Ryo

You cannot cram much into twenty-five minutes, so even though the setting and story outline is quite interesting, the final result is nothing special. It could have been a decent feature-length movie or even an interesting anime series; however, this way, it is just a nondescript period piece with a vague and undeveloped journey. You are expected to sort of guess the main ideas and what Ryouma is fighting for. There is a thirst for revenge toward the end, although we do not get to see much of it. Anyway, we already know because of Japanese history that there will not be any revenge killing because, in real life, Hijikata Toshizou did not die at that time. I liked the animation, I did not care for the soundtrack, and the characters were quite interesting. However, once again, I did not see enough of them to form any kind of coherent picture. In my opinion, this is below average - 4.5/10 (12/31/2016)