Shenmue The Animation: Episode 3 Review
The following article contains mild spoilers for the Shenmue anime and game.
Shenmue’s third episode carries the anime series roughly midway through the plot of the first game, and though small differences continue to surface between this and Yu Suzuki’s Dreamcast legacy, the overall experience remains interesting even when there's not that much action going on.
In Shenmue’s second episode, Ryo obtained some valuable information from Shigeo Yamagishi that now leads him to find out more about the mysterious letter sent to his father shortly after being murdered. However, besides marking the protagonist’s first friendly encounters with the criminal underworld, it also happens to be the show’s most video game-like chapter so far, which in Shenmue’s case translates to a slower episode.
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All of this is accomplished by introducing a familiar part of Shenmue games, as Ryo has to solve his first real puzzle in the anime in order to find his way to Yaowen Chen’s Warehouse 8, where he learns about the existence of another mythical mirror. Although the episode is about as long as the ones that came before it, this quest-like theme results in a duller experience where there’s actually very little character development going on, save for the mandatory interaction with Nozomi Harasaki.
Up until this point, the biggest win for Shenmue as a series has been Suzuki’s ability to expand some of its characters in very subtle ways, whether this is done by giving Ryo a life and backstory fitting for the young man he is, the flashbacks to Iwao raising him, as well as additional scenes featuring more of Lan Di and Shenhua that would be out of place in the games. The latter is especially true
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