Legend of Basara

Recommendation: An excellent post-apocalyptic adventure series with strong, complex characters and an engrossing plot. Very much worth watching.

Positives:

+ Epic, sweeping adventure storyline that's perfectly paced and interesting every step of the way. Worldbuilding is well done and makes it fun to follow Sarasa's adventures to new places, while also fleshing out the Red King and his court and making them equally interesting.

+ Gorgeous backgrounds that make the post-apocalyptic wasteland of ruined Japan come alive.

+ Good shoujo-style character designs, major characters look very unique and distinctive.

+ Complex characters that are not fully good or bad. Sarasa's enemies are humanized and you feel conflicted when she fights ... them. This is especially the case with Shidou, whose fight with Sarasa is one of the strongest parts of the series. Sarasa herself is not a perfect protagonist and makes mistakes and has believable flaws.

+ Shuri is an effective anti-hero in the truest sense of the term. He's not an edgy badass but a man that has committed himself to uniting Japan even if it means committing evil and indefensible acts.

Negatives:

- The romance between Shuri and Sarasa can be overly indulgent in shoujo manga tropes. "He's such a jerk. So why is my heart beating so fast?" is the kind of dialogue you get for most of these scenes and it doesn't always fit the mood or setting.

- Hayato is an annoyance and is not competent or interesting enough to justify his position in the story or in Sarasa's inner circle.

- The Blue King arc is weaker than the rest of the story and the Blue King himself is an unfortunate exception to the point above about Sarasa's enemies not being cartoonish villains who do evil things simply because they're bad.

- The story is a bit too epic, and the 13 episode series adapts only the first 5 volumes of the 27 volume manga. As a result, it feels like the series ends right as things are getting good.

They don't make animes or mangas like this anymore. This is what Yona of the Dawn wishes it could be.

This is an underrated masterpiece. It's almost Shakespearean with the amount of foreshadowing and the way the romance is constructed.

"Your loyalty to the Red King will kill you."

There are tons of foreshadowing early on that are reiterated. Nothing is accidental. Basara follows sets up similarly with Avatar The Last Airbender. Sarasa and Tatara are two siblings who grow up in a small village. Tatara is the chosen one, meant to unite Japan and defeat the Red King. Japan has turned into a desert. Sarasa one ... day ventures forth to see the ocean but sees a sea of red, the Fire King's army. They attack their village and kill Ma-kun, a village boy who disguises himself as Tatara. Three years later, the Red King's army comes again and kills not only her father, but also her brother. Without a leader, without the chosen one, Sarasa decides to cut her hair and assume her brother's role and live out her life as Tatara.

Her village is destroyed and from there she starts her journey as she forms alliances and comrade to take down the Red King. The Red King seeks to turn Japan into a dictatorship. You find out as you continue that the goals of the Red King and Sarasa are similar. They dream of turning Japan into a lush green land where cherry trees and vegetation can prosper once again . Even their means of getting there aren't that different.

It made me question what does it mean to be a hero. Is it being on the side that's considered right?

What shines is the story telling and the dichotomy and contradictions within the characters. Sarasa meets Shuri throughout her journey and bumps into him time and time again. She doesn't realize Shuri is The Red King. Their tones change when they are with each other. They can be theirselves without playing their respective roles. Sarasa can just be a normal girl and Shuri can just be a guy.

It woulda been a near masterpiece had it fully adapted the manga. I stopped around volume 5.

Animation is as limited as the current animes but I found the animation fluid for the most part. It looked natural, the animation.

This gave forth Avatar The Last Airbender.

Ahh.. finding the forgotten gems of the past is hard but always a thrill. We are bombarded with hundreds of shows in this day of age, yet it's nothing like going back and watching a hand drawn shows now and then.

Legend of Basara was made towards the end of previous century, based on the source material that ran though the 90s and as expected from shows of that time it follows some basic principles that were used then. You can't really take them into account while evaluating an anime (the endless name calling for example). It's just how the things were back then like it ... or hate it.

Now on to the series itself.. I will be blunt and just say it right away. It was not just bad, but straight up horrible. The only bright light that shines though it is that story (while extremely predictable) is at least somewhat interesting.

Characters were bland, stereotypical, edgy and often unnecessarily forced (looking at you Hayato). Story while somewhat interesting overall was predictable and sometimes uselessly stretched to fill out the whole episode. Pacing was off, but that is to be expected of 13 ep series. It could have been better with being 26 ep long. Music was often, if not always out of place. Animation, while taking into consideration the anime is old, was still terrible. Color schemes were all over the place, often completely changing color of clothes or hair from one scene to the other. If it came out 10 years earlier I would still consider it mediocre at best.

All in all this anime has been a shipwreck from start to finish with it's lackluster production. Haven't read the source material, but I've got a strong feeling that it didn't do it justice. We get what we get however and Legend of Basara clearly wasn't the gem I have been looking for. If anything positive taken from it is that I appreciate some old shows (like Cowboy Bebop, Trigun, Lain) that came out the same year even more and can't wait to go on another hunt for potential hidden gems. For this one, I do not suggest you to waste your time on it.