The first episode of Kampfer is great – a load of fun, a casserole of laughs, at least one or two kinds of badass, easily the best Nomad production since Rozen Maiden, and part of the growing yuri trend in anime. That said, let’s admit the truth: this is a show about female domination. It goes beyond just having a mostly-female cast and plenty of fanservice – this show is putting an effort into placing the pussy on a pedastal that the male gender is far too weak to reach.

Kampfer kicks off with a (surprisingly nice) gunfight between it’s two main characters, followed by the main plot exposition (after the opening theme). These scenes have one general message – that the girls have the dicks in this show. Our opening scene shows us what the Kampfers can do – mad acrobatic stunts, high speed gunfights, etc. The exposition then tells us that Kampfers must be women, hence the ordinarily male main character, Natsuru (Marina Inoue), having just been transformed into the buxom blue-haired beauty you see above. In summary, to be a badass, you must be a broad.

The sooner you figure this out, the sooner you’ll start noticing the show’s emphasis on female>male messages. I caught it during the op, when I saw this:

As you will see here, the female version of Natsuru is being glomped mercilessly by the girl on the left of her, while the girl on the right of her gets defensive over it, as we will quickly learn that she clearly likes Natsuru. But watch what happens when Natsuru becomes a boy in the next image:

Ouch. No one is even looking at him now, and the girl on the left looks pissed. It sucks to be a man in Kampfer! We learn about the Kampfer and the nature of Natsuru’s transformation from a gruesome stuffed animal he happens to own called ‘Seppuku Tiger.’ It’s obviously one of those stuffed dolls you will only find in Japan.

If we are to assume that Seppuku Tiger is male, then there is a symbolic nature to the knife sticking into him. Ordinarily, weapons (especially swords and guns) are seen to be definitively male and phallic. This is a show where the women have the dicks, though, and therefor it’s the men who get fucked. Seppuku Tiger being male gets the sword shoved into his belly, probably in his nature of being some kind of servant of the Kampfer. Later, we get to meet the similarly fated and far more creepy ‘Harakiri Rabbit’ (Yukari Tamura), as pictured below.

Anywho, once the little exposition is done and Natsuru becomes male again, he heads out to catch the bus for school where he meets up with Kaede Sakura (Nakajima Megumi), the woman he is pretty much obsessed with. They are going to ride the bus together until Natsuru realizes he is about to become a woman and runs away, and ends up being chased once again by the badass bitch Mishima Akane (Yui Horie).

Another pretty cool battle ensues, mostly cool because Akane is drawn in very skillful poses and looks great holding a gun. We learn that Natsuru can shoot fireballs and stuff, and then Kaede happens to stumble upon the battle with no idea that the blue-haired woman fighting is in fact Natsuru. The fight ends when a telephone pole is about to fall on Akane and Natsuru saves her, landing them in the following position and leading into another interesting scenario.

Fanservice and yuri elements are abound, but more importantly are a couple of reactions. First Akane, who doesn’t seem to mind that it’s a girl who’s turning her on…

And then Kaede, who makes the following face after Natsuru runs off, having just given her the ‘you’re about to fall in love at first sight’ look.

She definitely didn’t make that face to the guy version of Natsuru!Finally Natsuru makes it to school where his requisite buddy ignores his problems and prattles on about hot chicks, as buddies in anime tend to do. This is a common scene (done well here) but still adds that extra bit of female worship to the show.

Natsuru then meets Akane in her non-Kampfer form, who is a quiet and easily embarrassed girl who drags him to the library to brief him on the whole Kampfer situation. She slips in an awesome fourth-wall breaking comment about her stuffed rabbit’s seiyuu, which can be taken as more woman-worship, considering the way that many otaku worship their favorite voice actresses – to the point that they even get this joke in the show.

We then get a little fanservice moment in what at first looks like the only scene of male domination in the episode. Akane makes the usual embarrassed-but-loving-it remarks about Natsuru’s ‘hard thing’ (actually a book) touching her, and some sexual jokes are made. It’s hard to say of Akane is bisexual, having fallen in love with Natsuru when he was in female form, but still liking him in male form, or if her Kampfer is a lesbian and she is straight; there isn’t enough evidence for either idea at the moment.

More importantly, this moment is interrupted by as much of a female domination as you can get. The female student council president calls to the pair from high above on a walkway passing over the library (purpose totally unknown) telling them to knock it off in as much of a snoody, holier-than-thou-bitch way imaginable, and then smiles about her own awesomeness as she walks away. Now there’s a dominatrix.

Later, there’s more transforming action, some comedy, and exposition, and then Akane and Natsuru are on their way home when Kaede shows up. Akane excuses herself, and then Kaede makes the big reveal: Natsuru thinks for sure she’s confessing to him at first, but the truth is more drastic – she’s asking if he knows about the girl she met this morning, because she’s fallen in love with her!

After that, Natsuru goes back to the library to talk to Akane again and then some fighting starts before the episode ends on a cliffhanger (subsequently ruined if you stick around for the next episode preview.) The show closes out with a pretty nice (if tonally confused) ending video that features, of course, nothing but the ladies.