Ikkitousen: Extravaganza Epoch

It feels like there's been a huge step up in animation quality in these compared to the regular seasonal content from this series, which makes sense considering OVA's like this aren't under the same time constraints and can have higher budgets since it's just 2 episodes worth of content. In terms of story there isn't a whole lot here that's any different from what the show's already done a dozen times. New threat comes into town hunting toushi and it's up to the main cast to fight them off while getting most of their clothes removed. They introduce this tier list ranking system that I don'tthink has ever been brought up until this point. It's not as stupid and on the nose as putting a number to a fighter's power level, but it's still a lazy narrative device for saying "wow look at how strong this character is" without having to actually demonstrate how strong they are. Classic "tell don't show." There's also this one pretty gruesome scene where it shows someone's eye balls getting sliced in half in way too much detail. It's pretty graphic and was kind of shocking to be honest, it's not the kind of thing I would have expected from this series. If you're just here for the anime tiddies and don't really care about anything else then the shows still delivers that just fine, but it's making a solid effort to try and craft a grounded narrative. That serious tone is always instantly undermined with the gratuitous amounts of obvious fan service, making an almost comical juxtaposition, but the fact that it's trying is endearing in a way. 7/10

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