Language - Japanese
Genre - Anime, harem, fighting
Samurai Bride is the follow up series
to Samurai Girls so there may be some spoilers.
After the events of Samurai Girls
Muneakire had gone travelling to help get over the final battle, leaving the
samurai in charge of the dojo. The series starts as Muneakira returns to
find that the Dojo was running out of money and so, to stop it closing the
girls have opened it up as a maid cafe. Muneakira is not happy with this
but is soon persuaded that it is the only a temporary measure until they can
make the money to pay off the debts.
As part of the promotion for the cafe
Kangtsugu is sent out to hand out fliers, on her way she takes shortcut through
the local graveyard where she runs into four strangers. Later these strangers
visit the Dojo/maid cafe and reveal themselves to be recently resurrected dark
samurai who are looking to challenge Jubei, who they believe to be the
strongest warrior around to a fight to the death. The Dark Samurai then
attack the girls but Jubei does not have the ability to transform into a master
samurai any more. The dark samurai believe that Jubei is an imposter and
give the girls one month to produce the real Jubei, they put a curse on
Muneakira that will stop him raising his arms in battle and if, after the month
the real Jubei does not fight them Muneakira will lose his power and none of
the girls will ever be able to become master samurai again.
The first few episodes are mainly fan
service with the slowly developing story line of Muneakira and the others
trying to find a way of getting Jubei her powers back (Jubei lost her powers
when she sacrificed herself at the end of season 1.). Having to have at
least the same amount of fan service we now see all the main female cast in
maid outfits and we have the introduction of the 4 dark samurai, all of whom
are female and one panty stealing monkey, also who manages to
accidentally become one of Muneakira's samurai. This upsets Kangtsugu and leads
to a few comic moments. The fan service in the first half of the show reaches
its high point when due to the sudden surge of people opening maid cafes in the
area the girls decide to hold a competition to find out which is the best.
The episode starts at the final of the competition with the last two
cafes being Muneakira's and one open suddenly by the dark samurai (no one knows
where it is & we don't think they've ever had any customers).
Muneakira's team are cheating as they see wining as way of boosting their
revenue, the dark samurai are using it as a way to find out the strengths of
the samurai girls, especially Jubei.
After this episode the story starts to
play out properly the samurai girls now have clue as to what is wrong with
Jubei and set out to find Keiji Maede the one person they think can help.
There is also a strange creature stalking the streets below the dojo that
seems to be linked to the dark samurai. Muneakira and co have to find out
what the creature is and why the dark samurai were really resurrected.
With the help of a de powered Gisen and some information that Yoshihiko
Tokugawa has been keeping secret will the girls be able to save Great Japan
from chaos and destruction.
Samurai bride takes it's time getting
down to the main story using the first few episodes to introduce the dark samurai,
the problems Jubei has and to set up some small storylines. The first
half of the series relies more on the fan service than the story which i have
no problems with. I was watching the American edit and can’t help
wondering how much of the censorship was for that audience. I am waiting
for the UK edition to come out. When the story starts proper it is
interesting and has quite a few twists and turns in it which kept me
entertained (again the fan service also helped) although it was pretty obvious
who the bride was going to be.
One of the strengths of the first
series was the art style and i was glad to see that this was carried on in this
season.
Samurai bride is a good follow on to
the first season and if you watch for the story more than the panty shots then
stick with it.
If you have seen Samurai girls then you
have a good idea what you will be getting into but if you haven’t (& why
not) then be warned there is fan service, panty shots & nudity everywhere.
So this is definitely one to watch if you
like action fighting ghosts and did i mention the fan service.
