Given how the previous games were all about cheap spectacle on a large screen - a raucous concoction of blood, boobs and button bashing - it was always questionable how well developers Tamsoft could translate Onechanbara to a handheld. There's been some obvious concessions. Instead of lengthy levels to wade through, with a goal area at the end, the game is now broken up into bite-sized missions each with a time limit of a couple of minutes. Rather than finding keys to unlock doors there's only one objective in each stage: destroy a specific number of enemies before the timer runs out, or defeat the boss. The areas are much smaller, and despite sometimes being able to move between areas the play environment feels cramped. They're also recycled quite a bit, simply with new enemies or bosses thrown into previously visited areas.

With the central premise watered down from earlier games, which were simple to begin with, Tamsoft have attempted to add a layer of depth by including a shop system, weapon synthesis and multiplayer mode. Gone is the previous levelling up system, where yellow orbs were treated as EXP to improve character traits, and instead the orbs are now used to buy items at a store available between stages. There's a greater diversity of items than before, with the usual assortment of recovery gems, poison curatives, stat buffs, and items to revive fallen partners who fight alongside you (there's a multiplayer option for those who can be bothered). Monsters still drop these as before, but it's nice to be able to stock up rather than farm for them. The weapons synthesis option is only available from Stage 2 onwards and allows you to sacrifice weaker weapons to boost stats on your favourite or most powerful. This also adds skill abilities to the weapons, and can make the game considerably easier. You can only combine two similar weapons for a specific character though, so for example it has to be two of Aya's single blades, rather than mixing with her dual-blades or Anna's guns.

Unfortunately these token attempts to add depth to the formula can't prevent Onechanbara Special from being an absolute train wreck. The entire game suffers from catastrophic camera problems. Similarly to Monster Hunter the character control is on the thumbstick while the camera is on the d-pad, thereby forcing you to bend your left pointer finger into a hook shape and place it above your thumb to control the camera simultaneously. It doesn't matter how you cut it, this is an unworkable and stupid system. Any time a character attacks, using the Square button, they plunge forward into a crowd of enemies. This always, without fail, results in all the enemies sliding behind you, and therefore behind the camera so you can't see them. After your character finishes their attack animation of slicing through air, it's possible to hit down on the thumbstick to face the opposite way, but you'll be attacking blind and will likely miss. Although the camera on the earlier 360 version wasn't great, having it on the right thumbstick allowed much more precise control, while playing the game on a large TV screen afforded more visual space to show both the player character and surrounding enemies. Attempting to cram this onto the PSP's limited display and with the leftside d-pad acting as camera control is not only unfeasible, it's just ridiculous.

Using R to lock on to enemies alleviates the problem slightly, since you can usually then stay facing a specific enemy, but it's not really a solution. Attacking while locked on tends to initiate a powerful knock-back attack, so although you're desperately trying to focus your attack on a specific enemy to kill it, you'll instead just kick it across the play area, losing the lock-on, and starting the problem over again. This problem becomes critical when you consider the ludicrously short time limits on each stage. When there's only 120 seconds to kill 50 zombies, there is simply no time to go chasing after each of them as they're sent flying. In such cases it's better to just button bash enemies hidden from view and hope for the best. It's even worse when playing as Anna or Rieko, who use guns instead of swords, since they can't lock on to enemies. Holding the R button instead puts them in a behind the shoulder aiming view. You then have to manually aim with the d-pad while strafing with the thumbstick. Who the hell thought this would be a good idea? The game becomes unplayable and, to be honest, physically painful to attempt.

Overall the game is also considerably harder than other entries. Before, on the default difficulty setting, the Onechanbara were quite easy. Now it reaches PSP smashing levels of challenge. And not because the enemies kill you too easily. It's possible to go into any given level with five small healing gems, three large healing gems, plus two resuscitation items, most of which can be bought between stages. Dying isn't the problem. It's the short time limits. The first major boss, in stage 1-5, is likely to give most players trouble. He takes an inordinate amount of damage and there just isn't enough time to whittle him down, even when using weapons with the biggest attack stat. You'll find yourself madly hammering the Square button, risking breaking the PSP itself, only for the klaxon to sound when there's 60 seconds left and the boss to remaining standing at the end. Compounding this is a total lack of pause option, meaning you can't check the map to see where a boss is standing, and to use an item you need to tap Circle and use the d-pad to move through four cascading lists, on the fly, while enemies relentlessly hound you. It's infuriatingly awkward trying to use anything - again, which idiot thought this was a good idea?

There are other negatives too. For those who enjoyed the previous games' dress up options, allowing you to mix and match clothing or simply select nothing but lingerie, this has been cut back to selecting pre-set and generally uninteresting costumes. There's also no blood, or rather no red blood. Presumably this was done to avoid a CERO Z age rating and therefore garner more sales. Which is ironic considering that previous Onechanbara games could be considered some of the bloodiest in video games, to an almost comic degree, with gallons upon gallons of claret pumping out of countless dismembered cadavers. Instead the default "emissions" colour is purple, with no option for red - the alternative selection includes green or white, among other rainbow colours. Amusingly when your character goes into berserk mode, one of the visual effects is that they appear covered in blood, or whatever colour you've set blood to. Meaning if you select white you can make the female characters appear as if glazed in candle wax... There's even Engrish spelling mistakes (Time Rimit) to round it off.

If you thought the PS2, Wii or 360 versions of Onechanbara were fun, and they do have their merits and fan followings, then this instalment is best described as boring and frustrating. To any degree the series can be called sophisticated, this is broken and badly put together in comparison. There is absolutely no reason even to consider playing this instalment over any of the others and - when you factor in the multitude of genuinely excellent PSP action games out there - there's no reason to think about this game at all.

With this latest episode, Onechambara (with new official romanization) finally seems to try and tread some new ground, at least superficially. Unfortunately, the game was published January 2012 in Japan only as a region-locked Xbox 360 release, with no localized versions in sight. The new heroines are the half-vampire sisters Kagura and Saya, even though they just look like alternative universe variants of Aya and Saki. Only Kagura appears even more sexualized than Aya and gets a God of War-inspired chained weapon, and Saki is shown wielding a chainsaw and a mace alternatively to the standard katana. The graphics once again combine good-looing characters with bland stages, but at least there appear some new themes, like the boat stage seen in the promo screenshots on this page.

Following up on their Simple 2000 Series, D3Publisher also runs a line of mobile games, Simple Series DX. Three Oneechanbara-related titles have been made so far. The first one, The Oneechanbara Mobile, appears to be a shooting gallery type game with dialog scenes in between, complete with anime-stylized versions of the characters. The next one was a plain slot machine simulator. The most interesting of the bunch is Z.P.F. Annna: Oneechanbara Tokubetsu hen, a 3rd person shooter starring the miniskirt-wearing cop.

The Oneechanbara was immortalized in film in two different movies. The first, released in 2007 and simply called The Oneechanbara, fleshes out what little backstory was in the games and tries to fill a whole ninety minute movie. It stars Eri Otoguro as Aya, Chise Nakamura as Saki, and Minami Hosokawa as Reiko. The world is taken over by zombies due to a virus unleashed by the D3 Corporation (the game's publisher in both Japan and North America.) Aya and her fat sidekick wander throughout Japan, looking for survivors and slaying zombies in the process. In particular, Aya is looking for her sister Saki, who killed their father and is presently being experimented on by an evil doctor. Aya bumps into Reiko at some point, the two join forces, and more chaos ensues until the climactic Aya vs. Saki showdown at the end.

The fight scenes do a decent job of emulating the action of the game, filled with cheesy, low grade CG effects like sparks, sword slashes, and extreme amounts of blood. They're all pretty stupid, especially in the end when Aya starts glowing red and flying all over the place, but they're all in good fun. However, these encompass a fraction of the movie's length though, and the rest is almost astonishingly boring. It's dark, it's slow paced, and the few attempts at humor fall flat. It's strange that the moviemakers could take such a goofy concept and almost completely rob the fun out of it.

This piece of trash was actually released in the theaters in Japan. It's known under different titles around the world, including Zombie Killer: Sharp as a Sword, Zombie Killer: Sexy as Hell in Germany, and Chanbara Beauty in the United Kingdom. In North America, it's tied in with the Xbox 360 game, titled Onechanbara: Bikini Samurai Squad.

A second film, Oneechanbara VorteX, was released in 2009 as a straight to DVD flick. It stars a completely new cast with a storyline apparently unconnected to the first movie, since Reiko is still alive, after being infected and dramatically killed by Aya in the previous movie. The special effects here are actually worse, but at least there's more action and less aimless wandering around. Since it's based off the Xbox 360, it adds Misery to the cast members. While there hasn't been a US release, the film was in Germany as Zombie Killer VorteX and the UK as Chanbara Beauty 2: The Vortex.

2009 also saw the release of a ridiculous soft erotic spoof named Oppai Chanbara, which revolves around he heroine Lilly's abiliy to gain super powers whenever her breasts get exposed - which of course happens a lot. (The Japanese title literally translates to "Titty Chanbara," but was renamed to Chanbara Striptease in the UK, and is also known as Oppai Chanbara: Striptease Samurai Squad.) The film actually doesn't have hat much to do with the Oneechanbara series, as most of it takes place in feudal Japan, and there aren't any "proper" zombies in it (but two sentient undead villains, henchmen of the main antagonist, who also fights with her breasts).