Guin Saga

Guin Saga, an epic fantasy adventure that apparently has 129 volumes written by the late Kaoru Kurimoto. Unfortunately, Ms Kurimoto passed away a few months ago, however, with that many volumes published so far (plus whatever notes she had that can be used to finish off the story posthumously) should be enough to keep us all entertained for a while. So far the anime has been down-right incredible, and has not failed to keep me entertained through the 15 episodes currently subbed.

The story revolves around a mysterious warrior, Guin, who has a leopard mask magically attached to his head. Guin has no recollection of who or what he is. He knows only his name, Guin, and another word: Aura. Guin meets two twins of the Royal Kingdom of Parros, Remus and Linda, as they are mistakenly teleported to a demon-infested forest instead of the safety of their uncle's kingdom.

The Mongual Army, which is pursuing the twins, decides that Guin is now their enemy for protecting Remus and Linda. Big mistake for them. It turns out that Guin is a bad-ass warrior and can wreck everyone. In addition to being super-humanly strong, Guin is also very charismatic, and raises an army of barbarians and monkey-people (called the Lagon and Sems respectively) to fight the Mongual army that is invading their lands.

Guin is also a tactical genius and wrecks the invading army and sends their general, Amnelis back home with a sore rear and wounded pride, telling her she's better off at a dance wearing a dress, then at war wearing armor.

Now that Guin has kicked the shit out of the Mongaul army, the story is changing gears slightly, focusing on political intrigue and sorcerers and omens of war. The next story arc should be interesting. It's almost as good as reading the 'A Song of Ice and Fire' series. To be honest, if George R. R. Martin's epic were to be animated, this is what I would expect it to look like at the very least (HINT HINT ANIMU PRODUCERS WHO AREN'T READING THIS).

So, this series is also blessed by Junichi Higashi, the art director that worked on RahXephon, among two-dozen other titles, so of course the artwork for this series is freakin' incredible. The animation is fluid and the scenes are detailed and colorful. They've really pulled out all the stops for this series. This guy knows how to make anime look good.

As if having Junichi Higashi as art director wasn't enough, they have Nobou Uematsu composing the music. You might have heard of this guy. I got to see him last week at Final Fantasy: Distant Worlds. That's right, he's the composer of the music for most of the Final Fantasy series. Because clearly this series needed to be more awesome.

Apparently, Guin Saga has been called the Japanese answer to Lord of the Rings, and it certainly has lived up to the hype. Sadly, there aren't many groups subbing this show, though apparently it's been licensed so maybe we'll see a professional translation here soon. I've you've read or watched Berserk, imagine Guts, then make him more awesome. Then you have Guin.