Basilisk: Kôga ninpô chô

So I've been wondering for a long time if I should buy Basilisk or not. Well I finally bought it and have now seen it and I am very disappointed. Why?

First of all there are so many characters to keep track of and get to know in such a short time that you end up not giving a rats ass about any of them. They are all shallow and one dimensional.

Second reason is that its just plain boring. It keeps the same pace throughout pretty much the whole series, and that is a slow and undramatic one. witch doesn't always have to be a bad thing but here it is.

The good things I guess is the animation which are fluid and nice in general. Some of the ninjas technique are awesome.

But overall I thought basilisk was a pretty mediocre and impersonal anime series. And I don't recommend it.

I honestly have to wonder if some of the more negative reviews here are based on the newer iteration of the Basilisk series from 2018, the Ouka Scrolls. That version is honestly terrible, uninteresting, and frankly, not worth anyone's time.

But this version, the 2005 Kouga Scrolls series, is solid. While I wouldn't add it to my short list of exceptional anime series, it is a very good one. In contrast to the later series, this one is absolutely worth the watch. At 24 episodes, it's also not too much of an investment.

The storyline is interesting enough, and marries feudal Japanese history with fantasy elements. The characters each have rather unorthodox ninpou techniques, which you learn as the series goes on. They aren't exactly your typical fighting techniques or scenes, so if you need a typical chanbara anime, you might be slightly disappointed in that regard. But the plot keeps your attention, the characters are interesting, the fighting scenes are worth watching, and the artwork (for the time) can be beautiful. I'm personally a big fan of anime series set in feudal Japan with ninja and/or samurai elements, and this fits the bill for me.

A note - if you're sensitive to rape and sexualization of some of the female characters, there are some elements of this in the series, which may detract from it for you. These sorts of things lessen the experience for me in some shows, but I don't think in this one that it was to the extent that it took away much from me enjoying the show. I would have appreciated a little more development of some of the female characters, as this is something important to me, even when watching shonen/seinen anime. But there is enough there and the majority of the female characters have enough depth to them that I stand by my recommendation.

TLDR; I don't think you will regret watching this if you have any interest in series set in feudal Japan, with ninja and/or samurai elements, that has a thread of romance throughout. There is some implied rape and sexualization of female characters, but this does not, in my opinion, detract from the quality of the series.

Up until episode 12 this is a fantastic series keeping you in genuine anticipation, satisfaction and then anticipation again. The action is not the very best you have ever seen but it's okay and there is plenty of it around. The game with the truly exciting special powers makes up for everything though and you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat every time a new technique is getting revealed. These episodes are fairly well written too, featuring an interesting plot and also doing a fine job with character development and in setting up emotional attachment to most characters.

Now after getting you hooked I suppose, indicated by a token flashback episode a very different series emerges. The animation now becomes minimum effort most of the time, meaning a heavy decline on action scenes by definition and a lot of mere shaking of static pictures. This would be party acceptable saying that we'd have arrived at a more talky, story centered bit but unfortunately this is not the case either. The thing just runs out of steam and starts kind of going nowhere, doing that with a critically slow pace too. Ideas barely emerge anymore and everything just becomes very incoherent. Worst is that also the fights and deaths of the characters become disappointingly anti-climactic blowing a fantastic premise right out the window.

Now this doesn't stop me from genuinely recommending those first 12 episodes as they rocks quite hard nevertheless. I really can't recommend you to waste your time enduring the rest as there really is barely anything to look forward to, but maybe just reading the story (fighting those battles in you're head) on wikipedia and then cut to the final episode right away might be a good solution.

I'd give a 9/10 for the first half and a 2 for the rest.

Some desire love. Some desire peace and freedom. Some others want to protect their beloved ones. Some desire to temporarily achieve honor to enable further accomplishments or to justify their existence. Some finally simply want power to rule other's destiny in sight of their own perspective. And human history is just a huge conflict involving these major needs. I'm not going to list what's good and what could be better in this anime: it's 10y old and technology and tastes are different. It deals with great topics and it does it in a great way: animation, graphic, SFX and character design is top notch. I'm in my 30s and I cried a lot: ancient Greek tragedy sounds just like this and you can't avoid to feel what is deep in our souls when watching this. Watch it alone: your children won't like it apart from the battles. But let your grown children watch it if they don't want to read Euripide instead. I looked at all the serialised animes around in the last 20 years and found no one more deserving: this is great. Maybe just 3-4 other animes are of this level for our western perception. Buy it. Support it. Let this anime survive over the "consume to get something new" policy of these days. This will make you cry and dream and will motivate you to believe in human kind. In 5-20 years something better will be there but as per now anime poetry can be found nowhere else.

This is a very very good anime that I somehow missed in the mid 00's and only finally caught now, so while my opinion has been somewhat coloured by the history surrounding this anime, it is a very good story on its own, with detailed animation and very interesting depictions of the succession war that happened during the Edo Period.

The problem I have comes from the localisation that has happened, see back in the mid 2000's, companies like Funimation weren't as on the ball with distribution of Anime as they are today and while they created a dub for this, they didn't provide a subtitle for it until more recent re-releases to digital media like Amazon, so the people who were tasked with giving an original version of this were the Fans.

Fan subs were a far more prominent thing until far more recently and there was no need to have any biases placed into the story by people who have political and social agendas, it was purely to provide a good quality version of the story that the fans provided.

And while fans still do this and the sub is a VAST improvement over the licensed versions, there are less of them today than there was 10 to 15 years ago.

With that comes the beginning of the issue with this anime.

If you have gotten this from an official source, the subtitles are not the traditional story, they are a socially injected version by Funimation that detracts from the story's ability to tell itself, by adding issues and changing word meanings around to better fit a "woke" agenda, Funimation have tarnished a decent property of theirs with the disgusting actions of their staff.

That point out of the way where I do hope my opinion has been given (go for fan subs, allow places like Funimation and Crunchyroll to burn themselves to the ground)

Lets talk about the dub.

I don't know what it is with Funimation's staff, but since their inception they have had a core staff of 6 voice actors who can be seen in virtually every piece that they have, one of them being Chris Sabat - a man who has less range in his voice than Wilford Brimley - and no matter the casting or crew working on in...with 1 or perhaps 2 very rare exceptions due to things from Japan being a concern, a Funimation dub will have several very telling signs of its lack of detail.

It will have horrible sound mixing where voices are going to be either too quiet or too loud contrasted terribly with over dramatic musical scores that are rarely faithful to the source material, the level of direction and skill in the voice actors has a massive dip in quality depending on the actual skill of the actor and the voice director. And most telling of all

Funimation refuses to have a scene where there is quietness going on, where there is no talking while a character's face is on screen, I do not understand this and it has never been something they're willing to allow - again, except for rare instances where Funi are having their arms twisted by the studio in Japan.

Basilisk, Kôga ninpô chô is an amazing anime that you can deeply enjoy for its very dramatic and dark depiction of what life was like for small clans in the Edo period of Japan, it doesn't shy away from dirtying up historical heroes like Hattori Hanzo and depicting well know figures like Lady Kasuga (Ofuku) or Oeyo for their involvement in the War. The only downside is that many will watch this in the English and take away from it a negative view due to the terrible localisation in dubbing.

So again

Fan sub is the way to go, do NOT trust the official source if it has Funimation or Crunchyroll in the title.