Ikki Tousen

You'll die as you lived, in a flash of the panties.

Man, the early 00s were such a weird fucking period in media history. For those of us in the US, coming fresh off the heels of the experimental punk-ass attitude of the 90s, the following decade was defined by the extreme changes in technology and the increased affordability (and later, necessity) of home internet services, fundamentally altering the way many of us encountered new shows to watch. With the rise of communities bent on releasing and subtitling foreign cartoons (especially anime, which was in its, what, fourth major worldwide boom at that point?), amidst changing conservative attitudes about what should or shouldn't be allowed on national television, many teens and young adults turned to anime to get their fix of cool new cartoons that didn't feel like they were always talking down to them.

And while I wouldn't call a show like Ikki Tousen the pinnacle of that era's experimentation, or even the pinnacle of anything in particular, watching it with that context in mind made me realize what an incredibly high bar it must have set for the entire subgenre of anime that would later follow in its footsteps.

I don't know how many Nelsons this hold is comprised of, but I bet all of them are feeling a little hot under the collar about it.

Boob jiggle and pervy camera angles have been around in anime since forever, tracing at least as far back as 1973's Cutie Honey (and probably even further), but it wasn't until roughly around the late 90s-early 00s when shows built entirely around nothing but fanservice really blossomed into their own self-contained genre. And while Ikki Tousen has reasonably enough plot to classify it as more of a shounen action series than a softcore porn series, I feel almost beyond a shadow of a doubt that it set a clear standard from which most modern horny fighting anime is still derived to this very day.

You can still see echoes of Ikki Tousen's masterful money-shot poses in nearly every single "high schoolers fight each other" type anime out there, from Sekirei to Maken-Ki to Kämpfer and back again. And although the series honestly gives other hentai classics like Agent Aika a run for their money in terms of sheer pantyshots-per-minute, it still attempts to deliver some vague semblance of a tale in the process, no matter how eye-rolling it becomes to try and take it seriously.

The real reason they make anime girls' boobs so big is because that's where the Lore is stored.

That's not to suggest there's a particularly impactful story here - if you've seen one delinquent high school fight club anime, you've kind of seen them all - but the setting and tone and visual horniness of the show make such a bizarre clash together that, even in the face of its now-countless spiritual successors, it culminates in a weird and somewhat difficult to categorize brew of identities. Because while, yes, on the whole it is most definitely an overtly sexual menagerie of hotties committing impossibly slick fighting moves against each other, it's all held together by the characters engaging in what is essentially just LARPing war scenarios from Romance of The Three Kingdoms.

I mean, not THAT kind of Romance, but hey, I'm not complaining...

Each character in the show is based on a specific general or story player from one of the thousands in the cast of the 800k-word Chinese epic novel "Romance of The Three Kingdoms" (specifically the Japanese interpretation of the story), introduced as a sort of "reincarnation" of that fighter. Think of it like Clone High, but with a more hyperspecific historical focus, and also everyone wants to fight each other all the time. The characters all seem to be aware of their status as reincarnations, and most of them are inexplicably familiar enough with the novel to know what their supposed predestined fates hold in store for them.

Speaking as an uneducated American who hasn't read the sprawling epic in question, I did have a bit of a hard time keeping up with who was who. In typical Japanese fashion, characters are sometimes referred to by their first name and sometimes by their surname, on top of sometimes being referred to by one of their R3K names instead. Additionally, people would sometimes appear in a single scene in a single episode, then not appear again with an actual name drop for nearly an entire season, so it helped to keep a Wiki page open for occasional cross-referencing. Fortunately, there is enough visual distinction and characterization between them all to tell them apart, name confusion aside.

Then again, there are some names - like Kanu here - who I would NEVER forget.

Most of the show's major story beats revolve around recreating a specific battle from the novel, sometimes told over the course of a whole season. Because of this, the question of whether these Fighters are actually living their own lives or simply fulfilling the destinies of the characters they represent is one that gets posed frequently, with varying answers. Some characters believe in their destiny whole-heartedly, and seek to fulfill it and live off their success in the process, while others develop a complex about whether or not they're ever in control of their own actions. And while the answer is ultimately never made clear, the question becomes a driving force for defining each character's beliefs, and identifying their reasons to keep fighting.

Don't be surprised when you find out many of the characters fight for their definitely-just-friends.

All lack of historical nuance and context aside though, I found myself strangely enjoying the show for its brazenly unapologetic mix of genre, age rating, and tone. This is exactly the kind of show people who don't watch anime are thinking of when they try to explain why they don't watch anime. The excessive use of comically unrealistic ripped clothes, ogling crotch shots, and sudden splashes of profanity and graphic violence are exactly the sort of thing that make outsiders uneasy, and Ikki Tousen embraces that side of itself with aplomb.

Life comes at ya fast, just like Ryomou's gorilla grip pussy grapple attack.

The constant shifts in tone and genre also make it difficult to give the show a specific age rating. Over the course of the main show's four seasons (not including OVAs and spin-offs), the amount of sexual content varies from simple panty peek-a-boos and occasional nip slips all the way up to on-screen fucking (minus visible penetration, anyway). The show also features a few gratuitous close-ups of fear pissing and a gruesome curb stomp by the main character, but these are used sparingly. Even in the later seasons where both the sex and violence get toned down a bit, the dub picks up the slack by spicing up the translation with some extra "fucks" for good measure.

The point is, despite its many cutesy airhead moments and slumber party scenes, the show is very much Unrated through and through, so watch at your own risk!

You know what they say about spaghetti, it's only straight until things get hot and wet.

Anyway. While the show never really loses its core focus, it does sometimes flounder a bit due to the sheer size of its cast. There were times I felt a bit lost, especially when the show would quick-cut to show some new approaching challenger monologuing about some new mystical subplot they were cooking up. But any questions I had along the way would eventually and inevitably get answered by virtue of the "dumb blonde" characters also needing the plot explained to them, so I can't fault it for that. In retrospect, the whole thing wasn't terribly difficult to follow in the first place, but hey, it's understandable if you find yourself distracted by something along the way...

Eyes on the prize, kids. It's that simple.

Bottom line is, by virtue of the show's massively varied tone and subject matter, Ikki Tousen is just a wacky and unpredictable ride that probably won't jive too well with anyone looking for story or substance. It's the type of show best put on in the background while under the influence, or for those times you just wanna be entertained by porny antics and sick-ass fight scenes. There could reasonably be some deeper discussion to be had about reincarnation, and whether or not people actually possess their own agency if their entire lives are devoted to fulfilling a pre-written destiny or trying to avoid such an inevitable fate, or even a discussion about how well the series adapts its beloved historical source material, but I think the show simply works best when viewed as nothing more than a spectacle of silliness, and there's nothing wrong with that!

Even if I've never read it, I'm moderately certain there is not a scene in Romance of The Three Kingdoms where a shark gets punched, so it's pretty clear which one is the superior adaptation here.

It's pretty easy to make recommendations given how many shows have followed in Ikki Tousen's footsteps since its release. I already named several earlier. Sekirei and Maken-Ki are easy spiritual successors that follow the same format almost to the letter, crotch shots and all. For something that takes the sexual shenanigans even farther, try the boob-suckin' jigglefest that is The Qwaser of Stigmata. For something a bit older with a less explicit spin, look up a short OVA called Variable Geo. There's virtually nothing like this show in the hyper-puritan world of Western cartoons outside of a few movies, so the closest non-anime show I can think of to recommend would be Stripperella, which leans more superhero than high school fight club, but might still appeal to a similar crowd for obvious reasons.

Nothing more to add here. The show is great at what it does, but only if you already know you'll like that sort of thing, and aren't bothered by disjointed and multi-faceted genrefuck shows. Recommended for folks who like over-the-top bawdy fight scenes and/or have a panty fetish. I guarantee you won't find many similar shows that WEREN'T directly inspired by this one, so you may as well start at the source!

There's probably a "don't be a pussy" joke in here somewhere, but given how powerful pussy is in this show, I'd rather not dare to cross it!