Sea Slugs! Anime Blog

A city is in flames and many monks have lost their lives as Taitou, an emotional and brash kid, dashes to the Lotus Temple to see what’s going on. Entering the temple, Taitou runs into Keirou, a hard-nosed mustached warrior who had caused all the destruction. Keirou is standing below a statue holding a mystic sword called Kenkaranpu, which has a Sword in the Stone like property of determining who will be emperor by the one who unsheathes it. Eyeing the enemy, Taitou dashes in to take Keirou down, but Keirou bats him around like a fly, eventually sending him into the statue holding Kenkaranpu. Taitou lands on the ground next to the sword and grabs it to gain an advantage, but Keirou sends him through the wall and outside the temple. Seemingly down for the count, Taitou unsheathes the sword with all his might and draws it out to the amazement of Keirou, who notices the “Hagun” symbol near the right shoulder of Taitou as he draws the sword. With the weapon in hand and seemingly extra power that he received/unlocked from drawing out Kenkaranpu, Taitou puts up a good fight against Keirou, but the extra power seemed to be too much for his body. Keirou takes advantage by punching Taitou into the nearest valley, leaving Kenkaranpu at the feet of Keirou.

Fortunately for Taitou, Ryuukou, a warrior whom we know has a star symbol similar to the Hagun, happened to be wandering around the valley and noticed Taitou out cold on the ground. So Ryuukou take Taitou back to his family, where he gets a rude awakening from his sister Laila via head-butting. Once he awakens and begins to go around and see the damage that Keirou had caused, Taitou vows to get stronger so that such an event will never happen again. Meanwhile, Keirou realizes that he cannot draw the sword since Taitou had been chosen, so he sends out the mysterious Shimei, who manages to capture Laila to lure out Taitou. Shimei stuns Taitou with his sword and then proceeds to put some creepy moves on Laila. This provokes Taitou enough to draw upon the powers of Hagun to Hulk up, leaving us to wait for the battle against Shimei for the next episode.

This episode was a good start to the new series and the production values are very high, as the characters are well drawn and mixed in with some CG fire and electricity. The only thing I found sort of excessive was the seemingly steroid-induced power-up stances of Keirou and Taitou to the point where their veins are on the verge of exploding (although you could argue Taitou’s veins did explode after he and Keirou took their huge swipe at each other). There’s probably some astrology references I’m missing, so I apologize for those who managed to catch them. Given that Hagun seems to be an evil power, it’ll be interesting to see how Taitou manages to control this through the series.