Samurai High School is a comedic spin-off of the original Sengoku Basara anime produced by Brain’s Base studio. It features an alternate timeline where all of the historical characters from the main franchise are shown in a high school setting. It’s not about taking control of Japan, but the high school instead. Oda Nobunaga is the headmaster, Toyotomi Hideyoshi is the former student council president, Tokugawa Ieyasu is the aspiring student council president, Sanada Yukimura is the football club captain, Date Masamune the baseball club captain, and so on, and so forth. Oh, and yes, they still do have superpowers. No, it’s not just visualmetaphor.

Far and away the most bizarre thing about this show is that it’s a bona fide TV production, a full 12 episode cour, 20 minutes per episode, the whole 9 yards. You would expect meme spin-offs like this to come in the form of omake OVAs, you know, miniseries with, like, 5 minutes per episode or something to that effect, but alas, this somehow got made.

If this sounds like something you might enjoy, by all means, go for it. I can certainly say it’s not a terrible production, it’s just that I’m not personally the biggest fan of the franchise – that is to say the anime. I haven’t played the games.

For what it’s worth, I will say that Samurai High School seems to, at times, take itself weirdly seriously as a teen action show, rather than a gag comedy. The OP & ED look and feel particularly serious and edgy and do not fit at all with the actual dumb tone of the anime.

P.S.: Thankfully, it’s animated in the style and features the designs of Production I.G’s version of the anime, not Telecom Animation Film’s Judge End.