Available from Amazon Available from Right Stuf

Samurai Harem Released By: Sentai Filmworks Distributed by: Section 23 Released: 5/11/10 Reviewed: 5/29/10 Rated: 15+

The Story

For the first 17 years of his life, Yoichi Karasuma has lived in the mountains with his father training to be a samurai warrior. Having learned all that he can, his father sends him into the city for the first time to gain new life experiences. Arriving in the city, Yoichi now lives, trains and goes to school with four sisters who are the daughters of someone his father once trained with. Naturally a situation like this is just made to put Yoichi into a series of sexy misadventures and misunderstandings.

Not everyone is thrilled with his arrival however. The school delinquent, Washizu (who also has a crush on the oldest sister), has vowed to destroy the samurai and make Ibuki his and his alone. Additionally two masked figures with money to burn will hire every warrior and assassin they can find to enter the city and make sure Yoichi’s training and life are ended for good.

Good and the Bad

Despite its title, Samurai Harem is an odd entry into the harem genre. Yes, it has the usual hero character oblivious to the bevy of females around him but at its heart, this is a romantic comedy. One step further than that, it’s actually a not bad romantic comedy for awhile and for the first half, there’s not even a lot to nitpick.

For the first six episodes, AIC produces a good looking series that puts together a decent story. A lot of the elements to this series boil down to things we’ve seen before; hero with a desire to protect, female characters who all fit a particular mold (perfect ideal, tsundere, manga geek, oddly capable loli, etc) and lots of jokes centering on Ibuki being violent towards Yoichi. And for awhile, this is enough.

Setting up relationships early, the story moves at a strong pace. Within only a couple of episodes, all the important love triangles have been set up and dark, mysterious villains loom on the horizon. More importantly though is that by this point the series is still being relatively clever with its humor.

Not trying to rely solely on fan service (they make up for it with breast jokes), the relationships between characters do a great job of driving the story forward. Making good use of running gags, Samurai Harem produced quite a few chuckles with their version of fantasy and fight sequences (a few punches are exchanged, Yoichi pulls out a sword technique, the end) and a fun supporting cast oerfectly written to prod others forward. Out of four sisters, Chihaya is the manga artist always looking for a new source of inspiration. While never playing a large role in the overall narrative, she still has the fun role of feeding plans to the tsundere sister, Ayame, to get closer to the samurai.

Then it gets to the halfway point and decides to stab itself in the foot.

Up until this point, Samurai Harem does a great job of managing the relationships and keeping things fun. At this point however Samurai Harem makes two very wrong turns and never finds a way to recover fully. In episode 7, Samurai Harem starts to shift the attention from the romance to the villains after their big reveal moment. From here, you might expect the series to dial down one aspect so that room can be made for the other. There are only 12 episodes here and realistically there isn’t going to be space for everything if there is to be any resolution. Luckily, it seems that AIC wasn’t really concerned with that.

Besides bringing the villains forward, Samurai Harem goes the opposite route and increases the romantic conflict. By the time the series has finished, almost every character in the series is/wants to be romantically involved with another creating a mess of conflict for the sake of conflict. This could have worked if there was ever any intention of making these story threads go anywhere. Instead the ending becomes a mess of half started story arcs that are left to dangle in the final episodes. I’m not here to tell people how things should have been written but with so much left unresolved, what was the point?

Music

No matter which series it is, there will always be something to surprise those who are willing to look and in this case it’s the music. Sandwiched between the catchy themes, performed by Meg Rock and Aki Misato respectively, is a score composed by Tomoki Kikuya (Hidamari Sketch). While there are many background pieces which fit the standard electronic comedy theme mold, there is another side to the score which reveals itself during the quieter, more emotional scenes.

Using soft strings and flutes, the melodies of these tracks are diverse but consistently simple in their presentation. Always allowing one soft instrument to lay on another the results were beautifully soft piano, string and flute pieces which matched well with the characters personal reflections. While it’s a shame that it can’t always be like this, the overall feeling the music left me with is entirely positive.

Overall

Samurai Harem has about 10 jokes and uses them up almost completely within only a few episodes. After eventually losing its direction, a weak second half makes this a tough sell and there aren’t a lot of reasons to make this a must buy. Starting with potential, there are laughs to be found with these characters but the effort is not enough to make up the difference. A cute romantic comedy that you might be able to enjoy some afternoon but ultimately forgettable.