Anime Review: "Master of Martial Hearts"

Every once in a while, anime produces a piece of animation with visuals that astound the imagination, a profound story that provokes deep thought, and results in a total package that arguably qualifies as true art.

And then once in a while I come across something on the opposite end of the spectrum such as Master of Martial Hearts.

If the average person were to judge the DVD slip cover of Master of Martial Hearts, he or she would notice the trio of buxom beauties in various fetish costumes-school girl, nurse, and teacher-and safely assume this would be some animated jiggle fest. And peeling off the slip cover to see the potentially not safe for work rendering of the same girls in various degrees of torn clothing would reinforce that idea. And I would love to say how completely wrong they are... boy, would I like to say that.

The five-episode anime involves a somewhat underground martial arts tournament. School girl protagonist Aya is pulled into the tournament for some ham-fisted reason and fights her way through and learns the dark secrets about the appropriately ominous sounding Dark Realm that is running this affair. It is not the most original of plots but it seems to work so well for other fighting based movies like Dead or Alive-Martial Hearts might as well be Dead or Alive with a palate swap-and King of Fighters,which still means it is a pretty weak plot.

But the razor thin plot is simply used to tie together a series of girl on girl fights that litter the anime. In addition to the aforementioned three girls, each girl fighter is decked out in some fetish outfit such as police officers, flight attendants, shrine maidens, magical girls, mechanics, and of course swimsuits. And it seems each of the girl's clothes has nitroglycerin woven into it because the slightest punch, kick, throw, or other impact causes those clothes to explode into pieces of ripped fabric to expose the wonderfully animated and detailed breasts or panties underneath the clothing.

Yes, it is the old fashioned T&A exploitation route to get the male viewers interested in the series. So what if the fight scenes try too hard to be campy and wind up rather dull? So what if the characters are pretty much stock with little imagination? So what if all the build up in the "plot" leads to a sudden cut that leaves the audience hanging wonder if that was it? Bouncing breasts is not enough to save a series.

Unless it is the Dead or Alive series.