Anime: Shadow Skill (1998)

Shadow Skill is quite interesting when it begins, quickly having its own distinctive identity as a fighting series and setting up a story which may turn out to be amazing if handled nicely. And that is practically its downfall; it does very little with its own potential.

Shadow Skill is the name of a powerful fighting style, perfected along the years by slaves whose hands were always in chains. Thus all its power lies in somersaults and aerial foot attacks, while leaving the hands to be mainly for defense. In a way it shares the same origin as the funky Capoeira style, while adding some superpowers like sonic booms and bone cracking grabs. As far as the fighting goes, it is quite spectacular on a superficial level, as there is a lot of jumping in the air, using boomerangs, and binding chains, and smashing both terrain and skulls alike. Most of the songs are cool to listen and make the battles more exciting as well.

The problem here is the production values, which are not allowing the fighting arts to look as smooth and spectacular as they could have been and mostly end up feeling stiff or crude most of the time. Reused frames and static caricatures are all over the place, while the faces distort a lot during choreographies, something akin to what they did in Naruto battles (hiring different people for the battle scenes). It’s just Studio DEEN doing its usual lazy work and trashing its premises for retarded action and fan service. Well, there isn’t a ton of nude in it but surely, all those tight clothes, bouncing boobs, macho men, and cute girl sidekick can’t be ignored. But it doesn’t overdo it as much as the lack of realism in fighting, which in turn takes a lot away from the gravity of the backdrop story.

And yes, there is a backdrop story and I must say it is a decent one. The heroine Elle is the current practitioner of this style, and is also one of the four elite champions of her kingdom, thus her role is to protect the king from invading armies and other sort of internal issues such as raving monsters and powerful criminals. Along her travels an orphan boy she found in the battlefield, who is dead set on learning her style and fighting to protect all he loves. There are lots of scenes where the two of them share their worries and reveal their sad pasts, all part of a way of life where you need to fight for all sorts of reasons. And yes, typical to its genre all the fighters love to kick ass because it makes them be in control, gives them a sense of security, help them to find happiness through the thanking of the people they save, and so on. Elle is also not a peon of the king, as she constantly does things her own way, and usually acts very vulgar and undisciplined; thus she is a fine grey character. He adopted brother Gau also is interesting for slowly learning of how the world works and improving fast in the Shadow Skill. It has a very nice way of making you feel like there is more to the fighting; a serious aspect besides brainless action. And it is not just personal drama, as there is a sinister plan looming in the background, as evil fighters prepare to take over the kingdom by killing its elite protectors. Thus many of the seemingly stand-alone missions are in reality attempts to kill Elle and weaken the king’s defenses.

But as I said, it does very little to properly present all its ideas. Half the episodes feel like stand alone missions where we get to know the characters through their tragic pasts. And when the second part begins and the conspiracy starts to reveal, lots of stuff feel random and poorly executed. There is a super powerful man called Scarface, and he acts all mysterious and stuff, saving the heroes when they are in trouble before disappearing. He ends up being nothing but a plot device for cheap thrills. There is also the elite warrior of the conspirators, and he acts all mysterious before his goals are revealed and are just pitiful megalomaniac stuff. There is this chain-summoning girl dressed in green joining them midway as some sort of emotional support as well as a possible romance, but she ends up being useless and even a bother, as she constantly stands in the way of the fighting. And there is this invading army nobody can possibly stop when they otherwise can level buildings with a punch. The ending is also very rushed and even leaves things unexplained. Damn you DEEN; will you ever care to do it right?

And sadly, there are simply way too many shows out there that share Shadow Skill’s elements one way or another. When you think about Capoeira for example, you would easily prefer Cowboy Bebop or Samurai Champloo over this. When you think about a practitioner of a deadly martial art, Hokuto no Ken is eons cooler. A woman with a tragic past roaming the land along with a boy and fighting monsters? Here comes Claymore. I could go on forever with these comparisons but down to it, this could have been a lot more than your usual half-baked DEEN travesty.

And now for some excused scorings.

Shadow skill is a good anime. It has a good story line and the characters are well done in terms of background history and present achievement.
But powerful characters didnt really participate in the anime. they were just there as guides, pushing the weaker characters to fight. there shud have been stronger enemies in the anime so that we wud see the strength of the powerful characters. One of the most annoying parts of the anime is the fact that they wasted too much time explaining things that were not neccessary, and the fact that the ending was shabby and not well done. But apart from that, the anime was enjoyable. Its an anime u wud watch and wouldnt want to watch over again

Tries to be too serious and preachy instead of normal fighting-with-a-reason.

The animation is only okay. Although the series is from 1998, it has a lot of reused frames, during the fights, but also during other scenes. The backgrounds when they run are mostly reused, which is clearly visible - especially when you see the same man about 12 times in the background before they finally stop.
They also show that it's a low budget series, since they regularly just stop the animation and show a still picture with a cliffhanger-like situation, while they are still talking and you can hear the sfx from walking or running. While the still picture is cool looking, it's not really suitable for an anime, especially when the episode/story is not done yet.
Although the characters usually look good, sometimes they feel a bit misformed, as if they hired another animator who wasn't that used to them yet.

The OP-song is pretty decent. It's not a great song, but it fits the series perfectly and it's enjoyable listening to. The same goes for the ED-song, although that one changes to another song sometimes, which is (imho) not that good as the normal one from Spirit Level.
The voices for the characters are done pretty well. The voice of Elle Ragu has a really good seiyuu, which fits the character perfectly, but characters like Gau and Kyou are a bit less well done. They sometimes sound like they're weak characters and don't really feel comfortable in the series.

The story is not so great as I thought it would be. While the beginning was mostly about Elle being a Sevaar and Gau being sort of her student, it was a pretty decent running story. Unfortunately, when the 'real' story kicks in, things get overly complicated with lots of conspiracies which are not all solved at the end. This causes the story to become bad, especially since it's not a good thing to leave the main conspiracy open.
When watching the series as an entertaining show with a small story, the story is too involving and too complicated near the end to really enjoy brainless fighting, which makes it even unsuitable for that kind of watcher.

Elle Ragu is the perfect character for this series; a strong fighter with a perfect sense for when to fight, when to protect and on all other occasions to drink ;) Irresponsible at all times, unless she feels the importance of the situation. Elle is the kind of mentor you want all fighters to have.
Gau Ban is the other way around. He is practically the main character, but he gets fooled around too often. Things often get too preachy when Gau gets in a pinch, resulting in a victory (either physical or mental) which isn't always really satisfactory for the watcher.
While there are other characters, Kyou is also an important character for the series. While Kyou isn't really important for the story, she does get a lot of screentime, which is mostly about concern about Gau. And while one shouldn't worry too much about that, in a series which resolves so much around fighting, Kyou gets more and more annoying towards the end.

Is it rewatchable? It probably is, although one might disagree because of the story, which is a closed ending but leaves important things unsolved. But there are fights and substories which are indeed good enough to rewatch someday.
I for once liked half of it, but to me Shadow Skill TV tried to be much more than it was - and suddenly found out that they didn't have the time to solve it all. So they just decided not to and end the series with an ending which fits. The ending was indeed not bad, but when looking at the story, they never bothered to back up some parts of the story at all except introducing.

Shadow Skill is a good fighting series. I found it to be very similar to Slayers, except it was more serious and the characters stay in the same place.
The story was good (politics mixed with martial arts), it's a shame that's the secondary characters are under employed. The series would have been better if they were better used.

Animation
Average. The fightings are well animated.

Sound
Good. I like the OP and ED.
Special note to the episode when Elle sang the OP in the Inn, very funny.

Story
Good.
A lot of points stay unexplained. It feels like the authors expected a second series.

Character
Good.
I regret the secondary characters stay too much in the background. I hate when powerful characters don't act in a crisis because they 'feel' it's the role of the much weaker main character. It's totally unrealistic.

Value
I don't think I'll watch it again, but I'll lend the series to friends. It's worth a view.

I'll make a final reproach :

*little spoiler*

The ending.
Very bad and unimaginative ending. I hate when the situation is the same at the end than at the beginning. It looks like the 26 eps of fighting, trials and achievements were just anecdotal.