Sirius no Densetsu

Hey this is my second review for a show that hasn't gotten any recognition.

Story-Well its the Romeo Juliet esque plot line with two sets of parents and or families in which despise each other. The introductory part of the story tells how the Water god and Fire god came into conflict.The sea prince is the son of the Water god at first he shows a trait for running away on his escapades. Conversingly the fire princess and or fire child is dutiful to her mother at first( guarding the flame etc..). After the two main characters encounter each other is less friendly with an exchange ... of verbose name calling, but this is due to their parents respectively portraying the other side in a pejorative manner. Then of course after several meetings the veneer that taught them to hate each other was reproved. Afterwards segments of conflict insue in whether they can coexist and love one another.

Art-This show finished airing in the early 1980's. Don't expect pristine depictions of any scenery or setting. However the animation looked disney liked at times or similar to the style used by Ghibli films. For its epoch its quite well done and rarely are there any inconsistencies with the characters.

Sound-The music is clandestine and classical, almost scintillating that it illustrates the relationship between the characters.It's quite profound with the calming effects and peacefulness gained with the two main characters together without interruption.

Character-Sirius the sea prince is more akin the adventurous and disobient type. He adjusted rather quickly with the fire society disproving of his relationship with Malta. Malta however is calculating, calm and obedient for the most part but she also has her curious nature. Sirius had a direct influence on her changing of character in developing to become less dependent or questioning.

Enjoyment- The movie had its cheesy moments but that's what you should expect from Romeo and Juliet type romance. Childish and facile at times making it a proponent of disney themes but that doesn't trump the serious and poignant relationship that the main characters have for each other.

Overall-If you would like to diversify your list with an antiquated theme thats been done before but with different characterisations. The dosage of disney themes that this show ascribes to maybe be perilous to some. Overall a pretty good movie for its intended audience.

Legend of Sirius is a Dis­ney Movie. OK, it’s not by Dis­ney or by any of the staff from Dis­ney, but not a single aspect of it makes me feel like it ori­gin­ated from Japan, obvi­ously helped by watch­ing the dub. It’s a re ima­gin­ing of the clas­sic Romeo and Juliet tale except this time set in a myth­ical land between Fire People and Water People. Because if there’s ever two things that don’t get along, fire vs water is only beaten by light vs dark and moe fans vs mecha fans. So much of this is clas­sic Dis­ney. The main char­ac­ter has a wise-cracking ... smal­ler friend who helps him out when he is in a des­per­ate state towards the end of the movie. He also has doo­fus rival who comes in and messes up his plans in a sig­ni­fic­ant way where as earlier he was just a minor annoy­ance. There’s even the ever clas­sic ‘for­bid­den zone’, that is actu­ally called in-story the ‘for­bid­den zone, where the main char­ac­ter can’t go but does so any­way and makes his father angry. The more you look at it, the less it becomes Romeo and Juliet and the more it looks like The Lion King.

The anim­a­tion style has come straight out of Fantasia. Again, none of this looks like anime in any way. The pen­cil lines to depict the roar­ing waves is very Night on Bald Moun­tain. The way the show sets it’s frames comes out of clas­sic Dis­ney as well with the way it draws the centre focus of the pic­ture in a eth­er­eal glow next to the hard pen­cil lined back­grounds they were set against. This was pretty under­stand­able given the centre focus of a shot was often a Being of Fire and hence are meant to glow. It’s often been touted that Ghibli are a Japan­ese Ghibli, which is a pretty accur­ate descrip­tion. How­ever the fact remains that Ghibli still feels Japan­e­sey and has it’s own unique style. Legend of Sirius is not Ghibli. It is Disney.

None of this is a bad thing, des­pite my descrip­tion of it sound­ing like look­ing like the work of the most suc­cess­ful anim­a­tion com­pany of all time would be a bad thing. It’s just the easi­est way to get you to pic­ture what this movie is like. Because this movie, like much of clas­sic Dis­ney, is really damn good. There is the slight feel­ing that I’m in the wrong age bracket for this movie obvi­ously, neither being below the age of 10 nor old enough to hav­ing 10 year olds call me dad. This is very much a fam­ily movie, des­pite the obvi­ous tragedy that is the Romeo and Juliet story. The movie does work the story into a hope­ful and beau­ti­ful end­ing, but I still found myself feel­ing pretty sad by the end of it all. I’d got­ten myself really into the corny ideal­istic romance of Malta and Sirius. Well, See–ree-oos as Malta called him. No won­der the guy went batty for her when she had such a sexy accent, although wear­ing no clothes and hav­ing high heels nat­ur­ally built into her physique prob­ably helped.

Oh yes, I should prob­ably add that you should watch this dubbed. Watch­ing it in Japan­ese des­troys the Dis­ney feel of it and detracts from the beau­ti­ful art­work you should be ogling at. This is the type of movie corny line deliv­ery adds to the exper­i­ence. And since you’re watch­ing it dubbed, you might as well watch it as it was inten­ded. That is, stick it on one day when you’ve got to keep kids quiet for 2 hours but don’t want to stick on the bullcrap that passes for children’s tele­vi­sion nowadays. They may try to hide behind the couch when the big vil­lain makes his tentacley appear­ance (I cer­tainly wanted to) and dry a few tears when the inev­it­able end­ing occurs, but it’s well worth the watch for the excel­lent storytelling and ima­gin­at­ive world building.

The story is pretty much a Romeo and Juliet style with elemental gods instead of humans. This makes me have mixed feelings. While the story is so old and pretty much exactly what you would expect of the tale, I do like the gods a bit. Sadly, it was not enough to save the story as it felt bland in both voice acting and artwork. It just doesn’t pop at all and I felt myself becoming bored while watching it as there was no surprise, no special meaning behind any of it.

The artwork is pretty beautiful but it is far from perfect. While the watercolors ... and special backgrounds pop, the characters seem to feel a little lack luster. The design of the characters feel like they are bland. Malta has only a small hint of wearing something although she is pretty much nude to a point and her limbs are just think sticks compared to her body with rather strange eyes that seem to be overly slanted. On the other hand, Sirius has thin limbs too but with rather clumpy looking ‘feet’ and hands. It makes me wish they were beautiful images like in the credits but sadly, they don’t fit the background at all.

The voices… oh boy the voices… They have no feeling what so ever in their words and Malta’s voice is just overly high pitched. It’s a sad dub that makes me wish that I watched the Japanese version but the show was so bland to me that I don’t want to watch it again.

Basically it's a Romeo and Juliet style story, right down to the not-so-happily-ever-after ending.

Sanrio is a funny little company - known for their overwhelming cuteness overload with Hello Kitty and friends, and yet earlier in their existence they were also known for making movies with stories that are not exactly kiddie-friendly. Like Bell of Chirin.

In this case, you have a little bit of nudity, and (as mentioned above) non-Disney-everybody-happy ending. Its a tragic tale of forbidden love between two people who must forever be kept apart; but the real tragedy is there is hope ... held out for a happy pairing, only to slip from their grasp.

Decent artwork, decent animation, decent sound. Could have done with a little less of the annoying sidekicks, though.

Sea Prince and the Fire Child, also known as Legend of Sirius, is a 1981 fantasy/ romantic drama film from Sanrio. Set in a world where beings of fire and water hold hostilities with one another, the prince of the sea named Sirius and the princess of fire named Malta fall in love with one another and struggle to stay together due to their relationship being considered taboo among both their kinds.

Sanrio seemed to be going for a Romeo and Juliet style storyline in depicting the romance between Sirius and Malta for Sea Prince and the Fire Child. The approach works decently here as the ... movie implements the themes of Shakespeare's tragedy effectively with love being great yet cruel, the rivalry between the tribes of the movie being pointless, and the flaws of the couple in love contributing to their tragic demises. The movie is geared for a younger audience and it does show with the movie's simple storytelling, the plucky sidekicks/ friends that accompany Sirius and Malta, and the comic relief baddie that Sirius contends with at points in the movie. Still, the storytelling for it would be appealing enough for parents and older anime fans as well to see.

The animation is outdated with its simplistic designs on characters, but has its nice moments such as the destruction caused in the land and sea from Algorac's revival being nicely animated. Some beautifully drawn artwork stills are shown in the beginning and ending of the movies as the credits roll, both having beautiful ballads sung throughout their run. Beyond the mentioned ballads, the soundtrack may have Western viewers make parallels of it to older Disney films having a nicely composed orchestral score to accompany key scenes of the film.

If you're a fan of older anime titles or looking for a good family film, Sea Prince and the Fire Child is definitely worth a look thanks to its solid storytelling of Romeo and Juliet-inspired tragic love.

I’m reluctant to categorize Sea Prince and the Fire Child as a children’s cartoon―seeing as the overarching theme of Windaria, an ADULT-ORIENTED animated film felt a little bit less bleak. This film was produced by Sanrio Films, which also created the infamously dark “children’s” cartoon―Ringing Bell; which had me scratching my head as an adult―I can’t even imagine what a child would decipher a film that teaches, “if someone slaughters your entire family―hunt them down to… ask them to be your mentor, and then kill more of your own kind!” I don’t know, it’s a kooky film!

• This story, in layman’s terms, is a mythical rendition ... of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, which, probably sounds really cool―until you see how the plot is handled. There are several stupid mishaps by characters that could have easily been avoided; but, apparently, every single character in this fantastical Grecian tale is mentally impaired―causing problem after problem to intensify the tragedy.

• The romance is weak, but I don’t fault the story for that. Romeo and Juliet only happens because two people happen to meet and because crazily infatuated with each other, nothing new there. Piale’s (a lesbian fire fairy) dedication to Malta (essentially Juliet) seems stronger than the breadth of their love and her role in the film, while important, is very fleeting.

• Many characters die over stupid things, like, “I’m going to do this really risky thing to try to help this person, even though it might end our entire civilization.” The main hero and heroine don’t help with the stupidity, seeing as they are both bequeathed with the greatest responsibilities in their kingdoms and they both aren’t able to even live up to these titles for ONE day; they literally sacrifice the lives of hundreds or thousands mythical sea or fire creatures to smooch! It’s infuriating.

• People think that they thirsty character motivations in School Days is irritating―this is stupendously worse. In fact, School Days has much better catharsis and morality than this idiocy. This movie teaches youngsters that if you toss your duties onto other people, sacrifice the innocent lives of your kingdom to have a forbidden love, make decisions that further ensue calamity, and die holding onto that “pure” love―it will reunite the elders of the kingdom, in lieu of your death, despite their reasons for quarreling being incredibly pithy as well. Seriously, if the kingdoms of fire and water were torn apart at the seams because of the Wind God throwing shade and gossiping―how is the death of the lovers supposed to having any lasting impact on the illusory amalgamation of the two kingdoms?

• Overall, despite the production values being gorgeous―the animation and character designs reminded me of Disney’s Fantasia―the story, characters, and ethos of the story are severely lacking; Ringing Bell was much better, although the morality was also skewed. I give it a 3/10.