Review (con't)

Yumi Tamura has a thing for double identities, because almost every major character in the story carries two names. We have Sarasa - aka Tatara - a modern day Joan of Arc who is put under immense pressure to lead a revolution against a 300-year-old empire. Resourceful and intelligent, she is also torn between living the life of a normal girl and fulfilling her brother's destiny. Then there's Shuri - aka the Red King - a fierce and effective ruler who was also born under the curse of a prophecy. He wants to destroy Tatara not just at the urging of his estranged father, the Emperor, but also to prove the prophecy wrong. Of course, knowing how prophecies are: to fight it is to put it in motion. This leads to many chance meetings at hot springs (of course) between Shuri and Sarasa, where they get to know each other really well except for who each other really are. Aside from our main leads, we have Shido, Shuri's close friend and right-hand man. His inevitable fate not only exposes the vulnerable side of Shuri's personality, but further amplifies the Red King's hatred for Tatara. Rounding out the major cast is Ageha, a mysterious wanderer with a sarcastic voice and a very eccentric attitude. His initial position in the plot is that of a bemused observer, but he did lose his left eye in exchange for Sarasa's life when they first met. As the story continues in the manga, he will lose much more than that for her sake. Asagi - the Blue King's bodyguard - becomes a very prominent wildcard in the overall story. But as far as the anime is concerned, he barely got introduced.

Well, in any case, I'm very grateful that the main characters of the show are actually people I find interesting, and wouldn't mind seeing more of. This comes as a very pleasant surprise after my experience with some other well-known shoujo fantasy (cough Fushigi Yûgi cough) which has interesting side characters but very dull major ones. Another big difference between Basara and other shoujo fantasies is that its general tone is distinctly more serious, sometimes downright tragic. Yumi Tamura spares no sentiment in stacking up a body count that can put the creator of Berserk to shame. On second thought, maybe not, but you get the idea. The mood only lightens in the few sunny moments when Shuri and Sarasa are together; when they can briefly forget their responsibilities as the Red King and Tatara, and just be young and happy in each other's company. The duality of their relationship gives much of the show's dialogue such a heavy dose of irony and double-meaning, it's almost comical. One might even be reminded of the Greek tragedy Oedipus Rex, which relays the ironic fate of another man cursed by prophecy and unknowingly fulfills it. Ultimately, Tatara and the Red King must confront each other face to face, and how these four personalities - Sarasa, Shuri, Tatara, and the Red King - compromise their feelings of love and hate is left to be read in the manga.

So after all the praise I slathered on this show, is there anything I didn't like? Well, besides the obvious problem - only 13 episodes?! - I found the character designs a bit hard to get used to. Those pouty upperlips look plain ugly. Another thing that irked me was the prevalent use of split screens during key action scenes. They are basically used as a cheap animation cop-out and very distracting. Anyway, all of these are small quibbles from me. I'd much rather take my anime with good writing than good drawings. And Basara has enough good writing to make me concentrate on the story and overlook the animation flaws. So I'm hoping that maybe, just maybe, the rest of the story will be animated someday...