Tensui no Sakuna-hime

Animes like these never really have people jumping to recommend them to others, but in these little shows you can sometimes find something really quite decent and that’s what this is.

I always enjoyed the vibes of the farming villages and countryside when watching Inuyasha, but could you really make a whole 13 series anime about rice? Well here’s the little secret guys, it’s not really all about farming.

But okay to answer the question, can you make an anime about rice? Let’s start with the visuals. There isn’t much to complain about, the landscapes are generally beautiful, the characters less so, bur that’s ... because of the style of art, not really an issue with artist skill. I must say though, character design is very hit or miss. On the one hand you can get, say, a Yui or a Kamuhitsuki, while on the other hand you can get a Kinta, or some of the regular inhabitants of the capital city. Yeah, overall the characters are not the best to look at. The animation can be described as simply normal. They do water and crops pretty well, but it is a bit lacking when it comes to battle scenes, especially during the beginning.

Now while characters might be badly designed sometimes, that hails in comparison to how badly written some are. Well, I’m moreso talking about one specific character, that being of course Kinta. During the beginning of the show I questioned why they even included all these other characters. Everything focused on Sakuna, the rest didn’t contribute anything at all, they barely spoke and barely did well anything at all. But as it went on I wished for it to go back because Kinta was so unbearable. Now I understand that him acting this way is part of the story and just like everyone else he matures and grows as the show goes on, but for those episodes before we saw him lighten up, every time he was on screen I would despair. He was mean, bratty, contributed nothing but expected everything and so much more. It certainly didn’t help he is heinous looking, and has a voice to match his looks. Well his voice isn’t that bad, but it isn’t good either. Ultimately what I’m trying to say here is Kinta is so uniquely annoying as a character it took me out of the show for a while. As for the other characters, they get their time and I think they’re all fairly decent, with the notable one being Kokorowa, I thought she was a very nice and complicated figure who showed lots of complexity and growth.

Now Sakuna had 2 ways it could play out story-wise. It could be about the rice farm totally, the relationships between the characters, the hardships of agricultural life and watching Sakuna mature and step up to her role as goddess of the harvest. Then there is the way that it went. I suppose it would be pretty boring if it just focused on the farming life. I’m trying to avoid spoilers, so I’ll just say that by the last episodes of the show, rice has really nothing to do with the story at all. And I’m not saying this is bad, in fact I actually quite enjoyed the story. It wasn’t exactly hard-hitting or emotionally complex, but it was entertaining, and that’s what matters right?

The “oh, all our side characters are slowly developing into gods” part took me ont of it though. The reason I can say that and still mark my review as having no spoilers is because that part of the story has quite literally 0 bearing on anything else. It’s just kind of thrown in there for no good reason at all. A big theme of the show is suicidal empathy. Well, the creators probably wouldn’t say it that way. It’s displayed as essentially a good in the show. Sakuna and her crew really don’t seem to learn their lesson about it. “Oh but if we did x we would be no different than y!” They learn the hard way the results, and are forced to confront reality. It was annoying watching it play out, but it’s tolerable. And I must also say, the final episode was really great. It can get slow in the episodes building up to it, but it really stood out and proved its worth.

Now I don’t know if this is just me showing my cultural ignorance here, but based on the visuals and even storyline, one might expect the characters to be speaking Chinese instead of Japanese, just based on my experience with Chinese media. But they’re not and it is a distinctly Japanese show. Especially with the focus on demons.

So, would Sakuna: of rice and ruin be something I recommend first to someone? No, probably not, but thats because it really isn’t that kind of show. It’s humble and hidden away, something quick you watch in between bigger names, and are impressed at its performance. It’s an “if you have the time” anime, and it does its job pretty well. So go and enjoy the nice and decent scenes of growing rice, and everything else that comes with doing it on the isle of demons.

Okay...who was expecting this? Sakuna: Of Rice and Ruin is a video game that came out in 2020 and became surprisingly popular. I bought the video game at a random GameStop because it was on sale for cheap, though I haven't gotten around to playing it yet. I really ought to remedy that. But the game was so popular that PA Works decided to adapt it into an anime, which aired from July to September of 2024. Hell, the game was successful enough that there's not only going to be a second anime season, but a whole new sequel game that's currently in production. But ... this review is just going to be for the anime. I figured I'd watch this as a means to familiarize myself with Sakuna: Of Rice and Ruin before playing the game, and...it's alright. I like the anime okay, but like most game-to-screen adaptations, it suffers from the fact that it's a 12-episode anime trying to adapt a game that's 30-50 hours long.

In the far eastern corner of the country of Yanato, it has been believed since ancient times that there are two worlds in this land: the world at the top where the gods live and the world at the foot of the mountain where humans live. Princess Sakuna, a high-ranking deity who lives in the world of the summit, was born to a war god and a fertility god is a spoiled brat who would rather spend her days lazing around and drinking than doing any work herself, wasting the grains her parents had stored like a trust fund kid. One day, due to some strange circumstances involving a group of humans that wandered into the Lofty Realm, she is banished from the city of the gods and sent to Hinoe Island—an isolated island inhabited by demons—accompanied by the humans in question. In a barren land where there is barely enough food for the next day, she cultivates the soil, grows rice, and sets out to defeat the demons. The humans who have stumbled into the world of the gods and the novice fertility god begin their rice-husk-filled communal life together.

As far as its production values go, Sakuna: Of Rice and Ruin's anime is fine. The backgrounds are detailed, the character designs are faithful to their game counterparts, the fight scenes are well choreographed, and the actual animation is decent. It'd be pretty hard to adapt the game's thick linework and unique style into animation, but for the most part, it does its job well with what it has. Honestly, compared to another PA Works anime, Nanare Hananare, Sakuna's production values are far superior. At least Sakuna doesn't go the route of giving everything and everyone gaudy colored outlines that make everything look radioactive and a literal assault on the eyes. The execution of stuff like that really makes a world of difference in either making or breaking a show. Yeah, I couldn't resist taking the potshot at Narenare. I have even less to say about the soundtrack. It's fine, it does its job, I don't know if it reuses BGM from the games or not, but I did like what was there. I like the ending theme better than the opening theme.

Speaking as someone who hasn't played the game, I'm sad to say that the characters definitely suffer from the transition from game to anime. Honestly, the characters are pretty bland and are only memorable because of their character designs rather than their personalities, and even when they do get development, they stop being relevant after they change a little bit and don't get to do anything anymore. Now, to be fair, it's impossible to compress a several hour long game into a 12-episode anime, so of course a lot would have to be left on the cutting board. But the writing around the characters sometimes feels so haphazard that it feels like they change personalities whenever the plot feels its convenient. For example, at one point, Sakuna finds Kaimaru nursing a demon's injuries, and she gets angry and tries to kill the demon...and seconds later she's like "Nah, I won't kill you after all because I forgive you and don't want to continue the cycle of hatred." Even though beforehand there was nothing that indicated that hatred was even a running plot thread, so it feels less like Sakuna is actually developing as a character and more like the writers putting stuff in her mouth because they wrote themselves into a corner and hastily slapped a random Deus Ex Machina together. Even without knowledge of the game, the characters' development feels really rushed. I like that Sakuna is forced to grow from being a spoiled brat to someone more capable, that's actually one of the anime's strengths, but the other characters are made to be bum rushed through their development, making any growth they receive have less impact. Oh, and the villains are so generic and laughably cliche that I can't even remember their names.

That's not even going into how strange the plot gets, and I don't mean that in a good way. One episode goes into Yui's backstory...and suddenly introduces aliens that come right the hell out of nowhere, contribute absolutely nothing to the narrative, disappear, and nobody so much as comments on it, or they only mention it nonchalantly and move on to the next thing. I'm sure the game goes into it, probably, but the anime treats this whole thing like a Big-Lipped Aligator Moment and makes no effort to actually explain just what the hell these aliens are! Plus, their whole existence just raises a ton of questions that are never answered: Are all the demons on the island just weird aliens? Is the “Lofty Realm” not a divine realm for gods but just some advanced civilization posing as them? Are these places even on the same planet?! You can't dump aliens into my medieval fantasy farming show without some kind of elaboration! This whole bit was just so baffling and out of nowhere that it made me wonder just who the hell thought that was a good idea. Speaking of, the second half of the anime starts to go off the rails as it rushes through important plot points and doesn't really try to give them any real gravitas whatsoever, cutting out important bits from the game for the sake of getting through the story. For example, at one point Sakuna finds out that her friend Kokorowa has been conspiring against her and confronts her about it. The anime just has the two of them talk and it's played for some needless comedy, while in the game, it's a full-on boss fight. There's also all the later reveals about Kaimaru, which just absolutely scream Deus Ex Machina, and they're just as bad as they sound. Also, the anime has a pretty huge continuity error that I'm surprised nobody caught: One episode states that it takes three years for Sakuna and her friends to rebuild their destroyed home and fields...yet the characters are never shown physically aging. For Sakuna this makes sense since she's a goddess, but everyone else is human, and you'd think they'd physically grow up a bit, with their designs changing over the course of those three years, but nope, they look and stay the same, even Kaimaru, a toddler. Like...what? How did this get past quality control?

In the end, Sakuna: Of Rice and Ruin, for all its effort, is yet another addition to the pile of middling to bad video game adaptations that don't manage to do its source material justice. That said, it did get me curious about the game, so it's got that going for it. But I recommend skipping this one, especially if you like the game in question. It's still better than the incoherent mess that is Nanare Hananare!

Game adaptations are definitely an interesting medium. One way or another, they're very loose adaptations of their game counterpart due to the game in nature being a completely different experience -- usually spending tens of hours to complete. How does one adapt those hours of gameplay into a mere four hour adaptation?

Mobile games, in my experience actually tend to have the most success. Surprisingly, the production value of mobile game anime adaptations tend to be the highest, with a solid plot that the original game might not have been able to produce in it's mobile medium. Examples can be Rage of Bahamut Genesis (only season ... 1 let's be honest here) or Magatsu Wahrheit: Zuerst.

Tensui no Sakuna hime? It's a console game. Still, I don't judge. The first six or so episodes were good, especially the first 3 or so. It's about farming on a remote island, with a main character that acts spoiled, but slowly comes to age as the story progresses. Whether it be doing minor chores, taking on major responsibilities, or acting as a mediator, Sakuna-hime goes from a pampered spoiled god to someone that is shouldered with a bit of responsibility as a Goddess of Harvest. Sakuna-hime is a great character that's multifaceted and experiences many dynamic changes due to the challenges and hurdles she's forced to confront.

However, that's where all the magic stops happening. When the show becomes less about character development and farming, then it starts going downhill. Suddenly, a show about farming and developing land and character interaction becomes some third rate shounen anime about beating the evil god. Of course, this theme about demons looming around is certainly a theme that was always behind the scenes, but to so suddenly only focus about fighting was a wrong move. You're subject to the most one dimensional villains with self-righteous dialogue from Sakuna-hime and the rest of the cast that it's sickening. Yet another cliche-filled dialogue about how "we have to stop the cycle of hatred," and yet none of the main characters are forced to make a difficult moral decision. Rather, despite letting go villains and evil-doers constantly, the issue resolves by itself. By "forgiving everyone," Sakuna-hime and her people are able to still easily be absolved of any consequences due to plot armor. The final boss is similarly boring plot armor fights where feelings and sentiments are more important than the fight itself.

Additionally, I never said that the side characters were good. Tama is good just because he's mentoring/a close companion of Sakuna, but the rest of the characters -- especially the human ones -- are extremely cliche. Kinta was supposed to be a reclusive, polemic yet perhaps misunderstood or kind character that could have been explored a lot more than it should have. His whole arc with Yui kind of makes sense, but it just seems quite rushed and there's not enough exploration into the character relations afterwards for me to care. In fact, after Kinta's and Yui's character arc, he kind of just becomes a completely different character, which is to say he becomes a nice and generic side character that never contributes to the plot again. Tauemon, Myrthe, and Kaimaru are also similar in that there are some surface level descriptions of all of them, none of which are going into depth, and they also similarly contribute literally nothing to the story other than sometimes functioning as a plot device to a Hero's Journey.

If all of the human characters were likeable, the slice of life farming with some fights and magical happenings could have carried the entire show for 12 episodes, but unfortunately that would require good writing capabilities. Instead, if you slap an already failing cast of side characters and shove them away to make way for a generic and below average shounen show about beating the big bad boss guy, it's still slop, but you can get away with the terrible writing you had in the initial half of the show.

Art was fine, probably above average definitely when it comes to character design, details, and renders, but it was quite obvious that 90% of the budget was focused on the first few episodes where the visuals were quite a few notches above the latter parts of the show.

Overall, an uninspired anime adaptation that could have been great if it focused on character development and better writing.