I've become complacent in my anime viewing.
I've watched so many soft, cute, funny, and pretty anime lately that I've forgotten what anime has the potential to be.
Anime can be bloody, and ugly, and mean.
It can be graphically violent and epically nasty and brutally dark.
It can be Afro Samurai, the tale of a badass swordsman cutting an extremely bloody path towards vengeance.
And when I say extremely bloody, I mean EXTREMELY bloody. When heads and arms and fingers and knees get sliced and diced, the bloody spray from the wounds is immediate and obvious and brilliantly red so you can't possibly miss it.
This isn't a show that pulls punches or pretends that sword fighting isn't extremely violent and bloody. Characters don't get hacked and slashed and then pop back up again, wrapped in tight white bandages and ready to fight another day.
Characters here get their bits cut off and then they are dead dead dead.
Well, for the most part.
There are a couple of characters that drag themselves back up and are basically put back together. One becomes a living (sort of) doll - fully articulated and wearing a giant, googly-eyed teddy bear head (which is creepy and much scarier than it sounds). The other is basically one step away from being a god anyways, so its no big deal for him to just pop his almost-chopped-off head back on.
But for the most part, when someone gets hacked at by a sword, it kills them and they stay dead and its bloody and gross and hardcore.
This whole show is hardcore. From the chain-smoking, lemonade-drinking, revenge seeking titular main character, to the gun-slinging, heads-taking, creepy lisping main bad guy. The language is hard, the fighting is harder, and the characters are hardest of all.
Its awesome and unique and nasty and definitely not for children and one of the best things I've seen in a while. Even if it did make me want to vomit a little after watching it.
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