I’m more of a Gouf man, but a Kampfer is fine too.
Two episode impression
Oh Japan, you’re so silly with your various fascinations and strange fetishes, though the blatant obsession with all things German still mystifies me. I’m convinced everyone in Japan is a closet Germanophile at heart. In their defense, Germany is a pretty cool country though. Any country that can give us apple strudel and the most dangerous racetrack known to man gets a thumbs up in my book. This brings us to Kampfer, one of the latest anime to throw around German words like no one’s business without having anything else remotely German in it.
The premise is something like… Boy named Natsuru likes girl, girl is uninterested in boy, boy becomes Kampfer and turns into hot girl, girl likes genderbended boy, and boy now has to fight other Kampfers for reasons yet unexplained. Oh yeah, there are also talking, disemboweled stuffed animals. Any questions? In a nutshell Kampfer is pretty much this generation’s version of Ranma 1/2 except with heavy emphasis on shoujo-ai, girl-on-girl action (the non-sexual kind… maybe the sexual kind later), and plenty of fanservice. My sexuality hasn’t been this confused since I first saw Bridget… And I couldn’t be happier. Wut?
As a whole, Kampfer is wholly unremarkable. The voice acting and comedy are good, including some shamelessly self-aware seiyuu jokes concerning Yui Horie and Yukari Tamura, while everything else borders on average. The action sequences so far didn’t blow me out of my seat or anything, but they were satisfactory. I’m guessing this is going to be more of an action show than a comedy in the long run, so that’s just something to keep in mind. Kampfer falls somewhere into the average range but is enjoyable enough and short at 12 episodes. If genderbending and watching girls beat the crap out of each other turns you on, you may want to give this a go. I’m a sucker for both, so Kampfer gets to stay on my watchlist until it finishes or no longer amuses me, whichever comes first.
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Dude, I thought I was the only one that noticed the germanophillia in anime!
People I’ve mentioned this to weren’t responsive. I mean, spells in German instead of Latin, like in Fate/Stay Night, the quite Germanic feeling of many series, Asuka Sohryu Langley being half-German, Monster, Pumpkin Scissors, even the names of things like Seele, both in NGE and 07-Ghost… and the ghosts’ names..
Guy´s last blog ..MegaHouse Shizuka from Queen’s Blade Review.
@Guy: Think German!
Ein, Zwei, Drei… ah.
“You’re hopeless, Shinji! Computer, switch language to Japanese.”
Guy´s last blog ..MegaHouse Shizuka from Queen’s Blade Review.
ill agree alot of great actors in this, akane is my favorite so far she adds some interesting comedy and love her expressions. Natsuru seems alright too but i think this show wants to push his male side out of the picture for now, ah well we will see.
foshizzel´s last blog ..Kampfer 2 girlxgirlxboy?!
I’m not big on series where boys turn into girls, there are some I like so there are exceptions. But in general that’s a turn off for a theme for me.
lovelyduckie´s last blog ..Collecting Figures: Fun and Profitable