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Samurai Deeper Kyo has an unique and bizarre take on edo history, and the battles between samurai. The story has its twists, but when you think that the 'last boss' is defeated, more villians pop up. At first sight, the anime seemed like a fun hilarious anime with kyoushi junior, however when the "demon eyed kyo" takes over the anime starts in a much more serious tone, which prevails till the end.
The story centers around "demon eyed kyo", who has his soul entrapped in somebody else's body, so basically, he goes around defeating villians to get his body back. However, kyo is known as the man who killed a thousand men, the demon eyed kyo - reminds me of Kenshin and Battosai. I found the story a bit bizarre when Nobunaga Oda was introduced, and with all the messed up demons popping up.
Good Things:
. cool protaganist
. nice tense atmosphere
. good twists in the plot and character development
. badass looking demons and characters
. loved the opening song
Bad Things
. story is a mix mash of things which doesn't sit well with me
. fights are rather boring and repetitive, much like Kenshin using the same attack.
. kyo beats villian, moves on to anther villian, then another one, and another one and another one, until he fights the boss - very shounen, but the fights are not that amusing.
Overall: a mediocre anime, that I mostly forced myself to go through, but then again a watched 26 episodes in a day so that might affect my enjoyment of the anime. It's not bad, but not great either. Villians are very unique and have their own style and looks, very well done in the characters.

Samurai Deeper Kyo is based of the still running manga series by the same name.
In the year 1600, during the battle of Sekigahara, warriors Kyoshiro Mibu and "Demon Eyes" Kyo - the legendary slayer of a thousand men - engaged in fierce combat. Both men disappeared when a meteor crashed in the battlegrounds. Four years later, Kyoshiro is spotted on a rural highway, acting as a traveling medicine salesman. He is captured by the female bounty hunter Yuya Shiina when she discovers that deep inside him is the dormant personality of "Demon Eyes" Kyo himself.
Now on to all the problems I had with the show. First there's the story stated above, which is just a jumble together of stories from the manga. Then there's the so called animation done by Studio Deen. Were they trying to make a crappy American cartoon, I don't get it. The music was also terrible it didn't add anything to the show. Finally the characters which had one or two moments of enjoyment, but overall were terrible. One more thing don't watch this show in the dub version, you'll hate it even more.
Overall was this a terrible anime series..no, but it pales in comparison to the manga series.

The first review here is way too harsh. This anime is well worth a watch if your into historical/samurai stuff, it's not as dark and brooding as it sets out to be and the plot can feel a little convaluted at times but the characters are quite endearing and if you can get your head round all the different threads it's very easy to get wrapped up in the story.
I really enjoyed it and found myself watching one episode after another once I'd got past the first few, but I haven't read the manga so if you have you may be in for a bit of a disappointment.

Samurai Deeper Kyo is a rather obscure (thank God) shounen anime from Studio Deen based on a long running manga which is apparently a lot better but I have not read it. Now that we have that out of the way, what did I think of it? It SUCKED! I really forced myself through it and actually considered dropping it. Why did I dislike this anime? Well, that's the purpose of this review.
The story for this anime starts off rather solid albeit a bit cliched. With it's fugitive goofball setup it felt reminiscent of Kenshin and Trigun. I was actually rather enjoying watching the humorous character interactions and fun setup. Then about halfway through, something happened. The show decided to stop being fun and started being repetitive. And when I say repetitive, I mean REPETITIVE.
I mean seriously, when the lead character is about to reach his objective after fighting through several of the antagonist's lackeys, the writer slaps the viewer in the face and makes the antagonist move the objective to another destination, causing the lead character to have to go through the same bloody process as before. This happens roughly 3 times throughout the entire 26 episode show. It's just our protagonist fighting off supernatural henchmen to reach his goal over and over again. And when he battles against a powerful enemy he just uses his plot armor, I mean, special attack to defeat them in one blow after all else fails. We also see the same bloody stock footage for said attack used every time it happens. Fortunately this is accompanied by a badass guitar riff which I rather liked. Then after the show stops being repetitive it decides to get downright frustrating by throwing in all this exposition at you at once to the point where it becomes information overload. And don't get me started on the ending. I'm not going to spoil anything, but I'm just going to say it is possibly the most ridiculous conclusion to any anime I have witnessed.
As for the characters, they were all pretty bland. They were often just archetypes prevalent in the shounen genre. We do get the backgrounds of some of the characters but little to no development.
Finally I shall say something good about this show. The artwork was pretty impressive. However the same cannot be said about the animation. It is very limited and amusingly quaint. Watching a long distance shot of a character running is one of the most unintentionally amusing things I have ever seen.
As for the soundtrack it was actually very good. The aforementioned badass guitar riffs really stand out and the opening is actually amazing. Seriously, go look it up.
The best analogy I can come up with for my enjoyment of the show is that it's a tire rolling downhill. Starts off pretty high but gets lower and lower until it reaches the bottom.