Musashi Gundoh

""Uo' mabushi'!" ("Wow, it's dazzling!")"

- Miyamoto Musashi

Possibly the defining experience in So Bad It's Good anime.

Musashi Gundoh is set in a fictional feudal era of Japan, when the Toyotomi Shogunate (instead of Tokugawa) governed the nation. The anime tells the story of Musashi, a young practitioner of "gundoh", a martial art involving the use of guns. The series deals with Musashi's battles against a group of monsters called "Ayakashi". The art is terrible, the action is terrible, the plot... well, the series was never translated into English, and so people are reluctant to talk about the plot. Legend has it that it's funny.

That the TV broadcast version is considered superior to the retouched DVD release certainly says something.


 * Bloodless Carnage: Thanks to a bunch of "sleeping" bullets!
 * GIS Syndrome: Go ahead. Count the number of times the background isn't an obvious .jpeg image.
 * Gun Fu: Gun-doh, though most of the time it only really amounts to just a whole lot of jumping around.
 * He Also Did: This was created by Monkey Punch, better known for Lupin III, a much better show.
 * Mind Screw: Even if the entire series were subtitled, apparently the show wouldn't make any sense anyway, as a horrible editing job left out many key plot details.
 * Miyamoto Musashi is rolling in his grave.
 * Off-Model: Remedied in the DVD version. Unfortunately, the QUALITY animation is an important part of the viewing experience, so most people prefer the TV version.
 * One-Man Army: Implied with Musashi, seeing as one of his favorite pasttimes is "castle-taking."
 * Pistol-Whipping
 * Set Swords to Stun: In the first episode, Musashi slices up a bunch of people with an electric sword that stuns but does not kill.