Anime: Hyakka Ryouran: Samurai Girls

'Hyakka Ryouran SAMURAI GIRLS' is 40th anniversary media-mix project by Hobby Japan, a plastic model/videogame magazine publisher.
This series is an interesting watch because it's not only a "media-mix" as in franchise with products in multiple media platforms, it also feels like many popular anime are mixed together. However, it represents everything that went wrong with today's anime industry.

Animation: 6/10
Series like 'Gankutsuou', 'Mononoke', 'xxxHOLIC', 'Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei', and 'Yojouhan' have such distinctive and unconventional art style and character designs that you'll never forget once you've seen it. Sounds pretty cool, we should do it too! And there we have it, sumi-e (wash painting) style backgrounds and ink drops and brush strokes for censorship and scene transitions.
I have to admit that the style was unique, background is visually pleasing, and there were couple of breathtaking scenes. However, this art style was executed very poorly in many aspects. For one, the character designs were rather ordinary and they looked out of place in the picture even with the thick outlines as a buffer. The presence of modern day gadgets and use of CG made it seem awkward at times because it did not conform to the era or the style. The censoring technique was fine in still pictures, but it was unsightly and annoying when character is moving because the way ink dots follow and disappear screams of "look at me! I'm different!"
The action is cool, and labeling of people and attack move's names were done rather well though.
The animation in this series will certainly be remembered, but it simply did not work for the most part.

Sound: 7/10
Yagyuu Juubee's voice is really cool when she's transformed into Master Samurai, but sounded way too cute/loli despite her appearance in normal form. Muneakira sounds too gay for the macho hero who's supposed to be all about samurai honor. Otherwise, the side characters' voices were done pretty well and sound like they should.
BGM was pretty generic. OP is a really good intense rock song, not only is it very catchy, it also had the Japanese flavor, and the vocal was amazing.

Story/Character: 4/10
"Hyakka Ryouran" has two meanings. The first, more literal meaning is "Profusion of Flowers Blooming in Chaos", as in girls (Flowers) of various (profusion) backgrounds are unlocked (blooming) into master samurai and wreak havoc (Chaos). The second meaning is "Appearance of Abundant Talent in a Short Period", which describes the resurgence of Master Samurai after a considerable draught in awakening. This series has a great naming sense in its own title, and also the names of signature moves for each character. For example in Sen's "Denkousekka", a lightning attack which reads "Lightning Fast" in Japanese, "kou" is deliberately written in wrong kanji that has same pronunciation that means "Royalty". D'Artagnan's ice attack that seals enemy movement "Zettai Reido" means "Absolute Zero", but written "Absolute Slavery(Imprisonment)".

A lot of moves have such creative names like that. However, the originality ends there.
The setting is really, really bad. Sure, it's an alternate universe where the Shogunate rule survives, and there's zero Western influence in Japan, but then you have all the advanced technology (from the West) like air planes, cameras, and computers. It got so bad at one point that commando units holding guns were guarding ninjas and samurais. Talk about awkward.
The premise is basically Evangelion ripoff, you have a chosen hero who unlocks the power of super-powerful beings to fight ones that want to end the world, and an organization trying to prevent that. The secretive organization functions through unethical practices (human experiments/sacrifices vs child labor), and yes, there was mass production of the super-beings to build up the force.

Then all the characters were for manufactured harem. All the girl fighters except Sen have names of male historical figures or fictional characters of major literatures with similar attributes. It's not even 'Sora no Otoshimono', but girls literally fall from the sky, and yes, one of the them is a cyborg. The initial villain is identical to Vegeta, he thinks he's above all others (emperors and kings), he does have a good purpose but uses any means to achieve his goals, he even wears a Power Level Scanner, and of course, he joins the hero and heroines in the end.
There were many other similarities to DBZ, from "Her power level is over half a million!" to "They are far beyond our capabilities, we can only watch". The girls basically power up like Super-Sayan, and then a heroine even flies like one, before getting spirit bomb-like power recovery from allies. The whole action is like 'DBZ' meets 'Sengoku BASARA' with ridiculous power and constant yelling about love, honor, and justice.

And there's these random fan-services with explosion ripping off girl's clothes, a girl wearing thongs all the time (historically some men did, but still...), dumb activation of power (kiss), and 'Sailor Moon' ripoff naked transformation.

Character behavior in general made no sense, and things happen just to advance the plot.

Value/Enjoyment: 5/10
It's nearly impossible to create a completely original story or characters in this day and age. For example, one of the villains in this series also had a magical eye like Alpha Stigma, a ripoff of Geass, which is a modified Sharingan, which is a souped up version of Hiei's evil eye, and then you can trace that all the way back to Medusa.

However, good storywriting can camouflage similarities well enough that it wouldn't be easily noticeable and bother us. On the other hand, the mix of themes and reference in this show is blatant and shameless. They are so poorly executed that the apparent lack of originality is obvious to the viewer. And then you have excessive moe and ecchi fan service, failed art style innovation, and manufactured harem environment to distract us from the flaws in story and production. Like many similar harem anime today, 'Hyakka Ryouran' was a very poorly produced and forgettable series.

That said, the story is shallow and cliché, but it does have a good pace and some of the tried true formula do work, and the action scenes are exciting. The show is a true mix of previous anime and lacks originality, but it does offer quick entertainment.