More ninja clothing destruction and a AT-X parental lock airing to go with it.
The other day the pv for the upcoming second season of Senran Kagura was shown revealing it’s Fall air date along with some other details.
The studio this time around will be TNK with the director being Tetsuya Yanagisawa with his previous works being the first three seasons of Highschool DxD and Kenzen Robo Daimidaler. So we have a studio and director that have experience with ecchi shows which is good news. DxD fans didn’t like what they did to season 3 which lead to the 4th being given to a different studio and director but hopefully the mistakes made with that won’t happen again here impacting the quality of this.
The big important question though is if there will be nudity much like the OVA did 3 years ago. Fortunately the odds look good in favor of this containing nudity not only because of an AT-X airing being the channel announced for it (while others have yet to be announced making it seem like getting a contract with atx might had been their main priority over other channels) but the big thing is that the AT-X information page for the anime which went up a day after the pv contains the age restricted parental lock. In more cases than not the parental lock results in the show having uncensored nudity (DxD, 7virtues, 7sins, etc). So with that said it looks like we will not only get nudity in this just like the ova but we won’t have to wait for the BD either (though hopefully the BD contains specials like the first season did and considering the dxd studio is doing this it makes those chances better).
Wizard used filtering on the pv as well and found this when examining the light censors.
It makes sense for the sequel to have nudity since after that ova in which we got nudity of a number of characters not doing so now would be a step back. Also consider there have been a few official figures released over the past year which could have their tops removed and this all adds up to make sense why they would go the nude route in the second season. Using TNK is a plus as well not only because we obviously know they have no issues with nudity but body types don’t seem to be an issue either since we have gotten smaller chested girls in dxd. So that should mean Mirai for example should hopefully get nude in this as well since we didn’t get to see any of her in the ova since she covered her chest. Speaking of missed characters we didn’t get Katsuragi nudity either in the ova which was really odd considering her personality so seeing her doing her transformation here is good news at it means we will get her nude at last. Would also be a bonus if they find a way to throw the New Wave card game characters in the anime as well to give us nudity of them also.
One thing I really hope to see though is for this to take the approach dxd did with eyecatches. Having the same studio and director makes me hope they will since the dxd eyecatch format would fit perfectly for something like this considering the sheer amount of characters in it. Though I would want it to be two nude eyecatches of two different characters each time instead of the usual non nude and nude ones of the same character that dxd did. Also another thing of note is that the ED is called “Junsei Erotic” and is being done by Mia REGINA whom did the ED for the 7sins anime last year. Taking into account that name and the fact that TNK did help artland on the animation for 7sins perhaps this might mean we will get a credits sequence showing each of the girls nude like we got with 7sins. Ideally what would be the best is if the ED had different visuals focusing on a different group each episode (Hanzo, Hebijo, Gessen, Crimson) so that they could include all the characters though that might end up being to much work for them to do.
As for the story they haven’t really given too many details on it but considering the characters shown we can tell an adaption of most of the previous games isn’t going to be the plot here. In the visual we see Fubuki is present and she was not around until the recent mobile game New Link. Also in the pv we see Asuka fighting Senko and Gekko whom were also characters that debuted in New Link. Plus considering the full name for the game is “Shinobi Master Senran Kagura: New Link” and this anime season is called “Senran Kagura Shinovi Master -Tokyo Yoma-hen-” we can kind of assume this might be related to New Link in some way (which would make sense if they hope this will promote that game as well). In a deneki article describing what was talked about on the livestream it says “The story is made as an original story. Mr. Takaki declared “I am making firmly with the staff.” The scenario is done by Mr. Kitajima who is in charge of the game scenario.” So it looks like the story will be anime original rather than an adaption but will be watched over by Takaki and the person in charge of the story/scenario writing for the games so there shouldn’t be anything to worry about. So this will probably take place after or during New Link which would explain those characters being present. Wouldn’t be surprised if they used this to possibly set things up for Senran 7even which is set to release later.
Speaking of games during the same livestream they also showed the OP for the pinball game Peach Ball and the first showing of gameplay of it. Peach Ball comes out on Switch in december in Japan and presumably an english version will probably come out in 2019. They also announced various retailer specific bonuses for the game here on the main site though most of the images are still the rough draft form of them.
So a bunch of Senran stuff is coming out this year such as the new anime, the Switch pinball game, and the ps4 game Senran 7even (assuming it doesn’t get delayed). Maybe after all this has finished and released perhaps Takaki will finally have time to return to Valkyrie Drive and let Senran rest for a bit while making another Valkyrie Drive game and anime. Or at the very least maybe an OVA of Valkyrie Drive similar to Senran so we can see the game characters from the game nude next.
Overall Fall at least now has what will probably be the best show of the season assuming it gives what people want. According to crunchyroll’s announcement they coproduced the show so they will be the ones streaming it in english. Kind of interesting that we will have a handful of videogame based anime airing in the Fall now. There is the 3rd season of Ace Attorney coincidentally enough for non fanservice stuff but the two main shows to care about from a fanservice perspective will be Senran and probably Conception (which hopefully will get a pv soon as well). Will be kind of interesting to see a season in which videogame based shows end up being the main service providers (though I’m guessing there will be another r18 show for me to possibly cover as well).
More importantly hopefully this is not only successful leading to more Senran anime either in the form of another ova or more seasons but sets a standard for other videogame based anime to start following. It was a shame that Akiba’s Trip last year ended up being non nude and who knows what the upcoming Conception will be like either in that department. So hopefully Senran is able to demonstrate to companies that people are willing to accept nude anime based on videogame series even if said videogame does not have nudity in the source (if anything that is all the more reason to do it in anime form to make it stand out). It is still amusing that Corpse Party (missing footage ova) despite being horror stands with Senran in being the few modern games that gave us game characters nude in anime format. Would really be nice to see this change in the future with more videogame series (in particular fanservice ones) start getting anime adaptions that deliver on those goods.
I really wish Corpse Party had did a hotspring ova for no real reason just to give us nudity of all the girls in that. The 2U game was not serious and still worked so they could easily find an excuse here especially with how many girls were in that to use. The game Dead Patient is taking forever and probably won’t be done for like 10 years. Really wish the series would get a resurrection with a bunch of manga, games, and anime all at once like some other series have started to get. Would be nice to see them go all out since they would have no reason to hold back on nudity since they already broke that nudity barrier with yuka in the ova.
