Soukou Akki Muramasa is a work that I am quite conflicted about, but overall give a positive score. The protagonist blows most anime-related media characters out of the water, the fights are fascinating and written by a kendo practitioner author who entered the industry, wrote Hanachirasu and this, and then left to become a monk or something. The music is cool, the visuals are nice, the voice acting is phenomenal, and the humour is good. The reason I'm conflicted comes down to three points.

The first is that I really liked the story in the Hero and Demon routes, but not so much in Nemesis and Conqueror. The conflict and contrast between Kageaki/Muramasa and Ichijou/Masamune was fantastic, it was like experiencing a better version of Fate/stay night all in one route; and the Demon route was one of the best true routes I've seen in a VN, wrapping up everything that came before in a very satisfying manner. The problem with Nemesis for me is that while the action is some of the best in the VN, the theme of revenge was far less compelling than what was in Ichijou's route. Maybe that's partially because I read Hero first. And Conqueror, the final Kageaki vs Hikaru fight and Muramasa backstory aside, was not very compelling to me either. Kageaki becomes a rapist asshole for a short period of time as he shifts into focusing on helping Hikaru specifically, with large-scale military combat (which I usually love) written in an uninteresting manner, as well as chuuni which appeared abruptly to me, temporarily making Kageaki time travel with no important purpose other than to have him glance at Hero epilogue Ichijou for a moment. Also, I did not enjoy the maze on the zeppelin nor the math puzzle.

The second issue I have is the way this VN handles the topic of rape. Now, distasteful depictions of rape in eroge are nothing uncommon, but usually you have one, maybe two scenes. This one goes overboard. You have a rape scene in chapter 1 that is meant to be "horrifying", but I saw a friend of mine read the all-ages version and honestly from what I saw I far preferred it to be described in vague terms, that would be more horrifying. Then you have a gangbang scene of the girl from the racing arc. Then you have the gangbang-rape of the bandit leader girl in the flashbacks. They even say they'll put a sword up her butt, which makes one think that depicting physical violence would've been a more effective and horrific choice as she comes over and then dies in Kageaki's arms. But nope, instead she gets gang-raped by her bandit crew, which of course comes with CGs depicting bodily fluids that probably unfortunately aroused a subset of the readers. Then the bald monk commits public rape, and this is after revealing to his victim that she had been in the presence of her dead family's body parts. Then Kageaki rapes Chachamaru. And then it's revealed that Kageaki was raped when he was younger in order to conceive Hikaru. That last one actually seemed pretty sensitive since it is referenced in sex scenes with how Kageaki's mental state was affected by it, but the fact that it's bunched in together with the rest of these leaves a sour taste in my mouth. I understand that women are treated badly in war and that there was a lot of rape historically, but it's not handled in a sensitive or respectful manner, IMO. It just feels gratuitous, as if fulfilling an "H-scene quota" or something. In general, my approach to eroge having rape scenes has been to not expect too much, since they often turn them into porn scenes (meant to please readers, or at least part of the target audience) first, story additions second. Did they want the reader to be horrified first and foremost, or did they want to have a porn scene first, attaching meaning to it second? I think it's the latter. And again, it's mostly because it happens so often, and in Muramasa of all places, that this stands out like a sore thumb to me. I think if you're describing sexual violence, you want to give the utmost respect to the victims, while being sensitive about their pain, and not fetishizing it in the slightest, and this just isn't doing it. It's hard to assume good faith here.

My third issue with FMDM is one I have not seen discussed online before. To explain, there are a few pieces that I would like to link. The story, despite being set in an alternate world, features World War II inspiration, with the setting being in the mid-1900s, the Allies having defeated Japan in a war, and even Japan being potentially attacked by a bomb, the levels of destruction of which the world has not seen before. Additionally, the Rokuhara government are shown to be tyrants who use force and other evil means to remain in power. There is a character who appears in the lab/island arc who is deeply racist towards the people of Yamato. Furthermore, there is a flashback at a point in the VN (I believe it was Masamune's POV?), showing the POV of a Yamatoan citizen witnessing an invasion by soldiers committing heinous crimes against Yamatoan women, and thus growing a deep hatred for "the demons that are in this world". So, Muramasa goes a step further than a lot of war commentary anime-related media that I've seen, where it outright criticises the Japanese Empire (or a version of it), and doesn't go full "Japan are the biggest victims and didn't actually do anything wrong". And just in general, it shows various perspectives of different people, like when they showed that the bald monk had loved ones who would miss him too at another point in the VN, as horrible as he was. So then how is it that in this VN that has a level of WW2 inspiration, has foreigners and international relations, shows a foreign nation invading alternate Japan and shows so many different perspectives, including people being racist/xenophobic towards the Japanese, neglects to depict a single foreigner that is as humanised as some of the flawed Yamatoan characters? The most sympathetic foreigner character would be Clive Cannon, and even he shows no remorse about causing pain and suffering for Yamato, ultimately just acting in a self-interested manner. How come Yamato gets characters like the prince and others whom Kageaki and his adoptive father co-conspire with for a while, giving one an opportunity to argue by saying "well, it's Rokuhara that sucks, not the Yamatoan government in general!", but GHQ/Britain/America don't? Why does the aforementioned "there are demons in this world" flashback stop there with the flashback narrator effectively becoming xenophobic, instead of progressing into something like "ah, so there are demons in my country too!". Why do they constantly go over war crimes within Yamato, but, despite the Japanese army committing several awful, indescribable war crimes abroad in the 20th century, they never mention those? It's not like they didn't have the opportunity, and if anything, I think it's a responsibility of any work that has this level (or more) of WW2 inspiration to mention this. Because as it is, it is questionable to me that a story like Muramasa, which goes beyond many other weeb war commentary works, accidentally neglected to go into this. I have heard many arguments about why this might be the case, such as "it wasn't its responsibility", or "the story only covers the domestic affairs of alternate reality Japan", or "they didn't have enough time". I disagree with all of these arguments. For one, I would argue that it is the responsibility of any work covering or being noticeably inspired by war, especially such a large-scale, vile, horrific one like World War II to cover the context and aspects needed properly. Imagine if Muramasa was set in alternate reality Germany, where again it's the mid-20th century and Germany is being attacked by the allies, and they were talking about how badly they have it (which of course they did, they were defeated), mentioning how badly Germany treated minorities in its own country, but completely failing to mention what they did abroad. Do you think that would be okay? I would personally think that it would be disrespectful to how many people died, and how much they suffered. And if they didn't have enough time, they could've cut other things like the Nitroplus VN references (as cool as they were) out or something. I personally think you could dedicate a section, or at least give proper reference to, Japanese international war crimes. It had the opportunity, and it didn't take it, even when it would've served only to improve it, which disappointed me. It's just weird when it covers so, so many perspectives, even including the family and friends of tyrants mourning their loss, showing how different everyone's situation is, and not addressing this aspect, too. You could, I don't know, have at least one soldier with which you could say that not every soldier in the army necessarily follows orders because they personally believe that Yamato is beneath them. The VN would, in my eyes, only stand to benefit from looking at this topic, too. There is only one time in history where Japan lost an international war to the Allies, with plans to use a new kind of bomb, a weapon of mass destruction, against it, among other things. Essentially, I expect any work that features WW2 inspiration to this or a greater extent to either properly respect the victims of a war that caused millions of lives to be lost, or not touch the topic with a ten-foot pole. Anything else is inexcusable, as far as I am concerned.

Overall, I did enjoy Full Metal Daemon Muramasa. It's not a perfect work as it is sometimes hyped up to be, and it's inconsistent in route quality for me, but I liked the high points enough to give this 4 stars.