Katsugeki Touken Ranbu – 1 [To the Frontlines]

Hello everyone, and welcome to my first post on the blog! Today we begin our series on Katsugeki Touken Ranbu (Ranbu henceforth), by Ufotable and directed by Toshiyuki Shirai. Now lets hop into it!

To start, lets quickly talk about two of Ufotables most notable qualities that are also present in Ranbu, those being the art/effects and the music. Right off the bat we get hit full force by the digital effects team with some beautiful rain shots, both up close and with some 3D tracking. The 3D used on the enemies is well placed, especially compared to Berserk 2017, it gives them an otherworldly style compared to the rest of the characters we see. In regards to the lighting, throughout this episode we get both flashes in the darkness and fire on the horizon. None of it stands out or catches the eye, which is typically the sign of good lighting, that it seems natural. Finally, for music we get some sweeping orchestra tracks, moments of silence, and decent fight music. Nothing stands out, but it also manages not to overstay its welcome, knowing when silence is better than loud instruments.

Now lets get into the story and characters. We are introduced to our main duo, Kane and Kunihiro, and their pet future cat-dog thing. I can’t help but draw a parallel between Kamina and Simon from Gurren Lagann between these two in regards to their relationship and color pallet. I would not at all be surprised if our resident Mentor Kane died in the future to give Kunihiro the motivation he needs to step out of his shell. For our story, it looks to be a sort of Time Police gig. Its a time-travel premise I have not seen before in anime, and by its nature directly addresses the issues most time travel stories have with things like the Butterfly Effect. Our main duo is introduced en medias res fighting against the forces of the “Time Retrograde Army” or “Historical Revisionists” as they are later called, who appear to be the main antagonists for this story. They have been sent to this time to prevent these Revisionists from changing the past, for what purpose we do not yet no, but it is no doubt nefarious!

Next Ranbu takes some time to explain some of its rules, such as how their as of yet unnamed organization can only send 2 people but the Revisionists can send dozens. Our resident mentor Kane also explains to his student, and by effect us, some of the moral quandaries of their job. As a fire breaks out in the middle of the night, Kane explains that their job is not to save people but to preserve history, which means we may run into a scenario in the future where the Revisionists are trying to save someone and our heroic duo actually has to commit murder to preserve the future. It would be a great character moment… if Ranbu didn’t immediately go and break its own rules by having Kane save a young girl and then joke about coming back to kill her. Imagine how hard hitting the moment would have been, how ironclad that rule would have seemed, if we simply got a shot of the beam falling and then silence. We would be left with a beautiful character moment in the future as a result, where Kane breaks this one rule. But now we already know it means nothing to him.

This is one of the main issues I have with Ranbu right now, even though it just began. They setup their rules, their moral quandaries, their main conflict, and then break their own rules. Cant save people? Unless its a little girl. Cant have more than 2 people in an area/period because of limited resources? Well lets just beam in 5 more people to help with a fight our duo can’t seem to win. In the end the only rule that matters in Ranbu is the titular “Rule of Cool”, which I am sure everyone is familiar with. Finally at the end, we are introduced to 5 more character (Wow that is a lot of characters for episode one), names Tonbokiri the large spear man, Unnamed Male Ninja #1, Musunokami the Gunman, and Saniwa the boss-man. At this point I care for none of them, but they have 11 episodes left.

There is more I could get into, for example we could disect the Ending Song, but with how long this post is already I will save that little bit for a slow week and do the Opening Song with it as well. I give this opening episode a 6/10. Beautiful to look at, engaging at the start, but breaks rules as soon as they are established and ruined what little tension was left for the end of the episode. They still have time to fix it though, so lets just sit back, enjoy the visual roller coaster and hope it works out.