Title: Sengoku Collection DVD Complete Collection
Director: Keiji Gotou
Studio: Brian’s Base
Author: Touko Machida
U.S. Distributor: Lucky Penny / Nozomi
U.S. Release Date: August 5, 2014
Format and Length: DVD / 26 Episodes / 650 Minutes
Genre: Adventure, Comedy, Fantasy, Parody, Samurai
Industry Age Rating: 16 and up
Overall Personal Rating: C+
Similar Series or Titles to Check Out: Battle Girls: Time Paradox
Synopsis:
Oda Nobunaga is a feisty Warring States era general who is locked in a massive struggle to dominate the land, however, that all changes when a strange light sucks friend and foe alike into our era. But how will the Warring States era generals and their servants adapt to a strange land full of technology? Some will do better than others and become Idols or models while others are determined to go back to their own era. Japan and Feudal Japan will never be the same again when the generals are done wreaking havoc and collecting the “Secret Treasures.”
Commentary:
Sengoku Collection DVD Complete Collection once again brings us an all female cast for the Warring States era generals, but this time they are brought into the modern era. However, I wish that the story line would have meshed together a bit better. Each general had one or two episodes devoted to their adventures in the modern era. The only character that was in almost every episode was Nobunaga. I wish the other characters would have had some more screen time and more advancement of their character. Sengoku Collection DVD Complete Collection ended up feeling like a slice-of-life anime because the episodes are very loosely related to each other and they did not add much to the main story. The name of this series makes perfect sense after watching because it is basically a collection of all of the generals’ stories with no actual plot. You see hints of a story line in each episode, but for the most part there is none.
There were also some problems with the characters. Some of the characters are horribly written and have almost no relevance to their Feudal image that they should have either been left out of the story or shared an episode with another character. One of those characters would be Tsunehisa Amago, the general that came into our era as a four year old child. Her episode really threw me for a loop. However, some of the characters were well written and brought their episode to life. Some of those characters would include Masamune Date, Nobunaga Oda, and Ieyasu Tokugawa. I really enjoyed their episodes and their voice actors really brought their characters to life. Some of the episodes were awesome, most were okay, and a few were a chore to get through. There were also a large number of parodies in this series but most are Japanese-related media so the average viewer will probably not understand the references.
The art work quality seemed to change from episode to episode, however it did not take away any enjoyment from the series for me. I thought the opening and closing songs were catchy and cute. Every episode had different styles and artists for the music depending on the episode and parodies used in the episode. Be forewarned, there is a ton of fan-service in this series and I felt it took away from the episodes and was overdone.
Extras:
Sengoku Collection DVD Complete Collection includes clean opening and closing animations and trailers as special features. This release only included Japanese with English subtitles as the language options.
Overall Grade: C+
Sengoku Collection DVD Complete Collection had so much potential but it was not executed well. This was still an okay series but at times it was tough to make it through an episode.
