This morning I woke up to some very welcome news. Often, when it comes to Netflix anime, whether that be original or exclusive, it takes forever for the streaming giant to make episodes available outside of Japan. In the case of an original such as Kengan Ashura, it’s a little more forgivable because the episodes have to be made; but in the case of an exclusive series like Baki, which I’ve got no intention of keeping quiet about, it took them over half a year from the time the series aired in Japan to be made available on Netflix. What I’m getting at is, generally the streaming service can be pretty infuriating when it comes to their anime releases — but maybe they’ve learned their lesson this time around.
The first batch of Kengan Ashura episodes was excellent, and if you have an active Netflix subscription, you’ve got no excuse not to watch it. Given the fact that the series was being adapted from a long-running manga series, we knew that those initial 12 episodes weren’t going to cover the whole series. I figured that, given Netflix’ history, we’d probably be waiting until at least 2020 to get our hands on more, but it turns out these episodes are coming sooner than I would have thought; October 31, to be exact. Now for anyone too old to go trick or treating, you’ll be able to watch a bunch of beefy dudes beat it out on the spookiest day of the year.
While Kengan Ashura isn’t a horror show and maybe wouldn’t make for the most appropriate Halloween day viewing, you could argue it is genuinely spooky in certain respects. The richest of the rich throw conventions out the window and settle their secret disputes by hiring extremely skilled fighters to settle their arguments. These fighters are certainly not afraid to kill or be killed, and that’s what makes them so scary. They’re all the boogie man.
Kengan Ashura returns to Netflix on October 31, 2019.