Peace Maker Kurogane

This series is about a boy who joins the Shinsengumi in a bid to avenge his family's murder and in the process finds himself.

Given the above, the Shinsengumi are cast as the good guys as opposed to their usual portrayal as blood thirsty fanatics. It becomes the other side that are now portrayed as fanatics.

All th characters in the Shinsengumi are portrayed opposite to their usual portrayal. In fact it seems like most of the time its a bunch of lads banding together for a laugh.

And laughter there is, there are episodes which are quite amusing with comedy elements. The artwork is well rendered and consistent throughout. There is violence, rather bloody and some rather mature themes. In fact I was surprise that it brought out the idea of "shudo" (the jokes of which were pretty hilarious)

The series was entertaining although I feel that there were too many loose ends in terms of unexplained characters and the super natural story arc that abruptly ends.

First off, I really enjoyed this series. I have to preface with that so that I don't feel too bad pointing out the things I found disappointing. I remember seeing the series just after it came out, and have been waiting patiently to see it on DVD (since this rarely happens with Fan-subs). But lo, and behold, here it is! Congrats guys! Now for the caveats: This is not the gore-fest it advertises. I'm not saying that there's no violence. No no, there's plenty of blood and gore, but over the course of the 24 episode series you really only have a handful of good bloody battles. Personally I don't think this mars the storyline at all, in fact the story builds itself to the point where I was more interested in seeing more character development than another fight. But if you're wanting a gore-fest, go somewhere else.

And I was disappointed by the voice-actor chosen for the role of Souji, the female captain of the group. I'm not saying that she did a bad job, but when I saw this for the first time it was in Japanese with subtitles. The English dubbed voice-overs completely change the char of Souji into a somewhat androgynous character, and make her hard to relate to, mostly because you spend most of the first several episode playing "Guess that Gender".

However, aside from those two caveats, I highly recommend this series! Great story, great dialog, and a real attempt at telling a great yard in an unconventional way!