Welcome to day 7 of Senran Celebration Month. We’re in the final stretch now, one more post after this and we’re done. After I reviewed all the video games, I was unsure of what to do next, the one thing I wanted to write being the thing scheduled for this Thursday to close the celebrations off. So instead I want to go back to one of my good old fashioned discussion posts and talk about what I feel is in store for the future of Senran Kagura.
Future Games?
Of course there will be future games, but the main question is what will they contain? In an article from Duelshockers, the series creator talks about future plans for games and how the censorship problem will affect future releases. I recommend giving the article a read for a more in depth discussion, but to sum it up Kenichiro talks about how he hopes to produce more games on the Nintendo Switch, continue with production of Senran Kagura 7even despite Sony effectively ripping the game the shreds, and maybe transitioning fully to PC and Steam as those release aren’t met with oppressive censorship. Ad for my own personal thoughts, I think abandoning the PS4 is the right move. Censorship is affecting so many platforms, but Nintendo and general PC platforms haven’t hit Senran Kagura nearly as harshly as Sony has, so making the full transition to PC seems like a good move. The news that more games might be made on the Switch is also great news as I feel the Switch is the best console to put these games on. Nintendo has always been good to Ken and the Senran Kagura series, the first 2 games Burst and Deep Crimson appearing on the 3DS back in the franchises early days. So far 2 Senran Kagura games have been released on Switch, Reflections, and Peach Ball. If a game like Re;Newel was released on the Switch it would prove that a main title game can be put on this console and not just spin-off titles, which could open the door to future installments and their potential for multiple platforms. For now though Ken seems to be focusing on the new series he created Jet Girls, which only just started airing its tie-in anime series ahead of the games release on PC and PS4, so it may be a while before Senran Kagura picks up again in terms of title production. So in conclusion, the series doesn’t seem to be running out of game titles for the foreseeable future, although it does seem like an uphill battle as Ken tries to work around and cater to the oppressive censorship problem permeating the series.
More Anime?
Now this one I find to be more of a definite opinion piece as opposed to paraphrasing an interview. The most recent animated series Senran Kagura Shinovi Master, started airing just over a year ago from today, and so it’s been a little while since the last anime. The series itself was received moderately well, although not without its issues, particularly in terms of visuals and a heavy focus on Yumi which was unwelcome for some long time fans. The anime came out of a desire to promote the Japan only mobile game New Link, and the anime Ninja Flash was made with the intention of promoting the DS game Burst. There wouldn’t really be a need to make a new series right now, since the team seems to make the anime focused around promotion and advertising as opposed to being their own thing, as evidenced by the fact that the 2 different anime series share no continuity tying them together. I feel if they were going to bring out a new anime series, it would be in preparation for a future game down the line. The Jet Girls anime was released with pretty much the same reason as Shinovi Master and Ninja Flash, to promote it’s respective game, so with the arrival of a new game, we may receive a new promotional anime to accompany it. Personally I would love a new anime, giving the team a chance to make a series with less problems than Shinovi Master. I would very much love a Peach Beach Splash or Reflections anime adaptation, but at this point I’ll take anything.
The Censorship Crisis
Now for the part where we talk about what I’m sure many have deduced is a real point of annoyance for me. I usually don’t like to get too opinionated on my blog, it’s just not my style and honestly there’s never anything really worth getting opinionated about in the circles I blog about. But this is a problem I feel could really affect Senran Kagura as well as other games. The new Sony censorship policies essentially put Senran Kagura Burst Re;Newel into the ground when it was released for PS4, removing entire segments of the game that other versions had. From this point on many other games received the same oppressive treatment. Why do i feel strongly about this? It’s because it’s oppression of creative expression and ultimately devalues what was months of work or a lot of people. It also doesn’t help that other releases of the games have the features, but the censored versions cost the same, essentially meaning you’re paying for a full game that isn’t there. Other games like Omega Labyrinth Life received the same treatment, entire segments of the game heavily censored only for other versions on the Switch and PC being uncensored while having the same price tag. It leads to a horribly deceptive style of selling the games, making you pay for things you won’t get, which is largely why I essentially ditched PS4. I do hope that as more people become privy to the horrible nature of this censorship that it will be lifted, and I hope that whatever company Kenichiro joins after leaving Marvelous will provide a way to create his games unfettered by censorship.
Optimistic for the Future
So in the end, what is my true stance on the future of this franchise? I will admit that while the future seems bleak in some places, I am cautiously optimistic and supportive. Kenichiro recently announced his new series Jet Girls, with its own anime running right now (might do a review of the series wink wink), but he ain’t about to finish Senran Kagura any time soon. As a long time supporter of this franchise I hope that production of 7even continues smoothly and pray that it isn’t crushed by Sony’s obscene policies like before. The prospect of future games on the Switch is also pretty positive, and with a new company behind his games hopefully Ken can find his footing again. I hope Senran Kagura grows more and more over the next few years, with its fanbase growing day by day and old fans hungry for future installments, and I can’t wait to see what they have in store.
This is it folks, coming this Thursday, the final day of Senran Celebration Month will be here. We’re gonna end this with a bang, and maybe a little surprise to go along with it. For now let me just say, thank you all who have read the posts for this month, it’s been a lot of fun and I’m happy people like them. But enough sappy stuff, I gotta go prepare for the grand finale, stay tuned my friends.
Thank you for reading I hope you enjoyed it. If you did please consider leaving a like and following my blog for updates on future posts. Also follow me on twitter @joe_reviews for further updates and general nonsense.
Average Joe Reviews 
WHO DARES PING ME BAC… oh, hello. Thanks for the link!
(Minor correction, Burst Re:Newal hasn’t come out on Switch, unfortunately! It’d be great to see all the games ported to that platform, though. Imagine if you could play the whole series on one platform, that’d be awesome!)
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Ah right, sorry I thought it had lol. I guess eshop and my eyes deceived me XD
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an overall interesting set of thoughts but like I tell people I don’t think the censorship is the problem here. don’t get me wrong the whole situation sucks and I do agree that all this censorship does is limit creative freedom but in the case of Takaki himself looking over his work and anime that tie into them, the problem isn’t with his excessive use of fanservice and no matter how much fans want to defend him the fact of the matter is just his work is very predictable and at best all come out as average and at worst end up flopping and canceled since valkyrie drive in anime, vita, and apparently mobile game too kind of just dropped dead in the water. This is where I pretty much see Jet Girls ending up cause he’s just doing the same thing he tried with Valkrie Drive. take the elements that worked for senran kagura and tries to revamp it as a different title but at the end of the day you could easily just replace all these characters with senran kagura characters and you’d get the same result.
The reason people often associate him with senran kagura more is just due to the fact the first few games established these characters into something that could’ve and still could be developed more, not to mention characters that pop up in New Wave and the moderate success of new link certainly show how and why senran kagura has a lot of room to grow and develop from. I say moderate success just due to the fact that support for the series is a niche market and that can only go on for so long without financial support since other app games it’s competing against do tend to beat it out.
I would argue Takaki is being oppressed in his creativity but I think this whole situation does show he didn’t have much to begin with since a lot of things have been copy and paste and even your reviews from this month show there’s a repeatable pattern he’s not willing to expand or dive into other territories that deeply. I can’t even say he’s good story teller cause just from how he treats the anime adaptions of his projects are more for the game promotions which isn’t always a good thing especially when comparing the season 1 anime to its manga adaptions that had different artists and writers on them and really expanded the series more on the original 10 girls.
so on the one hand i do agree with this blog but on the other there’s other issues Takaki doesn’t openly admit to that’s gonna drag him down in the long run if he doesn’t start opening up to that and at the very least hire or work with other people who are more experienced in making an actual story with character developments and even look into other folks who have experience in certain genres of games that can make his series more successful. right now he’s working at Cygames and aside from jet girls he’s also helping in the granblue fantasy fighting game developed as a collab between cygames and arcsystem works but granted Takaki is not the main one leading it he’s just there to help in other areas so we can’t really say it’s his project. point being I think it would help him in the long run to relax and let others help in covering the points he struggles in cause as much as we want him to succeed the gaming market is really rough and competitive. especially if his jet girls game has to compete against other games that are grabbing people’s attention more than this one.
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These right here are actually some marvelous points. I do admit that while i try to make the reviews different, I find myself repeating myself and I do agree Ken seems to want to stick to the same formula with little differentiation. The censorship is still a pretty big issue for me, but it does speak true that the series is hindered by it so much that it kinda does show a lack of substance in the source material other than stuff that needs censoring. These have actually been some pretty eye opening comments, I’m glad I read them.
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no problem. it’s not that I want to be a downer on or anything but I think it’s as important for us as fans of anything to show some level or realism when it comes to problems or expressing where our favorite creators can expand and do better in whether it’s in gaming, movies, or anime just as it’s as important to show support for the official release of things we like and want to see succeed.
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I suspect the PS5 will be the first Sony console that I don’t buy. Tired of their censorship. Hopefully the Switch will continue to leave third party releases alone, as I am not a big PC gamer.
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Yeah, Nintendo has said they’re gonna avoid censorship of third party games. Although one new release from them will have censored versions from both Japan and the western releases. But I’m not too worried by this, it’s a one time thing.
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I will buy Tokyo Mirage, as I like Persona games and never owned a Wii U. Shame that even Japan is now suffering the censorship treatment. I was hoping Nintendo was use the Switch release as an opportunity to bring the uncut version to the west,
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Yeah, but I wouldn’t be too worried, this seems to be a one time thing. Reflections, omega labyrinth life and other games got released no censorship included.
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