Category: Guin Saga

Now this was supposed to be the episode to make or break this series; with this episode, we would know whether or not this series is able to animate large-scale fights that put armies against each other, and which will probably become the biggest focus of this series. We’ve already seen how Valkyria Chronicles screwed up when it didn’t seem to know whether its enemies were tactical geniuses or incredibly stupid, but I must say that Guin Saga gracefully avoided this flaw. This was such a great episode, and I’m even more hungry to see the next episode.

So as it turns out, Guin’s plans consisted partly out of psychological warfare, and partly out of using the local monsters near Nosferas. They attacked in small groups in order to draw out the Mongol Army, Guin also showed himself a few times, and when they became angry, they unleashed carefully timed giant blob monsters on them.

The thing is that this plan mostly worked so easily because of Amnelis’ incompetence. The way she’s dressed and the way she acts suggest that she’s never really lost a battle, or came close to it. The Mongol army really seems like an army that uses pure numbers in order to overcome its foes, and that means that they’ve never really had to use smart tactics in order to win: they’d just overwhelm their enemies and get things over with. My favourite scene this episode came when Guin actually nearly killed Amnelis when she moved too close to the front lines.

This episode was basically one very big wake-up call for Amnelis. Her numbers meant that she was overconfident, and with such a huge chunk eaten out of her army, this now means that she has to get serious and start using her head and listen to the advice of her companions, who are much more experienced than she is. Guin may have his giant slime blob, but now it’s also known that fire will repel it.

With Valkyria Chronicles, the characters in charge just felt too much like stereotypes: there was nothing that really set them apart. Amnelis, incompetent as she may be, is slightly different. We can really see what’s going on inside her head and where her weaknesses lie. She’s a flawed character, there’s no mistake about that, but she doesn’t have the personality of a paper bag.

Usually in anime when battles between huge armies are portrayed, they fail to impress because the creators are trying to rush through them too much and fail to keep track of this army. I often have no idea how large these armies are: all we see is just a bunch of people fighting here and there. And here this series comes, and simply by saying how many soldiers are involved, I feel much more able to imagine the sheer amount of soldiers that play a part of this.

Rating: ** (Excellent)
This episode had one of the best battles on a really large scale I’ve seen in a long while.

Oh boy, this series is sure promising some great things. In the next episode, we’re going to see Guin along with an army of ape-men try to take on 15000 Mongols. I really can’t think of any fantasy series that correctly pulled off battles between entire armies a la Lord of the Rings, but if there’s any series that can do it, then it’s going to be this one.

And yeah, I’ve been trying to think of something to compare this series with, and this really has a lot in common with Lord of the Rings, the anime, especially when you look at the presentation of the movies: beautiful landscapes, different races, majestic architecture and battles on a very large scale. The big difference is that the enemies this time aren’t a bunch of dumb orcs, but human beings themselves. That’s one thing I dislike of a lot of western fantasy: its “humans good orcs bad” mentality. I mean come on, break the boundaries between good and evil a bit.

In any case, the next episode is probably going to be make or break for this series, and we’ll see if it can pull off such a huge battle (of which we probably will see much more in this series) correctly. I’m not asking for much, just as long as it doesn’t screw up as badly as Valkyria Chronicles did in its first episodes. But I’m confident: so far, the only flaw in the combat of Guin Saga was that at times the mood gets ruined by bad animation, which really stands out like no other in this series amidst the otherwise beautiful drawings.

As for the rest of this episode, it mostly built up for that next episode, but I’m glad to see that the graphics looked much better than the past episodes. The fact that Satelight ended up animating this series really has its good and bad sides: on one hand, the best shots look really good, but at the same time the lesser shots really visibly lack polish. It’s about the opposite of companies as Production IG and Kyoani, who hardly ever seem bothered corner-cutting.

Rating: * (Good)
Building up, but that battle in the beginning was pretty good.

I’m noticing a worrying decrease in animation quality with every progressive episode of this series, which seriously isn’t a good sign. I really hope hat Satelight are saving their budget for the later episodes, because amidst the beautiful shots the bad shots really stick out like a sore thumb. The graphics of this show unfortunately are of the kind that need a big budget, because otherwise they’re just going to look bad.

In any case, this episode didn’t have me as much impressed as I hoped to. The novelty of this series has worn off just about now and this episode lacked a bit of atmosphere. Guin, Remus and Linda get captured by the Mongol army, only to get rescued again by Istvan. It’s mostly just used as a building up episode, and not really that of an exciting one, although we do learn some new stuff.

As it turns out, these lands are very unfamiliar to the Mongol forces and they too have a lot of trouble trying to fend off all the huge fishes and giant sandworms, which seems to suggest that they don’t have these giant beasts in their home country (otherwise they’d know how to deal with them more efficiently by now). Another small clue was given about Guin and Istvan’s pasts: somehow the name of Landock is important to Guin, which Istvan once saw written on a very fast ship ten years ago when he was being a pirate.

Rating: (Enjoyable)

Short Synopsis: Guin and the others descend a rather dangerous river in order to escape no man’s land.
Episode Rating: 8/10 (Excellent)
While most EDs aren’t anything special, I do have to say that Guin Saga’s ending theme is really good. Probably the best of the season along with Basquash’s (interestingly, both come from Satelight). It fits the series exactly with its epic sound, and the vocals are clean and haunting. It’s a very varied song, considering it’s only ninety seconds.

In any case, this episode again brought a whole new dimension to this series, as it introduces Amnelis, who turns out to be a princess of the Mongol (or however that’s spelled) country. At the same time, this episode was also used to get to know the cast better: everyone has a different goal, but for now they still need to work together to get back to civilization. I was quite surprised by all of the disturbing things that live inside that river. Those oversized piranhas and big-mouthed fish were bad enough already, but to think that some sort of everything-eating plant lived somewhere underwater…

We also learn that there’s some sort of deep storyline involved with Istvan. If I understood correctly, he was supposed to have died at one time. How does that relate to him getting captured by that demon of the previous episode? And Linda also turns out to either have some ability of telepathy, or she occasionally gets possessed by something that wants to talk through her. The meaning of the occult in this series is still a big mystery, though. We also see some henchman of Amnelis who is into foresight.

It seems that next up is the village of Suni’s people, from which either everyone will go separate ways, or something (probably involving Amnelis) will happen that will keep the five of them together for a while longer.

Oh, and on a side-note, while the character-animation this episode didn’t look as good as in the previous episode with quite a few inconsistencies that even I could notice, the architecture in this series really is amazing. All of the different buildings are distinct and look like a lot of creativity had gone into designing them. And it’s not just for one building, but every single structure in this series looks amazing. I bet that the creators could even make a wooden shack look awesome if they wanted to.

Short Synopsis: Guin, Linda and Remus try to escape from the count’s castle.
Episode Rating: 7,5/10 (Good)
In this episode, Guin Saga showed some of its weaknesses, but I’m still a big fan of the show. Sure, it was a bit strange that the count would allow the black-haired guy (I believe his name was Istvan) to keep his sword and whip while in jail, and it was quite convenient for the ape-men to attack the count as well in order to create the diversion that everyone needed to escape, but nothing really got in the way of the really important stuff in this episode. This episode still was as epic as it should be.

And this episode did a nice job of giving a few glimpses on how the rest of the world of Guin Saga looks like. It turns out that Guin isn’t the only were-beast around as this episode shows that the count is some sort of demon, and it introduces a bunch of ape-men who are after revenge because the count killed one of their comrades. Meanwhile, Linda meets another ape-girl from a different tribe and adds her to the main cast of the show. It looks like there are many different countries, counties and all sorts of political fractions, races and parties. As expected from a show with a source material of over 100 volumes. It’s shows like this in which just about everything is big. Well, apart from some of the characters, of course.

I’m also surprised at how I’m not annoyed at all by the antics of Remus. Around the net, the biggest criticism against this show seems to be the annoyingness of the two lead characters, but I find them strangely enjoyable as two small kids dumped into an incredibly big world, totally out of their comfort zone. Sure, it’s not exactly original, but in this show, it works.

Short Synopsis: Guin, Rinda and Remus get captured by the enemies.
Episode Rating: 8/10 (Epic)
Oh, Guin Saga is promising to be another one of the gems of the current spring season. Perhaps not the best, but I just can’t ignore such an epic series that at the same time favours a very slow pacing and solid storytelling. This really is the kind of series that draws you in so far, and the choice of Satelight as the animation company really fits this sort of story.

Obviously, with the original novels currently at a staggering 124 volumes (?!), there is no way in hell that the creators are going to be able to stuff this into only 26 episodes (or however long this series might end up to be), so I wonder how the creators are going to plan to end this thing, but that shouldn’t be that big of a deal.

The problems with this show of course are of course that when you start objectively looking past the haunting dialogue, great atmosphere, terrific music and solid graphics, there isn’t that much new: the creators specifically chose this slow pacing and simple setting as a base, and from this they’ll probably slowly develop the rest of the setting. I’m interested in what kind of character-development this series seems to be going for as well: here we have Guin and Rinda, who are already very stable characters without much flaws in their personality that they need to overcome. Instead, Guin’s flaw is his amnesia and the fact that nearly everyone sees him as a monster, while Rinda’s problem is that she’s a grown up stuck into a child’s body that nobody’s going to listen to, now that she lost her status as a princess.

And then there is of course the evil overlord that makes his presence in this episode, who probably is my least favourite character of the show. The guy really needs to be fleshed out, get some development, or have something happen to him to make him more than your average sadistic bad guy. But then again, it’s only been two episodes. There’s plenty of time left for that.