Anime Analyze: Sengoku Basara: The Last Party (Movie)

 So we all remember the show Sengoku Basara  that I reviewed earlier, it was that anime that never explained how it worked when it came to how the people got abilities and it just went on doing what it did without taking any time to go through the basic mechanics of how people fought. Well that show was freaking awesome and so they made a movie to go along with the show.  This is Sengoku Basara: The Last Party.  Released in 2011 it starts off where the second season ended and is supposed to be the finisher for the animated franchise.  While being the ending for it, I can make the argument that it didn't finish out the series as well as it could have, and I will go into that more later.  So, here is the review of Sengoku Basara: The Last Party.  

So the movie starts off pretty much like I said, almost exactly after the second season ended after the tyrant from the second season, Toyotomi Hideyoshi, was wiped out.  It was kind of like how the first season transitioned into the second one, having the same ending scene which closed the previous one just come up again in the beginning of the next series or movie and just go with it.   Well what happens now is that a follower of Hideyoshi, Tokogawa Leyasu, has not given up on Hideyoshi's dreams of unifying Japan and seeks out his revenge on Date Masamune for killing his once beloved leader.  He is so bent on this revenge that he even gets together the remnants of the Hideyoshi army and takes them on this little journey of his.  And like the rest of the show, since he actually has a name, he has super powers too and can take out pretty much any grunt that is thrown at him.  The rest of the generals hear about this man and take up arms in order to defeat him and take out one more threat that is preventing them from taking control of Japan.

Allies punching each other? Nothing new here...

While this whole fight is going on, there are some leadership changes within some of the groups, mainly Yukimura taking control of his people, in one of the most bizarre and yet amusing changes in leadership that I have seen in a movie.  And apart from Leyasu going crazy throughout the country, the rest of the nations not anywhere near him are starting to think that the end needs to come soon and that they should be the next leader of Japan.  Through all of these skirmishes, guess who comes back....Yep, the villain from the first season, Oda Nobunaga.  Somehow his followers from the first season bring him back to life, (remember this show makes no sense anyways) and the nations have a huge battle with him again and, once again defeat him in spectacular, unexplained display.  As the fight ends with Oda, the rest of the generals go on once again with their fight for supremacy in Japan and that is where I will leave you as to not spoil anything more about the movie.

He's Back!

The story in this movie was good, and although the whole vengeance thing has been done so many times in movies and shows, it worked well with this movie mainly because while having watched both seasons of the show, the plot line was something that we had actually not seen with anyone, so it had not already been done, along with the fact that we knew that this movie was going to be the finisher for the series as a whole.  The old villain coming back was kind of cool especially since it was a such a cool bad guy to begin with.  

The animation of the movie was slightly better than in the series I thought.  While they kept the same kind of style in it, they used more shadows and that brought out some of the darker points in the movie as well as the lighter points as well.  There is not a whole lot to be said about it other than if you thought the animation in the show was good, then you are still going to like it in the movie as well.

This movie was great, the action was good, the characters were good, plot was good and it was really fun to watch.  Especially since watching the series, it was cool to see the outrageously superhuman fights again and I think it was a good idea to have the ending of the whole thing be in the form of a movie.  I give this movie an 8.5 simply because, while there was no character development, it really didn't need it if you've seen the TV show.  The animation was good and the plot was great.  And that is my review of Sengoku Basara: The Last Party. Check it out sometime and watch a great movie.

Final Rating: 8.5
                  Premise:           9.0
                  Plot:                 9.0
                  Animation:        8.0
                  Character Dev.:  6.0
RWF: Japanese W/ English Sub
MRS: www.nwanime.com