Cosmo Imai

Ohma Tokita

Kaede Akiyama

Kazuo Yamashita

Jun Sekibayashi

Setsuna Kiryu

Ryo Inaba

Keizaburo Sawada

Suekichi Kaneda

Hajime Hanafusa

Rei Mikazuchi

Naoya Ohkubo

Julius Reinhold

Ren Nikaido

Saw Paing Yoroizuka

Haruo Kono

Mokichi Robinson

Masaki Meguro

Takayuki Chiba

Akoya Seishu

Muteba Gizenga

Hideki Nogi

Shion Soryuuin

Sen Hatsumi

Takeshi Wakatsuki

Since the Edo periods of Japan, gladiator arenas exist in certain areas. In these arenas, wealthy business owners and merchants hire gladiators to fight in unarmed combat where winner takes all. Toki Taouma, nicknamed "Ashura", joins these arenas and devastates his opponents. His spectacular ability to crush his enemies catches the attention of the big business owners, including the Nogi Group chairman, Nogi Hideki.<br><br>

(Source: MangaHelpers)

<center><h1><b><a>OVERVIEW</h1></b></a>
Kengan Ashura starts of with Yamashita Kazuo who sees a guy (Tokita Ouma) being taken into an alleway by a much bigger guy, soon Yamashita realizes that they are gonna fight ofc he is certain that Tokita (who he doesn't know yet) will loose, much to his surprise Tokita wins with fair ease & soon after Yamashita gets entangled in a underground bussiness that makes use of settling big scores (be it building rights, or getting entire factories under said company name) by letting fighters fight for different companies with the company Yamashita works for also being apart of those & using Tokita as their fighter
img(https://i.imgur.com/XeHEDtw.gif)

<a><b><h1>STORY</a></b></h1>

The way they handled the story wasn't rly up to par with the manga, the show wasn't bad but it was definitely compressed, which is sad as the story is very amazing & each character gets it's fair share of screen time which in the anime was mostly skipped past, just to get to the fights or it was made into a quick flashback scene (do have to say i liked how they made those scenes)
But ofc it was still able to hype you up for the fights to come & still give some share of screen time to some of the characters (not as much as i wanted it to but oh well)
In the end i was still able to like it to some degree maybe because i already know the characters & their story.
<h1><b><a>CHARACTERS</h1></b></a>
The Characters in the anime didn't rly have much development, they get but a little bit of development as most just gets cut or is used in a quick flashback sequence of sorts, alot of the interactions between characters inbetween fights or right before them is also cut, which again sad as their is some amazing characterization in the manga, that makes you like a lot of the different characters even if you 1st hated them.
the anime rly just went with fights & just a little bit of development for some characters.
And it doesn't rly help when you know it has a big roster of characters but they aren't rly developed.
img(https://i.imgur.com/kIAl0cR.gif)
<h1><b><a>FIGHTS</h1></b></a>
The fights were quite nice, the 1st few fights were quite nicely done, it made some impact & impresion on you, but not all fights were as good there were some that weren't executed as good or just didn't leave as big an impact as the others (or like the manga).
They were all quite smooth & fluid, aswell none of the characters were of model during fights or regular scenes.
The anime did struggle with making the fights as impactful & epic as the manga. (sad as the fights in the manga leave a big impact & lasting impression).
Some of the fights just didn't rly add that extra story & impact that the manga was known to do.

I do have to commend the studio for using real fighters to perform the different moves & the studio recreating them almost perfectly in the anime, the moves rly did look great.
img(https://i.imgur.com/Tq5eYip.gif)
img(https://i.imgur.com/hMMgJPk.gif)
<h1><b><a>ANIMATION</h1></b></a>
The animation was pretty decent, alot of people will prolly be put of by it being CGI but tbh it wasn't half bad & it had significantly improved since the 1st teaser trailer we got which honestly looked very bad, the final product made everything look much better & was pretty fluid when it came to the movements, ofc it had it's fair share of flaws, but that is ofc to be expected, CGI is still far from perfect but it has been gradually improving in shows & this show is def trying to make it look great.
Aswell it also made use of 2d imagery so not everything is CGI, there were a ton of scenes outside of fights(which are all full CG) that were 2d.
Which they nicely implemented & made look rly good and blend together quite nicely.
img(https://i.imgur.com/aj9x7Ud.gif)
<h1><b><a>MUSIC</h1></b></a>
The ost wasn't rly anything too special, most tracks aren't rly too memorable, atleast to me.
The OP was quite good, the ED wasn't rly my thing but it did quite nicely fit the show.
<h1><b><a>OVERALL OPPINION</h1></b></a>
In the end the show wasn't all bad but it wasn't able to rly convey the same emotion i had when i read the manga, but nontheless it had it's moments that were quite good & enjoyable.
so now we wait for part 2 & hopefully it's better & improved

(also this is my 1st full on review so i'm sorry if it isn't the best)

A show with a great source, sadly not used to it's full glory.

I've never written a review before, and will probably never do so again, but because the other review on here is pretty much just a comparison to the manga I decided, just for this one single time, to make a review for an anime I really enjoyed. 
I'm not going to write down the synopsis here because I am extremely lazy, so let's dive right in.


# 1.  Story
There's not much to talk about when it goes in term of the story. Its just fighting with some background stories thrown in the middle of them. That's not to say it isn't fun though, the story of every character is unique. Sometimes it's silly and funny, and the other times they are serious and maybe even touching. You go into the fights knowing nothing about the character and get out of the fights satisfied with the conclusion. 
I never know where a fight will go, it might be over in 30 (anime) seconds or its a long drawn out fight where endurance is important. The author always surprises me with what he comes up with to make the fights interesting, and does it really well too. Everyone has their own special 'ability' but, apart from some, they feel very grounded and 'realistic'.

# 2. Characters

There's a whole abundance of unique characters in this show and they're all so interesting that I never know who to root for in the fight. Even outside of the fight there are interesting characters that you will see often, be it eliminated fighters or just spectators. 
Because of the story focusing a lot on all the other fighters, you don't see a lot of Kazuo and Ohma, which makes them a bit shallow. Ohma is getting there, later on, but Kazuo is just a pawn with no real character development going on.

# 3. Animation
Animation includes animation and art style. Honestly, I don't really _like_ the art style that much. It's not a pleasure to look at like say, Houseki no Kuni, is. I don't think this distracts me from the experience as a whole though, unless it's the 2D scenes. Whenever the 3D characters switch to 2D it's jarring enough to notice and I don't think it looks that good. 
Scenes outside of combat are rarely ever good looking, but thankfully this is a battle anime and combat is mostly what you will see. And oh boy let me tell you, the animation in this anime is spectacular. I don't think I would have this anime in anything else other than CGI anime, because I really don't think it would work all that well. There's a lot of speed involved in the movement that would just be way too hard to capture in 2D.
People think that they use 3D to save money, or time. But this is bullshit. Anime like these take as much time and talent as 2D anime does.

The animation here is all hand animated, no motion capture is used, and it was worth it. Instead they used reference videos from real MMA fighters. This makes combat extremely satisfying to watch and because of the cg bad/awkward art is never a problem. 

# 4. Soundtrack and effects

The music here is nothing to write home about. I actually think it fits well and it does have some satisfying tracks I suppose, but it's nothing you would listen to after completing the anime. 

The sound effects are very good, they feel gritty and have a lot of punch to them. I will also include voice acting in this topic as well, and damn, there's some A+ voice acting here. 

# Conclusion

goood good anime. Definitely try it out if you like fighting. Here I _will_ start my manga comparison (I have not read it, though) and say that it feels like this show misses a lot of slice-of-life type stuff, like people just chilling and talking to each other instead of it going straight to the conflict like the anime does. The show is funny, so if you want more of that and less cut content, make sure to check out the manga, because I know for a fact it has more of that stuff.



Kengan Ashura Series Watch Order

Season 1

Season 2