30-day Anime Challenge
Day 10: Favorite Fighter Show
Eh? Favorite fighter show?
When I hear “fighter,” I can’t help but think of Kidō Eita and his chuuni writings about BURNING FIGHTING FIGHTER (from Ore no Kanojo to Osananajimi ga Shuraba Sugiru).
I guess we’re talking about shows where humans fight other humans or entities that at least outwardly resemble humans? And there’s special moves and power levels and everything?
The problem is that I tend to associate such shows with harem + rom-com antics, so it’s hard to come up with a “fighter show” I can say that I enjoyed. That’s probably why I’m going way back by saying my favorite fighter show is Shakugan no Shana.
My memory as to when I watched the show is a bit fuzzy, but I’m pretty sure it was during winter break, when I was a sophomore in high school, since I distinctly remember going back to school and walking through the hallways while imagining that I was a Flame Haze (and keeping such fantasies all in my head, of course!)
At any rate, I probably enjoyed Shana since it was my first exposure to action series outside of the childhood dubs I watched as a kid (I’m talking about Dragon Ball Z and Sailor Moon). Yeah, I watched a few shows here and there in middle school (Loveless as a sixth grader, for instance), but those 3 years were primarily dominated with me playing various MMORPGs and FPSs as well as various GameCube games and GameBoy Advance games.
So when I look back to Shana, I can see how some of its character archetypes could be considered mainstream these days. But back then, I was experiencing that stuff for the first time. If I recall correctly, there wasn’t an excessive amount of fanservice within the series, which was also another plus. It’s hard for me to give a “fighter show” much consideration if it’s plastered with excessive nudity and censoring, which seems to be the default strategy for said shows to attract viewers when there’s no battle scenes to be found.
I don’t know, fighter shows aren’t really my cup of tea. Sorry! Maybe readers who are more knowledgeable about the genre can talk about fighter shows in the comments below.
The Lily Garden 