Karen Senki: The CGI anime you badly needed

=Karen Senki is 11 episodes long and can be seen in full on Crunchyroll. It is unclear if another season was ever planned.

CGI-anime is still relatively new. Most of the titles I've seen usually have characters that are too animated, (Meaning: they can't just sit still, they have to be waving their arms) too sugary, too emo/edgy, too cell shaded or otherwise they look like one of those rip-off dollar store films. 


On rare occasion, I'll see an anime done in MikuMikuDance, which fixes the animation issues, but then the show will last less than a YouTube clip.

And then there's Karen Senki.

The series was made in Taiwan and Japan, and comes from the creative minds of Ouji Hiroi and Kousuke Fujishima. They originally worked together on the Sakura Taisen (Sakura Wars) manga, which still retains a cult following.

The storyline for Karen Senki belongs in the 1990's. It harkens me back to all the shows U.S. Manga Cops. used to produce on VHS, and it's very clear the creator of Sakura Wars wrote this. There's a dark story here, but it's told with tons of high speed action, where the gore and the action makes sense and isn't over abundant.

It's a post-apocalyptic world. At some point, humans had invented robots with perfect A.I. Some of these machines proved to be useful min everything from war machines to just basic, friendly models. And then one day, it happened. Racist robots. Robots that treat humans like garbage. Before long, the robots figured out that they don't actually need humans to survive, and all hell broke loose.

On one such day, a young girl named Karen was out with her parents and her little sister, Touka. Touka was obsessed with anything to do with magical girls, and wanted so badly to be one... when suddenly, she was killed by a robot, and in the fatal blast, Karen lost her eye. So begins Karen's war against the people who robbed her of her family.

As far as the characters go, I really only find myself caring about Karen and her dead little sister Touka. Karen is trying to avenge the death of Touka, but Touka seems pretty good at handling her own, avenging herself. After the first time I saw Touka emerge, she became my favorite character. If you like psychotic-cute characters like Harley Quinn, you'll probably like Touka, who treats the murder of the machine empire as simply, playtime. The fact that she kills with a Magical Girl toy makes it all the more fun. Batteries may not be included, but they are hardly necessary when you can use your own spirit power to wipe out an army.

Karen, not to be outdone, when she's not producing her sister from her stomach, (Yes, it looks like she's giving birth to her dead sister in every fight) is firing her wizard gun and outwitting the enemy.

It's hard to really like the other characters, though I pity Eleanor. Her lover cheated on her, smacked her around the minute she confronted him, and then was killed in front of her, and now due to her mark, she ends up asexually reproducing herself nearly every time she dies. Junkshop is that annoying character in every action movie, who somehow cheats death way too many times. His brother Xiao-gang is also a movie cliche, as the moody emo boy you know better than to trust. The other supporting characters are just not memorable, and often eat up too much screen time. Seek is your average, overbearing "tyrannical government-racist" villain, who is trying to curb the human population.

Luckily, the dialogue scenes are few, as the writing leaves a little to be desired. The action scenes do a better job of storytelling, so after a while, the killing actually becomes artistic. 


The series abruptly stops at eleven episodes and ends on a cliffhanger. Karen gets her revenge, but we last see her falling backwards into an abyss, leaving her fate up to your imagination.

Karen Senki is action packed, thrilling, dark, and highly cerebral. This is the CGI Anime we have badly needed to kick-start the new medium, and the writing beckons for re-watching. At only 10 minutes per episode, it's a quick binge too.

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