fanservice of a thousand
Categories: anime
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The best (and most fanboyish) way to describe Strength of a Thousand (SoaT) is that it’s Tenjo Tenge plus Jubei-chan plus Romance of the Three Kingdoms with Belldandy thrown into the mix. The story centers around seven fictional high schools that via for supremecy just like the tales from Three Kingdoms, but it’s highly reminiscient of how the high school fighters are portrayed in Tenjo Tenge. Each school has its own group of l33t fighters, and they constantly battle with each other for position in the pecking order.
Fortunately, for those of us who don’t care for complicated plots, the old ruler who dominated the land many years ago has been re-incarnated as a girl named Hakufu who does not understand modesty. Besides flashing her underwear, she enjoys alternating between being a ditz and being a supreme fighter who specializes in kicking high (sound familiar?). This is controlled through her soul stone, which suspiciously looks like the same stones from Blue Seed.
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Rounding out the cast are an underwear saleman (j/k… kinda), her mom (voiced by Inoue-san in her unfortunate MizuHO voice), yet another bandaged Ayanami clone (she has an eyepatch!), and Hakufu’s cousin. The cousin, of course, is the romantic interest– this, of course, is slightly better than other series.
The overall tone of SoaT seems to be fairly serious, but it’s hard to take it seriously due to the overabundance of fanservice. The music is also mainly done by move, who also did music for Inital D and Final Fantasy Unlimited, so it’s basically an attempt to fuse Euro techno with Japanese rap… when it works, it works, and when it doesn’t, it doesn’t. Ok, that didn’t make much sense…
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In the end, I think people who enjoyed Tenjo Tenge should check this series out. It’s not as adult as that manga, but it does try to follow in its footsteps in a less NC-17 sorta way.
