Katana Maidens: Toji No Miko starts off with a battle against a flame centipede creature called an Aratama and katana wielding shrine maidens. They are all wearing school uniforms and are called Toji, which seem to be the special fighting force that defends Japan against these monsters. After quickly defeating it, the story moves on to the main character Kanami and her friend Mai. Both are very close and do everything together, as well as traveling to represent their school They are going to a tournament between five schools to represent their own school, Minoseki. The government chooses these students based on their ability and practice with a katana. Basically, each of these schools selects certain girls (since the shrine maidens that are chosen are all female) to see who is the strongest. So one battle at a time we see them use special abilities and various sword stances to win each match. The final match happens at the end of the episode, but there are some mysteries behind that battle which I won’t ruin here.
I wanted to do a First Impression of this show since I am a fan of sword or samurai anime. I really enjoyed Rurouni Kenshin among others, so I was hoping to get some good action scenes out of this one. The beginning was so fast paced and I felt didn’t introduce the characters well that I was bored. Finally, they get to the fights but they are so quickly over that again, I felt let down. Those few fights could have been stretched out over several episodes, but are done in 30 seconds or less. The end of the episode gave some questions to be answered for the future, but I feel that could have been saved for later. Too much was done in the few minutes given, so hopefully it will improve in later episodes.
Check it out over on Crunchyroll!
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