Peace Maker Kurogane Episode 1
"Cherry Blossoms"
For the first two minutes of the show, I could have sworn I was staring at recycled backgrounds from Rurouni Kenshin.
Obviously, this show is going to suffer a lot of comparisons to Kenshin. We've got the same time period (different point of view), a very similar art style and design, and some of the themes found in Kenshin. Also, the main character, so far, seems a lot like Yahiko, even down to the "I just want to be stronger," talk.
The animation of the show is pretty good, but during action sequences, cost-cutting makes the scenes look very cheap. Again, the show is probably suffering from comparisons to Rurouni Kenshin (especially the OAV, which most likely had a tremendously larger budget). Something that stuck out to me, also, was the way the characters' mouths move when they talk. From some angles, only the lips animate (no facial changes), which further exemplifies some of the corners cut in the animation process.
The show follows the story of Tatsu, who wants to join the Shinsengumi so that he can avenge his dead parents. Of course, he also wants to be the strongest man in all of Japan. Kind of hard to do when you're just a kid though, especially when your first challenge is to fight one of the Shinsengumi's best swordsmen.
It's always hard to judge the content of a show from its first episode, with so much setting establishment and character introduction, but the first episode of Peace Maker Kurogane doesn't really grab me as something special. However, I have to imagine the people who created this show know that it will invariably draw comparison to Kenshin, so it remains to be seen what their take on this period of Japanese history is.
Rating: C