Kengan Ashura has come to a close, and even as it improved in nearly every regard from season to season, its finish was middling at best. While this season had more material that appealed to my particular tastes than any other, the problems that have plagued this show since its first episode persisted through the final episode. So, while this season is undoubtedly the best that Kengan Ashura has to offer, it remains a poor facsimile of other martial arts series and fails to understand what makes these kinds of stories appealing.

To start with the positives, this is the best Kengan Ashura has ever looked. While it's still jarring to see characters rendered in different animation styles on screen together, the 3D models have never looked better in fights. To compensate for CGI animation's deficiency in conveying weight and impact, the animators chose to alter the coloring and texture of the character models. When a character takes a particularly nasty blow, they'll immediately start bruising or expelling viscera that stains their clothes and skin. The result is gnarly, and the show finally feels like it's living up to its graphic reputation.

The fights themselves also have some of the best pacing of the series. Between this part, which consists of a longer-than-usual sixteen episodes and fewer fights for them to cover in this tournament format, matches finally feel like they have a narrative and serve as a means to flesh out characters. One of the best examples of this is the bout between Sen Hatsumi and Agito Kanoh; where we learn that Sen wants to achieve peak martial prowess without having to sacrifice his identity to a rigid training structure and that Agito is a little freak who gets a base level pleasure through violence. While there are fewer fights this season than in past seasons, quality trumps quantity, and the handful of fights are the best of the series.

While always one of the anime's stronger points, the music in season two part two of Kengan Ashura is my favorite of the franchise. The new opening song, "Feel My Pain" by HEY-SMITH is a ska-punk number that gives Streetlight Manifesto vibes. Similarly, the ending song "NANI!?" by rapper Jin Dogg made me recall "ITADAKIMASU" by Kazuhiro "MEEBEE" Abo from the No More Heroes 3 OST. This is all to say that the music of Kengan Ashura is more fun than ever in this batch of episodes and that these tracks build upon the edgelord sonic identity of the previous season splendidly.

Now for the negatives, of which there are many. Put simply, the writing in Kengan Ashura is terrible. Outside of a few lines of dialogue that mustered a chuckle out of me, I can't find anything positive to say in terms of the show's plot, character, or concept writing. For example, this season, Setsuna Kiryu and Tokita Ohma finally face off. Kiryu worships Ohma like a god, thanks to an act of violence he witnessed Ohma commit when they were children. However, he believes that Ohma's teacher, Tokita Niko, ruined Ohma by teaching him the Niko martial arts style, dampening Ohma's violent impulses. Hallucinations of Niko drive Kiryu into madness and a deep hatred of Niko and the Niko style. Throughout their fight, Kiryu tries to push Ohma into using the Possessed by a God technique, which transforms Ohma into a monstrous form more in line with his idea of what a violent god should look and act like.

However, Possessed by a God is a technique within the Niko martial arts style, making Kiryu's motivations a logical fallacy! I know this irrationality can be explained by pointing out that Kiryu is clearly having a mental break, but that excuse doesn't make this writing interesting or even good. It's bad writing when a character whose entire multi-season arc is undercut by information that was readily available to them. Poorly thought-out writing choices like this make it impossible to think of Kiryu as a character with interiority who believably developed his identity and values, and instead make it clear that he's just a puppet that will do or say whatever has to be done to push the plot forward.

Without getting into spoilers, the anime's plot is also fairly inconsequential and ends without wrapping up several loose ends. Those dudes in suits who showed up during the Kengan Association coup last season who were seemingly acting independently from any previously established faction? This season doesn't bother explaining what's going on with them and kicks that story-critical can down the road to a sequel series that might never happen. It's okay for an anime to have mystery and build up future storylines, but it's frustrating to have a pretty significant plot development at the end of one season totally ignored in the following season.

This season also wastes a lot of time trying to create artificial tension. There are multiple conversations about companies swapping out their injured fighter for a fresh one, and they never follow through. Similarly, the show spends a lot of time talking about how close some characters are to dying, but that tension also feels hollow. Characters in previous seasons came back to life after having their neck snapped or after being injected with a lethal amount of poison, so death feels of little consequence in this supposedly hardcore and edgy anime. Further playing into this artificial tension is a lengthy flashback sequence that's told out of chronological order for the sole purpose of making the events therein seem more interesting than they really are.

The worldview and attitude of Kengan Ashura also remain as cynical and skuzzy this season as in the prior seasons. In one scene, audience members start verbally berating a fighter for seemingly no reason. In another scene, we learn that a major character was part of a battle to the death ritual with no explanation for why the unmentioned group responsible would do such a thing. And, as is now customary with Kengan Ashura, there are a couple of scenes where adult men are cool with, and even encourage, the idea of sixteen-year-old girls having physical or romantic relationships with men well into their twenties.

Not only is the writing in this show poor, but it advocates for a really grim worldview that always assumes the worst of people and normalizes ideas harmful to vulnerable groups.

On a more technical note, the English dub this time around is surprisingly rough and a step back from the previous seasons. While the Japanese performances and subtitling remain serviceable, the English script has some distracting translation choices. Some strange phrases from this season include, "Ever since they were young, the two would fight and compare techniques many years ago," "Show 'em how we do it in Japan," when the speaker is a very American man, and "What the heck is Life Advance? I thought his teacher had forbidden him from using that. Why is he trying to do something so dangerous?" A lot of meaning and original intent are lost in these clunky translations, and it's surprising to hear a dub with these kinds of issues in 2024.

That said, chances are you've already made up your mind whether you want to give Kengan Ashura your time and energy now that it's over the fifty-episode mark. If you enjoy this anime, congrats, but if you're reading this, I hope you expand out to other martial arts media. Kengan Ashura is a superficial anime with a mean-spirited core that's best enjoyed as YouTube or TikTok clips, where its better-than-ever fights are removed from their underwhelming context.