Martial Arts prodigy Ryo Hazuki has a promising future in
sight. But everything comes to a halt
when Ryo witness the murder of his father at the hands of a powerful crime boss
with ties to the Chinese Mafia. With
revenge set in his heart, Ryo begins a journey that will take him across two
continents and into the dark underbelly of the criminal underworld. Along the way, Ryo will continue to hone his
skills and increase his strength, all the while finding answers as to why his
father was killed…and what secrets he might’ve been keeping.
When it comes to Anime based on Video Games, Shenmue is a
curious title to select.
The original
game was released on the Sega Dreamcast in 1999 but received poor sales despite
critical praise.
The same fate would
fall upon it’s sequel two years later, this time on the original Xbox.
We eventually got a Shenmue III after almost
two decades of waiting and yet even that didn’t provide a satisfactory
conclusion to the main story, instead leaving things on another unresolved cliffhanger.
Whether or not Shenmue’s video game saga will
ever be resolved is a debatable question.
The same can be said of it’s Anime adaptation…or rather, why are we
getting a Shenume Anime so long after the games prime back in the late
90s/early 2000s?
Do we need it and is
its first episode at least any good.
Having never played any of the Shenmue games, I cant
speak to how accurate events in the first episode are in line with its debut
title.
However, from an Anime fans
perspective, Shenmue already feels like an Anime adaptation that arrived twenty
years too late.
The production, another
co production project between Crunchyroll and Adult Swim, feels like it was
thrown into a blender of Anime tropes and design choices from that turn of the
century.
Look wise, Shenmue has a lot in
common with some of the other Anime I’ve covered on FIF recently.
This is a show that feels like it belongs to
the same era of Anime as Kaze no Stigma or Saiyuki.
The time capsule aesthetic can be a good call
back but there are far other Anime that look better in current Anime styles
than Shenmue.
I mean look at how good
Castlevania is and it isn’t even a traditional Anime series.
As for our main protagonist, is Ryo really this
stiff?
Dude looks and acts like a robot
more than a high school senior.
For one
thing, he has a constant, perpetual scowl that hardly ever leaves his face,
even during more peaceful scenes.
And
when Ryo actually laughs in one scene…it’s so damn creepy.
It feel like Ryo was written and drawn to
reflect your basic revenge driven Video Game protagonist from his attitude to
his movements.
I felt like while
watching Ryo in the whole first episode that I was watching someone playing the
opening half hour of a new video game, including sub quest events and
interactions with the locals of the town Ryo resides in.
As for Ryo’s motivations, yeah, it’s the same
as the Shenmue video games but the first two are more than 20 years old right
now and their plotlines aren’t exactly fresh for Anime adaptation.
Point is: Ryo is too robotic and stiff to be
compelling for me.
All that said, I don’t know who was asking for a Shenmue
Anime in 2022 but I’m sure someone is happy with this.
Me?
I’ll pass on this one.
Shenmue
feels like an Anime that came way too late to matter in the current Anime
landscape, especially when you have better Video Game Anime offerings out there
like Castlevania or Halo Legends.
I
haven’t heard much chatter about this one so I don’t think it’s made the splash
hoped for.
Plus, there are other Video
Games still waiting for their time in the Anime spotlight like Metal Gear Solid
or The Legend of Zelda…come to think of it, why haven’t we gotten Anime
versions of either of those yet?
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