All of my reviews contain spoilers for the reviewed material. This is your only warning. This review contains embedded images that are not safe for work. Aim to become a Super Ninja Before we talk about Senran Kagura: Ninja Flash lets talk about Dumb Fun. Theres an idea prevalent in the western anime fandom that Japanese people do not know that certain media looks silly on a surface level. In truth its more the fact that westerners and Americans in particular speaking as one tend to have an underdeveloped sense of Camp. We tend to default to assuming dumb Japanese shows are in some sense naive that they somehow dont realize that theyre making something goofy. Hence the dumb fun label and the turn your brain off refrain. In anime this generally not actually the case. Shows like say Kill la Kill PUNCH LINE or the Symphogear series are campy to be sure but they have genuine emotional cores backed by solid character writing and deeper themes if one cares to pay attention to them. Fun yes but not dumb by any means. Of course nothing in life is ever completely clearcut. 880https://i.ur.com/89dI2GH.png I say this because Dumb Fun is a term that fits Senran Kagura: Ninja Flash like a glove. Even if it was your very first anime it would strike as cliche. Ninjas who are in reality superstrong schoolgirls in skimpy outfits cleanly divided into a Light Faction and Shadow Faction. A narrator who straightfaced solemnly explains that a shinobis armor is made of her ideals and that being struck physically or harmed mentally can cause it to disintegrate leaving her in her skivvies. A plot that can be boiled down to our heroes get beaten by the villains train get beaten again train some more and then win without losing many major components. These are the elements that define Senran Kagura. Its not a series that takes itself particularly seriously. Though theres thankfully very little of the have a cliche happen and have someone yell about how cliche it is tripe that started becoming common around when it first aired. Whats perhaps more surprising is that Senran Kagura actually manages to wring a decently compelling narrative out of its bareasbones components. Its not an inventive narrative by any means being a pretty straightforward Good Vs. Evil type deal with only a few minor welltelegraphed twists but its competentlyconstructed and fun to watch it unfold. The show has the general sensibility of a popcorn flick youre certainly not going to learn anything from Senran Kagura but its a fun way to burn six hours. 880https://i.ur.com/x6aOUW5.png Homura one of the villains has eight swords. I mention this Doctor McNinja level combat technique because its indicative of the shows sensibilities which is where a good chunk of the fun of it comes from. With some caveats of course. Senran Kagura: Ninja Flash is an ecchi action series and while complaining about fanservice in a show like this is like complaining about the yelling in Dragonball Z it is worth at least noting down that if youre uncomfortable with the teenaged characters being mostlynaked a good chunk of the time youre not going to get through this one. 880https://i.ur.com/ohX7Yn6.png Lots of this. Similarly there are a couple of bizarreinabadway writing decisions though they mostly relate to the characters overthetop tragic backstories and are consequently rather insignificant in the grand scheme of things. The one exception here is the weirdly predatory characterization of Haruka a manipulative villain and the only textually queer character. Its dampened somewhat by the absolute mountains of lesbian subtext all up and down the rest of the series you could probably compellingly pair almost any two given characters but it does suck a bit of the air out of things. On the production end the show is again competent but not astounding. While there are some sequences throughout that showcase some pretty impressive animation its mostly functional rather than groundbreaking and the overall quality of the drawings tends to vary. Most annoyingly otherwise decent to good fight scenes that take place within the socalled shinobi barrier pocket dimensions are hampered by someones bright idea to smear the footage in colored filters. Presumably this is supposed to make them look otherworldly. In practice it mostly just looks ugly. 880https://i.ur.com/44bTC3j.png Sometimes the colored filters strike even in the real world. Such as this one which appears to have been applied by someone who thinks that it would be neat if the sky looked like piss. One does get the impression throughout that the production may have been shoestring hurried or both. Being one of the last notable releases from ambiguouslystillextent studio Artland before they dropped a few MushiShi sequels and then fell down the ecchi rabbit hole entirely before running into serious finance trouble. Theres not much else to say about Senran Kagura: Ninja Flash because theres not much to the series. If you like this kind of thing and yours truly considers them something of a guilty pleasure youll like it just fine. There is to be sure a genuine charm in how utterly goofy it often gets. 880https://i.ur.com/hl3W1UQ.png On the other hand if youre looking for something a bit more substantial or if the fanservice puts you off youre probably better off checking out an at least marginally more restrained girls who fight series like Katana Maidens or RELEASE THE SPYCE. If youre in the former boat but not the latter Kill la Kill nearly made shows like this one obsolete artistically if not commercially just a few years after it aired. That said as a final note its certainly a likable show despite its evident faults. Girls with swords make for a compelling combination and while its hardly the apex of that particular pairing its enjoyable nonetheless. 880https://i.ur.com/I55WJ80.png And if you liked this review why not check out some of my others here on Anilist?https://anilist.co/user/planetJane/reviews