Ikki Tousen, Ikki Tousen, Ikki Tousen. Where to begin? Loosely based on the famous historical epic Romance of the Three Kingdoms, the series's original author chose fertile ground for a compelling narrative to begin the series. I'm a longtime Koei fan; even Dynasty Warriors is a blast despite how much it dumbs down and butchers the history that serves as its basis. Ikki Tousen sounds like a fun series, right?

WRONG. As complex, fascinating, and celebrated as the Romance of the Three Kingdoms is, Ikki Tousen reduces it to an insipid one-dimensional show about teenage brawlers. And yet, there's enough demand that two more seasons have been made.

There's so many places where the show goes wrong that it's hard to decide where to begin. The story begins at Nanyo Academy, firmly in Gi (Wu) territory. We're introduced to the ineffectual male lead, Shuyu Koukin (Zhou Yu), who is soon overshadowed by his louder, dumber, and much stronger cousin, Sonsaku Hakufu (Sun Ce), who shows up as a new transfer student and makes her grand entrance by beating the crap out of a bunch of no-name students. After coming face to face with intimidating muscle-man Gakushu (Yue Jiu), Hakufu begins to make a splash as the legendary Sho Haou. (If you've seen any fighting anime, you'll quickly realize that this is just another generic term to indicate that she's going to become ultra-powerful in time.)

They introduce the full complement of characters for the first season within the first episode, including: Ryomou Shimei (Lu Meng), Saji Genpou (Zuo Ci), Kannei Kouha (Gan Ning), Enjyutsu Kouro (Yuan Shu), Teifu Tokubou (Cheng Pu), Taishiji Shigi (Taishi Ci), Totaku Chuei (Dong Zhuo), Ryofu Hosen (Lu Bu), and Kaku Bunwa (Jia Xu). Incarnations of various Go (Wei) kingdom figures such as Cao Cao and Xiahou Dun have small supporting roles, as well as an incarnation of Shyoku's (Shu) Guan Yu. Again, you would expect a modern day take on something truly epic and historical with a cast like this — that's not what you get out of Ikki Tousen. Each character is, on their own, a rather shallowly written anime trope; most episodes set up to revolve around anywhere between one and three battles between various characters. The fates of these historical figures are sealed within magatama beads worn as earrings, and each character faces the dilemma of following or avoiding said fate.

This question of fate is as deep as the series gets. All of the characters are incredibly shallow. The show makes you crave something substantive to latch onto, but there's nothing there. Instead of any kind of meaningful character development or growth, they throw predictable and tired character tropes at us that keep the viewer at arm's length — there's not a single character that feels authentic. Every single one of them is contrived, artificial, and wholly uninteresting to watch. Instead, they try to distract you from the series's lack of an interesting story by throwing the characters into battle, which itself is full of problems.

If not for these issues, Ikki Tousen might have actually had a legitimate shot at being entertaining. Combat in Ikki Tousen is ruled by two things — fan service and anti-climax. There's an obvious dirty joke there, but this show is not even worthy of that. What action there is tends to be rather unsatisfying — a tremendous amount of combat you'd actually want to see unfold is conveniently cut away from, leaving the viewer with only the aftermath. Likely done for budgetary reasons, it comes off as a real cop-out, when the combat's supposed to be a main selling point of a fighting series. And because of the poor quality of character development, you never care who these people are, why they're fighting, or who wins or loses. There's never a sense of meaningful intensity or suspense in the fights. On top that, the fan service in the fight scenes hits a level that's better suited to something pornographic. It even takes some overtly fetishist tones at times, such as their making a point of showing us that Hakufu has pissed herself in the middle of a battle in the second episode. This is something I would un-see if I could.

Many of the characters are outright wasted in the fight scenes as well. It's established early on that Koukin's actually a decent fighter despite his meek personality, but this is something they never return to again. He ends up reduced to little more than a punching bag — the same fate they soon pass on to Gakushu, after establishing him as a very powerful presence in the first episode. They give him enough of a personality to somewhat subvert the tired cliche of an overpowered muscleman, but then waste his character by not giving him any real screen time. Ryofu's portrayal is completely inconsistent, being a powerful woman loyal to Totaku one minute, sexually abusive the next, and then doubtful and wavering after that. Totaku himself just appears on-screen to comment on the others menacingly, and sadistically abuse his female henchmen. The other antagonist — who shall go unnamed so as to avoid spoilers — is one of the most aggravatingly written characters in the series. He spends the series manipulating the others, molesting every woman he meets; he goes so far as to try to rape one of them, and even after a violent showdown, everything's forgiven and he sees no real comeuppance.

"See this guy who tried to rape this one girl and keeps molesting these others? It's all okay, most of them actually love him!"

Yes, you guessed it: rampant misogyny is one of the show's biggest problems. It all starts with Hakufu: to put it bluntly, she's dumb as a bag of hammers. This is often played up as the series's primary form of humor — all of which feels stale and none of which works. The show's implementation of humor fails as hard as its attempts to be serious and intense.

Every named female character on the show is there to be abused. Just about all of them get groped, raped, or molested at some point over the course of the show. Rarely is this given any real dramatic heft, and sometimes it's played up as humor. When they're not being abused, their clothes are being torn off — this is the crux of the show's combat. Everybody throws punches and special attacks, and the women get their clothing shredded. Nothing says brilliance like mixing a focus on sex appeal with violence, am I right, guys?

"Hey, did that guy just threaten to rape and kill that girl?"

"Shut up, you can almost see her tits! And check out how tight her panties are!"

This is EVERY fight in the series. Just when you think we might see a few exceptions to that in Kanu Uncho, Ukitsu, and Kaku Bunwa — you're proven wrong. Soon enough, it's time for the former two to get their clothes shredded in epic battles, and the latter to get abused by Totaku.

In short, Ikki Tousen is one of the most misogynistic shows I've ever seen. There isn't a single female character not written as a sex object, and the juxtaposition of sexually charged violence with a complete lack of a meaningful story or real character development is both insulting and offensive to the viewer. From its lackluster fights to forgettable soundtrack, and the completely inappropriate mix of violence and fan service (while downplaying sexual abuse and rape as story elements), I cannot recommend Ikki Tousen. It has a lot going for it conceptually that could have made for an entertaining show, at the least, but it's not even that. There's no shortage of fighting and fan service shows out there — not necessarily combining the elements — and you can find much better on either front.