Battle Girls: Time Paradox is another in a long list of series that has tried its hand at recreating the Sengoku, Warring States Era. Year on year there seems to be more series attempting to use the Sengoku era and its most famous figures Oda Nobunaga and Akechi Mitsuhide in increasingly more varied reincarnations. Battle Girls has also decided to go the route of another increasingly popular trend that replaces historical male figures with those of women, especially those with rather large chesticles and revealing outfits.
Hide Yoshino is an ordinary high schooler who happens upon a temple to pray for good grades and ends up being sent back in time to the Sengoku era. Known to her friends as Hideyoshi, our main uses this name when questioned by Nobunaga and Mitsuhide only to end up living with them as she has no means to return home.
There’s fan service aplenty here and the only real selling point of the series, for those looking for a large amount of fan service you would not go wrong with this series, although even in this aspect there are better shows out there. The plot is largely forgettable from start to finish, as are its characters and while there does seem to be some effort at the beginning to set up the famous Sengoku Era there’s nothing aside from character names that really tie it to that period. We follow our main characters as they seek the Crimson Armour in order to conquer their rival lords. So begins the series of rare and meaningless fights, random episodes of nonsense and constant awkward girl on girl infatuations.
Being based on the Sengoku era and its figures you would be forgiven if you expect any kind of lesson in Japanese history. Sadly this is not the case, as you come out of the series knowing as much as you know before you went in but probably warped in a way that would require you to go and re-educate yourself. The series does try to reconnect with its historical origins at times but apart from the characters using famous names you could easily place it in another war-torn era.
Visually the animation is fairly decent, nothing outstanding but fairly solid overall even with the very generic artwork. The voice acting in the English dubbed version is average at best, the pronunciation of Japanese names is painful at times especially the use of honorifics. I personally have never felt honorifics carry over well in translation and some series irritate more than others, but that’s a personal niggle of mine. In rather stark contrast to the rest of the series, the opening and ending songs are pretty decent, probably one of the series only saving graces and even makes the series appear better than it actually is, if only for a few minutes.