Shenmue

The long awaited Shenmue Anime is here and they have brought to life the beautiful story from You Suzuki's creation. It's action packed and has good character development. Looking forward to the rest of the series.

The plot is very well thought out and adds new layers to the characters. In video games, due to technical and dubbing issues, the voices are somewhat flat. In this adaptation, in the version with Japanese audio, they are the same voice actors but adding all the expressiveness that was not possible in the games.

The animation of the series is correct, it is not dazzling and the low budget is noticeable in some scenes where the saving of frames is very evident. But instead of subtracting it seems to complement very well with the story whose development is more leisurely. So maybe it's a creative decision.

Show has good action sequences and soundtrack. The art work for this really does fans of the video game series justice with accurate depictions of locations fans may have explored. The plot of the show is great and many plot points tie into one another smoothly.

With an engaging story and high production value this martial arts murder mystery ought to appeal to fans of anime, fans of videogames, and fans of good storytelling.

As a fan of the Shenmue franchise for over twenty years, I set the bar high for Shenmue: The Animation. After watching the first episode (twice) I am blown away at the quality that was delivered. It felt both fresh and familiar. It has exceeded my expectations, and I eagerly await the next episode to drop.