Directed by Nobuaki Nakanishi
Featuring Voices by Nami Kurokawa and Hiroka Nishizawa
Warrior women come together and spread fan service across ancient China, occasionally fighting some bad guys.
The Series
The series takes a not-so-new spin on the Romance of the Three Kingdoms tale of ancient China, with an almost entirely female cast of warriors in completely historically inaccurate attire. The main characters are Aisha (a.k.a. Kan’u Uncho) and Rin Rin (a.k.a. Chohi Yokutoku), two young who decide to form a sisterly bond and travel together, as Rin Rin is drawn to Aisha’s kindness and her quest to protect the innocent. Along they way, the two meet a multitude of new allies as they find new adventures fighting bad guys, forging friendships and
This is a pure fan service show, which isn’t too surprising from yet another adaptation of an adult visual novel game. Make a drinking game out of all the breast jiggle shots, and you’ll be plastered before the first commercial eye catcher. Add in the few nipple slips, the anachronistic frilly bra and panties and the heavy-handed lesbian overtones to these one-dimensional characters, and you have a show for people not quite brave enough to look up the XXX aisle. Given all the young girl characters in the mix, the series borders on downright creepy at times.
The characters are all warriors of some sort though, so most episodes tend to have some combat. Sadly, most of it is poorly choreographed, especially when these few characters are pitted against armies. Oddly enough, as most are fighting with bladed weapons in times of war, there’s no real bloodshed or death. Nipple shots are fine, but believable fighting, not so much.
There’s no real plot as each episode is fairly self contained. The two main characters pick up and cycle through traveling companions all throughout the series, all to build up a large enough cast for a big reunion battle towards the end. The characters are all pretty simple clichés. With the shotgun approach of shooting enough random one or two-trait characters at once at the audience, most viewers can probably pick one of interest. However, as the show primarily focuses on the two main and moves on from everyone else, there isn’t enough time dedicated to flesh out any characters that show promise. Even if one of those does an Ultraman reference towards the end. Too little, too late.
It’s a weak series that tries to hold itself up with too many one-trait characters to develop and way too much breast jiggling and bathing scenes for there to be any time for a story in the first place. The bonus OVA (original video animation – DVD-only) episode at the end is a canon-less side story that revels in cheesecake and completely tosses aside the facade of being a legitimate cinematic story that the main show barely tries to maintain.
3/10
The Video
The show comes in 16:9 anamorphic widescreen. The animation is average, but some of the camera angles in the combat scenes are awkward and obscure the action. In more light-hearted scenes, the animation will changed and the characters assume a mini deformed, more child-like appearance for humor, which is an alright gimmick and actually works well with those scenes.
5/10
The Audio
The audio is in 2.0 stereo with only a Japanese language track. Both the voice acting and the soundtrack are forgettable, but those aren’t the point of this show.
4/10
The Packaging and Bonus Features
The collection comes in a two-disc case with all original 12 episodes and the one OVA special episode spread across the two discs. Special features are only trailers and clean opening and closing animation. Just as mediocre as the series.
4.5/10
I really can’t think of a reason to recommend the series. There is better fan service, better historical battle tales, better sisterly love stories. Heck, there are better ancient Chinese retellings with hot girls in place of their historical counterparts (not that I recommend Ikki Tousen). But what do I know? Koihime Muso already has two other seasons on the way state side.
Overall (Not an Average) 3.5/10
The Review
The Series 3/10
The Video 5/10
The Audio 4/10
The Packaging and Bonus Features 4.5/10
Overall (Not an Average) 3.5/10