Streaming: Crunchyroll
Episodes: 12
Source: Multimedia project, including a stage play and Manga
Episode Summary: As war rages amongst the feudal lords all around them, the expert gunsmiths of the Saika village are defended by a group of powerful warriors who wield a selection of powerful special treasures called “Armors.” Among them is Magoichi, a warrior who arrived at the village with no memories, clutching one such Armor. Though the Armors allow those who own them to defend Saika village, their existence also draws the ire of the enemy toward the villagers more and more.
One day the village comes under attack once again. All of the lookouts are killed and the individuals holding the Armors suddenly find themselves overwhelmed and outclassed. Magoichi faces off against the leader of the enemy armor and quickly finds himself at death’s door. Just then he sees the flash of a sword as a mysterious man dressed in white comes to his rescue.
Impressions: Because I’m getting to this a little bit late I’m sure the comment has been made already to the point of cliché, but even so I find it necessary to be one of many to reiterate it – it seems that in this modern era of Japanese animation, every season brings with it a particularly cursed-looking CG anime. I get it; CG animation has the potential to provide flexibility to productions looking to maintain a certain kind of visual consistency. Once a CG character model exists, as long as the character doesn’t change costumes all the time, it’s easy to re-use the same assets to save some time and resources, which is appealing. But good grief, CG animation is by no means a shortcut, and requires at least some of the same sort of finesse of its 2D counterparts to look decent, especially when set against 2D assets within the same scenes.
Rusted Armors simply doesn’t achieve this base level requirement. The character models for the main cast move like puppets against simplistic, unfinished-looking background artwork. Side characters rendered in 2D animation rarely if ever actually move, making the scenes in which they appear look more like slideshows. There’s very little effort made to establish harmony between the differently-created assets, and thus the protagonists look copy-and-pasted into almost every scene. It’s really frustrating to watch, because as a rule I’m one of those people who doesn’t enjoy condemning bad-looking, poorly-animated anime just on looks alone, but it’s very, very difficult to avoid in this case due to the distinct lack of charm in either the characterization or the story. This episode feels mostly like an afterthought – a piece of a multimedia project that received the least amount of its parent organization’s resources.
Aside from its… troubled visual execution, there’s nothing else really meaty to chew on in this episode. There’s an initial nod toward some real-life history that quickly drops to the background as the show’s fantasy elements begin to take on a central position. There’s a small amount of cultural context too, which is mentioned during a live-action segment at the end. Beyond that there’s not much else for me to say about it, other than that I truly feel for whichever reviewer at ANN is forced to write weekly reviews of this series when people let their sadistic streak rule their choices during voting.
Pros: Possibly the most interesting part of the episode is the live-action segment at the end, which follows two of the cast members as they visit some real-life locations that are relevant to the story. I think it can be helpful to tie fantasy to reality and history if possible to do so; because Rusted Armors plays off of historical Japanese conflicts it’s a good candidate for this. That said, this is a short segment, so there isn’t as much time as there is with, say, Let’s Make a Mug Too (in which a solid 12-ish minutes is devoted to the tour segments) to really get a complete feel for the locations the actors are visiting.
Cons: There’s some uncomfortable gender-related material involving a trans character that kind of rubbed me the wrong way. One of the Saika Warriors is a trans woman, and there are several gags that play off of that fact and which come across as fairly insensitive (two enemy soldiers threaten a sexual assault against her and the general tone among the characters is to make fun of her and call her a man). It’s the sort of situation that makes one wonder from which decade exactly the writers are attempting to communicate.
And just generally, the poor visual execution coupled with the fact that this is a tie-in to a multimedia franchise just causes this anime to feel like a cash-grab. Again, I feel really terrible griping about animation quality when it’s such difficult work, but I lay the blame solely on the people who decided to order an anime series while also seeming to not provide enough resources or turnaround time to allow for something competent. Stuff like this only hurts people who are attempting to make a living in the industry.
Content Warnings: Violence, including brief instances of blood and gunshots (most of the weapons are also guns). Transphobic gags. Mild nudity (characters in a bathhouse).
Would I Watch More? – No; while there are some series that are so bad that they’re entertaining to watch, this series doesn’t have that feel to me. It just seems uncomfortable and cringe-y.