May 13 2012 12:22 AM Brave 10.... an action show set during the Sengoku era featuring Sanada Yukimura's legendary group of ninjas...of course, the show just happens to make sure a majority of them are not actually ninjas...
Story is basically stopping darkness from prevailing over light...It literally took 8 episodes to assemble the 10 warriors and even then, the group didn't even last an episode with them all together. Character wise, literally over half the group had no major role in the "story" and may as well as not have existed. I'm not familiar with the source material, but if the show was accurate, then the series as a whole is even worse than I had imagined. Waste of time effectively watching the first 8 episodes. Changing history is also not a very good thing to do unless you do it right like Hakuouki, which even then was average at best.
Studio Sakimakura is new and supported by TMS Entertainment, who has done Sengoku Otome, Lupin III, and Cardfight Vanguard just to name a few. Animation quality is along the lines of Cardfight Vanguard, which is not saying much considering Cardfight season 1 was a 480p show and Brave10 is a 720p HD show. It may as well have been given the 480p treatment given how poor the show was. Art looked cheap but fit the "historical" feel from time to time. Characters designs are obviously of the bishounen type, but cheap in quality fora bishounen title. For a series supported by the decade old TMS studio, I had expected better. I don't know who they were trying to target audience wise, but they really should go back to making shounen/children oriented shows. They tend to excel at that. Otherwise, stick to Lupin III and Conan.
Music is bleh and seiyuu wise, the only thing that allowed me to finish this was Jinpachi's seiyuu, Kazuya Nakai, known mostly for Date Masamune in Sengoku Basara and Zoro Roronoa in One Piece. Had he not appeared, god knows how much longer it would have taken for me to finish this.
Enjoyment? The first episode set up an interesting premise but that all quickly went down hill when I realized the show was going to spend episode after episode hunting for the Braves. And of course, many of them play no significant role in the end...they were just there....
Overall, I have little knowledge of the source but this is a poorly written work telling the story of the Yukimura's ten "ninjas." Lack of direction and too much supernatural with little explanation. Poor characters and depth and not to mention what ended up being a cheap shounen title masked as a bishounen show. All together this became a large waste of time. I had a hunch that this show was a tad over-hyped when people were claiming this to be a good action title last season but this even went far below my expectations. While there aren't any shows I can think of that tell the story of the Braves, if you're looking for some Japanese Sengoku action, there are plenty of other titles out there that will do much better than this trash.
Preliminary Score: 6/10
Final Score: 3/10 
