Two Disfigured Samurai
Shigurui, like many anime, was at first a Manga that was written and illustrated by Takayuki Yamaguchi. In 2007 the manga was adapted to an animated series by Madhouse Studios. Now, Funimation has brought the twelve episode set to DVD and Blu-ray.
My first impressions of Shigurui were positive — the box art looked cool, the story sounded interesting, and I was enthusiastic. However, after slogging through the first couple of episodes, I began to wonder if this series was ever going to pick up the pace. Frankly, watching Shigurui was difficult not because of the excessive violence or blatant and unnecessary nudity, but because of its pacing — many times I found myself dozing off during the course of an episode because nothing interesting was going on. Each episode runs roughly thirty minutes and generally features one or two plot points that it spends the entire time on. That much is fine, but the pace of the episode is so slow that it just doesn’t hold your attention.
Let me provide a basic breakdown of the story. The series takes place during the first half of the 17th century and centers around two disfigured samurai warriors that are brought together to fight each other in a violent, full combat tournament that is hosted by the tyrant ruler of the time. One samurai is missing an arm, the other is blind. The first episode of the series gets us ready for their battle, but most of the series is told in flashbacks about the two samurai’s histories and what brought them to this point, etc.
Along the way several other characters are brought into the story, and while I was constantly expecting to see more fast paced action, it never came. Every battle in Shigurui is very slow and deliberately, but also very short. Additionally, too much time is spent on silly animation styles that emphasize the blood and gore, apparently to cause a stir in the audience, but honestly I think it just further slows the pace of the story.
Speaking of the animation, Shigurui doesn’t do anything outstanding. It also uses a nearly grayscale color palette throughout, so expect plenty of light grays, whites, and blacks in nearly every scene. It’s not a very colorful or pretty anime at all largely due to that. Technically speaking, it looks fine, but it’s just not that good looking.
On Blu-ray
The Blu-ray release of Shigurui is nicely packaged. Two keep cases are contained within a cool looking box. Simple, but well designed menus make navigation a snap. In terms of presentation quality, I don’t think the Blu-ray set does a lot to make it clearly better than the DVD release. While I haven’t seen the DVD release, I can vouch for the video quality on the Blu-ray and honestly it’s just not that impressive or special. If you’re on the fence about whether or not to pick this one up on Blu-ray or DVD, I think the presentation quality differences between the two is likely a moot point in this case.
For extra features, there aren’t that many, but it’s good to see some. The first disc has an optional audio commentary track for episode four, “A Children’s Song.” The second disc includes commentary on episode ten, “Kengyou’s House of Punishment.” Additionally, you will find production artwork including character descriptions and settings. Textless songs are also included on both discs, as well as trailers for other Funimation releases.
Conclusion
Shigurui: Death Frenzy isn’t the worst anime I’ve seen, but I can’t say it’s one of the better ones either. The pacing is as slow as molasses and it’s very easy to become bored and disinterested in what is going on in the show. I thought the animation wasn’t that great either thanks to a very subdued color palette that also doesn’t help captivate the audience. The story isn’t bad, but it is told too slowly and too deliberately. You can say the same for the action; the action scenes are setup slowly, and end really fast with too much attention devoted to the violence.
Bottomline, I would strongly recommend renting or borrowing this one before sinking $40+ into it.