Basilisk

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.

Basilisk is a very good looking, serious and very well animated action packed ninja version of 'Romeo and Juliet' set in ancient Japan. It tells a compact and solid story about two rivaling ninja clans and their ninja. The story is pretty fast paced which kept me interested at all times and makes you care about the great characters in it. The animations in the series are one of the best-looking animations i have seen so far. Overall Basilisk is a pretty realistic anime for a ninjanime and has a lot of cruel, bloody and violent scenes, and a pretty good build up to the righteous violence climax, which makes it that much better.

Definitely worth watching!!!

rate it 8,4

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.

The animation is good and the character design are great but it was so boring if you are looking for fights there is not much and even when it happen it does not last long. For me this is one of the worst animation i have ever seen.

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.