Sekiei Ayakashi Mangatan

Sekiei Ayakashi Mangatan is good for what it is, and that's all you can really ask from an anime like this one. Beginning with the story, the premise is classic, if a bit overdone, with its own flare thrown in. An eccentric demon hunter in the edo period, surrounded by women who sometimes lose their clothes, Sekiei Ayakashi Mangatan manages to have one of the most stereotypically 'anime' concepts I've seen. But, beyond that, the concept is executed in an interesting manner, with the concept of painting being a lynchpin of the story. It doesn't excel in any particular way,but it does manage to be consistently entertaining. The art is pretty subpar overall, which is to be expected from an anime of this brevity. While the art direction, like character design and demon design, is well-done and memorable, other aspects of the art suffer immensely, like a general lack of animation and strange, crowded shot composition. The sound is perfectly serviceable in all respects, meeting the basic standards of quality, while the voice acting is better than I was expecting, bringing a lot of life into this little show. The characters themselves are all kind of flat and predictable, but then again there wasn't really any time at all to develop those characters in the first place. Overall, this feels like someone's first anime, and a commendable effort thereof if that's the case. I was simply entertained, and if this anime was longer and had a little more money put into things like animation, I could easily see it higher up on my list at a 6 or 7. Indeed, I did enjoy these 3 episodes more than some other shows higher up on my list, but I do not rate based on enjoyment alone, but also on metrics of objective quality. Give it a watch, as it's more than worth the 15 minutes, and it actually makes me want to check out the manga, which is a feat in and of itself.

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