Did you people see the same film I saw?

Beautiful, moving film.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.

Set in an alternate version of Japan's Edo period where steam powered mecha called Onigami keep foreign ships away and maintain Japan's isolation this series follows Keiichirou Tokugawa a rowdy youth in Nagasaki who is destined for greatness. Keiichirou also has a rather awkward problem; every time he comes into contact with a girl he breaks out in a rash! It turns out this was the result of a curse; he is destined to pilot a powerful Onigami called Susanoo and it can only be operated by a virgin and his female copilot! As is often the way with such series our protagonist soon builds up a harem of attractive girls each vying to be selected as his copilot; most notably Kiriko, a buxom ninja and the half demon Chiharu. Over the course of the series they get into a variety of scrapes; early on these are mainly comic but later on they must confront real enemies and the future of Japan is in their hands.This series felt like the creators couldn't really decide what sort of series they wanted to make; the early episodes were fan-service heavy comedies where they took full advantage of the fact that Keiichirou lived in a bath house then as the action intensified the humour drastically reduced. The character designs weren't bad but the animation wasn't that great; lots of shaking and 'lined backgrounds' during the action scenes. Also the final confrontation seemed to feature more pointless shouting than actual action. Overall I'd say this was one of the season's weaker offerings; not so bad that I wish I hadn't watched it but I can't see myself watching it again.These comments are based on watching the series in Japanese with English subtitles.