For those who don’t know. Netflix is a goldmine for anime shows. There so much on there from One Punch Man, Dragon Ball Super, Pokémon, Sword Art and a whole bunch I’ve never heard of. Kengan Ashura anime is an original anime show made for Netflix based on the Kengan Ashura manga comic. I’m not going to lie I’d never heard of it. I just got done watching Baki and it came up in recommended. The trailer looked awesome so I started watching and was blown away. It was quite similar to Baki but not as slow-paced and has way more fights.
Kengan Ashura is violent, gritty and fast-paced. If you love anime’s about martial arts, underground tournaments and seemingly unbeatable fighters you will love this.
Our main protagonist is Ashura. He’s your typical unbeatable fighter who toys with other fighters because he knows they have no chance, or so we are led to think. This is until he is entered into the Kengan tournament which is full of fellow completely unbeatable fighters from all over the world, most have never tasted defeat.
The series starts with Kazuo Yamashita, a fifty-six-year-old typical cog in the cooperate machine summoned by the chairman of his company. He is put in charge as a manager of the mysterious fighter named Ohma Tokita nickname Ashura for the Kengan tournament. The night before Yamashita accidentally witnessed a street fight between Ashura and another fighter. After witnessing Ashura dispatches his opponent with ease, Yamashita was in complete ore of Ashura.
The Kengan tournament exists for super-wealthy business owners who are completely bored with their life’s so put on a giant wager tournament with the best fighters in the world. The corporation of the overall winner of the tournament gets to be the new president. The fighters like most are really in it to fight the best and prove they are the best. They just want to test themselves against the best about like a good fighter should. Ashura is no exception, he loves the thrill of combat and testing his skills.
Yamashita provides the comedy elements of the show through completely exaggerated facial expressions and reactions to situations. He is very comical at times.
Once the tournament begins, each organisation puts forward its fighter. Each trained in a different discipline and completely unbeatable in their own way. There’s no superpowers going off or fires balls/magic powers. The show tries to represent each fighters’ skills in a realistic way with techniques and experience or some kind of mystical inner strength. We have boxers, wrestlers, mixed martial artists, submission experts, kickboxers, huge guys with brute strength and the guys with mystical martial arts that no one’s seen before. The techniques each fighter has are leagues ahead of real-life stuff and completely unrealistic such as one fighter’s ability who has hardened his fingers so much they can cut like razors. But come on this is anime, who wants to see 5 rounds of two guys laying on top of each other in a octagon.
Once you see each fighter you honestly think to yourself how the hell is anyone going to beat him and you think that for everybody. Then they get paired against each other and you say to yourself “this should be interesting”. Even the fighters you think are completely untouchable have a hard time as each fighter has their secret techniques. Such as the tournament favourite The Fang. Everyone is told to try to avoid this fighter but even he has a hard time against another completely unbeaten fighter. The fights are spectacular full of ups and downs and you honestly can’t predict who’s going to win. Even Ashura you think sometimes is done for and there no way he going to beat this guy.
Each fighter has a little story about their background, experience and how they became so masterful at their art. Each one can be an untouchable protagonist in their own anime shows but here they are all pitted against one another.
Ashura is a mystical martial artist, confident in his ability with an unknown background begging to be revealed. The only thing we find out about his background is the master that trained him and the name of the art he’s trained in.
Currently, series 1, part 1 and 2 are on Netflix and the whole thing ends on a cliff-hanger as the tournament only reaches the quarter-final stages by the end of part 2. We are going to have to wait for season 2 to see how it all pans out and once you get hooked as I did, you will yearn for season 2. I planned on just watching a few episodes a time but as it turned out, it was just one of them shows where I had to see what happens next and ended up watching 10 episodes a time sometimes more.
I found the animation style takes a bit of getting used to at first. It’s like CG combined with tradtional animation in some kind of hybrid style. But later on this style really cators for the fights and it looks awesome.
You can watch Kengan Ashura on Netflix now.
Rating: 4.5/5 Belts
