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R2 DVD Reviews
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Written by maehara
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Saturday, 02 September 2006 00:00 |
 Battle Vixens finally reaches the end of the line, with "fate" for most of the participants meaning a bloody end with only Goei making any real effort to make sure that "fate" isn't inevitable. Me, I don't believe in fate - apart from it being mine to never really realise what the point of all the fighting in this show was all about..
Episode 11
Ryoumou arrives at the poll to try and stop any battle between Hakufu and Ukitsu, but she needn't have bothered rushing - it seems Totaku left her a little gift from their meeting, and it's left Hakufu unconscious and unable to fight. While Ryoumou and Koukin get her home and wait for her to recover, Totaku continues his scheming. Later, Koukin and Ryoumou try to locate Gakushu after he fails to answer his cellphone - when Koukin learns from Saji that Gakushu's at Enjyutsu's hideout, he heads over there, unaware that it's a trap. Meanwhile, Goei learns that the attack Totaku used on Hakufu could leave her with as little as three days to live - and the only way to reverse the effects of the attack is to confront Totaku...
Episode 12
Ouin's plan: to use Ryofu to kill Totaku, then take Totaku's position for himself. Totaku's well aware of what he's planning, which is why he's hoping to use Hakufu to defend him, and is quite prepared to use Ryoumou as a hostage to make sure Hakufu does as she's told. While Hakufu knows she's not exactly fighting on the side of good, she's determined to do what she can to defend her friend - but she didn't count on Ryofu's amazing power. With Hakufu out of the way, Ryofu sets out to do what she came for - kill Totaku...
Episode 13
Hakufu goes on the rampage, with no-one quite sure if it's her dragon personality or Totaku's that's controlling her - either way, she's out of control and has no concept of friend or foe. The one person who can stop her is Ukitsu - but with Hakufu back to her usual self, destiny demands that she and Ukitsu must face each other, in a battle that's likely to have only one survivor...
I'm not much of a believer in fate, myself, which is why I have a hard time dealing with the various characters' attitude towards it here, which varies from "It's my fate to die in this battle, so I'll just blow myself up here", to "It's my fate to die in this battle, so I'll just walk off this cliff." So much for battling to the end. Even Hakufu doesn't really seem to care about avoiding hers - it's only her mother's efforts that save her in the end, leaving us with a story where some live to fight another day, but most die messily. And the point was..? None that I can see that was even remotely worth fighting for.
So Ikkitousen's story was a complete bust, but it did have one or two saving graces. The supporting females were an interesting bunch - and this volume wasn't relying on them getting into compromising & titillating situations to make them interesting, either - even if their blind devotion to fate did have me screaming at the screen. Goei almost made the show herself, being the one person in the series who really had her own mind and a plan to get her way. Past that, though, there's not much here that you can latch onto to really get into the show - with one exception (one side character who really didn't deserve it), none of the deaths evoke any sort of sympathy, and for most of the characters you genuinely don't care what happens to them. That's a fairly big problem for any series to overcome.
Ikkitousen does have its moments over the course of the series, usually in the shameless titillation and fanservice departments - because The Maker alone knows it needed the distraction to stop people getting thoroughly disillusioned with the storyline and the fighting. Overall, it's hard to really recommend it as anything other than a rental, as the good stuff is such a small percentage of the whole - certainly not one to rush out and buy.
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