Story: The Story of Guin Saga is very well-written, the characters grow and change as the story moves along, especially seen in Remus more than any other character, I think where I have to dock it marks is the fact that the story had a bit of a inconclusive ending specifically near the last five minutes of the final episode, I think there was something with Remus that specifically stuck out as a sore thumb and didn't conclude it for me perfectly. Granted, there are 130 Novels written by Ms. Kurimoto before she passed on, but this one only adapted around 13. But for the story in the anime it was well paced and planned out.
Art: The Artwork in this anime is beautiful, especially the ending credit sequence, it reminds me of Gustav Klimt's the Kiss and I think it was specifically based on that piece of art work. Now I'm not an art critic and generally I'm judging based on how the animation looks, It's very hard for me to pick out inconsistencies in certain episodes unless it's glaringly obvious. So there are really no animation issues.
Sound: First of all, coming into this anime, the one selling point was the fact that this was the first anime series whose music was composed by Nobuo Uematsu, I don't think I even need to talk about who this man is if you've played any of the Final Fantasy Games. The Music is Perfect, the opening theme is one of the best composed themes I've heard in anime. I prefer to watch my anime in English. Usually the quality of the English Dubs has gotten better as it goes on, this is one of the few instances where there have been major quality issues with this dub, There is a scene with two characters Flori and Amnelis that is supposed to be very serious and sad but the emoting in this scene is just really bad, I honestly blame the director for not doing his job right. The other thing that was bad was the song Malius sings in I think Episode 15 or 16, The Japanese version was perfect but the audio must have been out of whack because the voice actor could not hit the high notes and I had no idea what lyrics he was using, it was incredibly awkward and left a foul taste in my mouth. The other problem with this dub is that many characters had their voices changed after the first set (Scaal, Loluka and many more) I have no idea why this happened but this is a reason this dub is a major mess. The one thing that shocks me is that the ADR Director of this anime (Steven Foster) has done some fantastic dubs like Mardock Scramble and Le Chevalier d'Eon), but this whole dub is a disaster it's like he didn't even try to direct his actors.
Character: The Characters in this show are very complex, they aren't 1 dimensional, they tend to be well rounded and display a variety of emotions, Istavan is brash but loyal. Guin is a voice of wisdom and somewhat of a fatherly figure to Remus and Rinda. Remus starts off as weak but he grows into a strong young adult by the end of the series. Rinda, grows stronger as well. We even see a character like Amnelis who seems to have it all but ends up... well you'll just have to wait and see.
Overall, Guin Saga is an anime for those who like to see well-rounded characters, some fantastic music, beautiful artwork and strong story, the dub needed a lot of work though but if you can look past that flaw or even prefer to watch it Japanese you will enjoy this!
