forces were evidently supported by the same ritual, and fail completely, leaving the Choshu to be easily overwhelmed. This leaves the accomplishments of the fake Shinsengumi, when it comes to dealing with supernatural BS, as just about nothing.
In the aftermath, everything seems to be going well, as it seems the Shinsengumi will be needed a little longer to help maintain peace and order in the capital. We get little scenes as “epilogues” for most of the characters, and just for fun I’ll include some historical facts about what became to the individuals involved.
Gyatarou is shown to still be helping the orphans of Kyoto, bringing them rice balls and education. He was the double for Shinpachi Nagakura, who was eventually the 2nd unit captain. Nagakura is one of the few members of the Shinsengumi to survive the Boshin War, dying of natural causes in 1915 at the age of 75. (For the record, the show takes place as a heavily-fictionalized version of the attempted Choshu rebellion of 1864)
Bo also helps townspeople a good deal, clearly earning the Shinsengumi a lot of good PR by putting his immense strength towards constructive efforts. Sanosuke Harada, who he was the substitute for, died in battle in 1868, though rumors persisted into the modern era that he fled to China instead.
Sakuya doesn’t get an epilogue, but in a sense his fired early, in a scene where he gives up his assassin mentality. He presumably does his job to the end. For Toshizo Hijikata, the figure for whom Sakuya was a substitute, that end would come in 1869, during the final battle of the Boshin War.
Akira leaves off her romance arc on a tsundere-style maybe, which amounts to a ‘no’ seeing as her potential partner was from the Choshu domain and has to escape into hiding. She was the substitute for Okita Souji, who would ultimately die of Tuberculosis in 1868, at the age of 24. Katsura Kogoro, the fun character I’ve usually just called “the crossdresser”, was a real person. During the events fictionalized in the show, such as the Ikedaya Incident and the attempted rebellion by the Choshu, he was involved but largely escaped scott-free, in part thanks to his lover, a Geisha who he would later marry, who helped him out of the Ikedaya before the raid and who escaped with him into hiding as of the failed rebellion. He would re-emerge as Kido Junichiro and later Kido Takayoshi, and was instrumental in negotiating the pro-Meji alliance of the Boshin war, restoring the Emperor to power, and later in modernizing much of Japan’s government and culture. He died of illness in 1877.
Sogen and Suzuran are still buddies, with Sogen at least having experienced enough to think about yet give up thinking about creating an even more powerful weapon than summoning an ancient spellcaster as a weird undead giant. Sogen was the double of Yamanami Keisuke, who attempted to desert the Shinsengumi in 1865 and was consequently forced to commit seppuku, with Okita Souji standing as his second. Suzuran was the replacement of Saito Hajime, who survived the Boshin War, adopted a new identity, and ultimately died in 1915, at the age of 71. In his later life, the real Hajime worked as a police officer (familiar…) and finally a museum clerk.
Ichibanboshi gets two appearances in the epilogue; one at a grave prepared to memorialize his father, mother, and now brother (using the evil cursed sword as the marker, at the spot where his father and mother were killed), and the other having really good chemistry with Okayo (the glasses-wearing sister of that temporary friend of his.) I have to admit, for all the broad strokes this show does poorly, some of the character interactions like theirs are pretty well written. The real Kondo Isami was captured by imperial forces during the Boshin war in 1868 and, despite an attempt by Hijikata Toshizo to earn him a pardon and formal pleas to spare his life, was executed by beheading.
The one non-fake Shinsengumi member, Todo Heisuke, largely leads us into the epilogues by narrating, to the graves of the real originals, how the substitutes are doing (well, per the end of the show). In real life, he was part of a group of Shinsengumi who tried to split from the organization in 1867 and was killed by orthodox Shinsengumi, as departure from the Shinsengumi was a mortal violation of Shinsengumi rules. Allegedly, Kondo Isami had wanted to spare him, but didn’t get the chance as he wasn’t on scene at the time.
So, how does the show shake out as a whole? I have mixed feelings. As a “turn off your brain” affair, it’s mostly fine. I’ve pointed out how the leads don’t really accomplish anything, and that’s true. They never beat a villain or stop a disaster, they mostly just arrive too late and clean up the aftermath. You’d think you could at least let them have one of the more fictional enemies. But at the same time they do have a sort of rough competence in their investigations, finding clues and following leads like champs. Getting Kogoro and especially Okayo onboard to help can be credited to Akira and Ichibanboshi, respectively, and did amount to more than nothing. It’s not really that the criminal Shinsengumi were bad at their job, so much as that the writers didn’t ever quite let them have a clean win they could call their own.
As a fictionalization of some interesting and volatile historical events in 1864 Japan, it’s kind of fine. Like most fictionalizations, it reads better if you know what really happened since the fiction is more concerned with criminal substitutes and crazy soul-powered weapons, but that’s neither here nor there. I kind of have a soft spot for this sort of “historical fiction” – the “Beethoven was an alien spy” stuff that’s absolutely absurd but because of its absurdity also has to carefully tie itself into the historical facts if it wants to be effective.
The character writing is broadly… fine. It’s fine. Nobody’s too uninteresting and not even Ichibanboshi is really that annoying. The visual style is unique, but fitting. I enjoyed it from an artistic perspective. But there’s not a lot of meat or intelligence to the final product, and while it doesn’t dramatically fail on most accounts, it doesn’t really win on any of them either. It tries to patch over its weakness with some yelling and flashy moves, but it can’t quite make the veneer stick. It’s not unfun, but neither is it really engaging.
At its best, Shine On! Bamumatsu Bad Boys is somewhat amusing, a vaguely acceptable way to kill somewhere short of half an hour. At its worst, it’s disappointing, a weak setup for no real payoff. For a grade, I’ll err on the generous side and grant it a C-, in large part because the break between C and D is usually my marker for whether or not I’d ever recommend something, and if you’re in the mood for a slightly cheesy none-too-competent samurai show with some unique visuals, I guess I wouldn’t say to stay away.