To describe Senran Kagura is to best imagine being swarmed with replies on Twitter by masses of users sporting same-looking anime avatars. Only here, in the middle is another anime avatar (female, of course), shouting about tickling or boobs, and ripping off her own clothes to gain super powers.

This stuff exists. No use pretending it doesn’t. Books, comics, film, games; cheesy titillation will always have market value. Were it not created within Japan’s wildly kooky standards of sexuality, Senran Kagura would appear to mock the existence of standards in the American game industry. All this one needs is a tagline: “Bop bountiful bouncy busty babes backward, bitch.” Instant antagonistic appeal of critical circles.

There are techniques like parries and clothes-shredding special moves within this slender brawler, but no one can admit they play Senran Kagura for its repetitious fighting – in third-person, because skirts and low cameras are revealing. Onechanbara and its pervy ilk adopted the beat-em-up rhythm of Dynasty Warriors and made it into their own genre – panty-em-ups.

Unlike Onechanbara or Dead or Alive where the women start without clothes, you need to earn the bra-and-panties privilege here by hacking at rival shinobis. Spankings and tickling occur. Big-eyed anime women squirm and shriek with their shrill voices. Later, there are probably lesbian pillow fights but this mild erotica isn’t worth the time to find out.

2/5