Musashi Gundoh


Musashi Gundoh is a Japanese anime television series, based on an unused story by Monkey Punch. It premiered in Japan on the satellite station BS-i on April 9, 2006, and was also set to be broadcast across Japan by the anime satellite television network Animax from October 2006. It is also legally distributed over the Internet by GyaO from May 13, 2006. According to the producer, there were originally plans to broadcast the anime overseas, but they were scrapped due to poor reception of the anime.
Produced on a low budget, the series has been infamous for poor animation, and has attracted a cult following for this reason. It uses uncropped live photos for backgrounds, and its sound effects are completely out of synch with the animation. It is also the directorial debut for animator Yūki Kinoshita, who previously worked as a technical animation director, storyboard artist and key animator.

Overview

Musashi Gundoh is set in a fictional feudal era of Japan, where the Toyotomi Shogunate governs the nation. The anime tells the story of Musashi, a young practitioner of "gundoh", a martial art involving the use of guns. The series deals with Musashi's battles against a group of monsters called "Ayakashi".

Quality issues

In 2006, Japan's televised anime market was severely oversaturated, at the breaking point of an anime bubble which had also hit America and Europe. Musashi was one of over 60 new shows airing during its season. The plot relies on many action scenes, which require a large amount of animation, and the direction of these scenes attempts to somehow mix complex traditional swordfight imagery with gunplay. However, due to the chronic shortage of human resources and budgets for the production, the animation issues became apparent on-screen, and soon viewers began to pay more attention to the degrading drawing quality and nonsensical settings than to the content of the plot. For this series, both the in-betweens and key animation were ordered from overseas, mainly from China, which was agreed upon in advance by the production team, and there were no sufficient meetings with the director and other domestic staff. Normally, production is finished within a week or two, and if the quality is still not good enough, it can be reworked or sent to the video editing process. However, in the production environment of Musashi Gundoh, the footage ordered from overseas was delivered to the director the day before it was to be broadcast for video editing, and there was no time to make corrections to the poor footage, so episodes were broadcast as is.
Yūki Kinoshita, the director, was not attempting to create a bad anime. He stated about the reaction of the viewers, "At first I was angry at the ridicule, but in the end, the viewers' voices encouraged me to work hard even in an environment that made me want to run away." He also said, "The degradation of the drawings in this anime could have recurred elsewhere. The fundamental problem is that there is too much being produced in the entire animation industry." In addition, when the DVDs were about to release, he said that he wanted to make as many corrections as possible so that his power would not be underestimated, but in the end, only the uncorrected versions were released.

Characters

Musashi side

Musashi Miyamoto
His notable line: "Wow, it's dazzling!"
Ronin
Ninja-Taro
Priest Takuan
Desperado
Kaguya
Dabi-no-ji
Sasuke Sarutobi
'''The Horse'''

Ayakashi side

Yasha
Ryogen
Jijouda
'''Gandadarn'''