I’ve been waiting to see Seirei no Moribito for quite a while. I saw a fight scene clip at Otakon 2007 at a Geneon panel and I was hooked into wanting to see it. Spears make for interesting weapons. First, they are primitive, low class, and generally considered low skill weapons. So when I saw a spear wielding female warrior dictating terms of battle to four “samurai” the underdog cheering blood vessels pumped with glee and it went on the get list.
Add to that, gorgeous animation, the Production I.G pouty lip design style, a main character who says, “I’m not so young anymore, 30 is just around the corner,” and seriously, I’m there. The story is pretty classic so far, eight episodes into it. Balsa, the warrior with the spear, seeks to atone for the lives she has taken by saving lives in order to appease the souls of those she killed. She has one more soul to appease, one more life to save to repay her debt. For her last life to save, Balsa must protect prince Chagum, who is said to be the host of an egg of a water demon, who upon hatching will send the land into drought. To save the people, the king of the land, Chagum’s father, has deemed it necessary to sacrifice Chagum.
While Moribito is an adventure story, with sword fights, strange mystical characters and cliff-hangers, there’s a mature side to the storytelling, or at least a non-otaku feel to the storytelling. It introduces a potential dilemma for Balsa. If she keeps Chagum alive, the egg of the water spirit will hatch, sending thousands to their death resulting from the drought. If she values the lives of everyone else over Chagum, has she really atoned and learned the value of all life or would she be using his death as convenience and expediency? So far, this dilemma hasn’t been tested too much, but it does add something to Balsa’s character — and thankfully, Balsa hasn’t whined about it like a teenage heroine might.
Of course there’s no point in having a condition in a story if it isn’t exploited, I expect Balsa to be tested somewhere along the journey. Balsa is an adult. She knows where she has to go, the problem is, can she get there? This is a bit different than the teenage heroine dilemma where they spend most of the show figuring out where they want to go.
In spite of some very slick fight scenes, Moribito moves carefully, laying a path before the viewer to walk along instead of grabbing them by the shirt and thrusting them off the ledge. There’s a bit of palace intrigue going on as well as the adventure storyline with Balsa. This intrigue, at least on the part of one character, is very much in gray lines, rather than black and white. So far Moribito looks like a good first third of a series.
Dub and Release Notes
The English version of Moribito is produced by Bang Zoom Entertainment! Everyone sounds fine as who they are in Moribito. Cindy Robinson sounds about right for Balsa, but other than convenience and default preference I don’t have a compelling reason one way or the other to choose the dub. For the record, I didn’t find the Japanese track all that compelling either. While I’m not an expert in Japanese at all, it sounded pretty functional to me as well. I found myself switching between English and Japanese in between episodes and not favoring either one. Looking for a silver lining, the English matches with the Japanese intent well.
The package I got included volumes 1 and 2 and a pretty flimsy cardboard collector’s box. The DVDs came in Super Jewel cases, basically dvd sized versions of the standard CD case. I haven’t seen those in a long time. The plus side is they’re somewhere between a normal dvd case and a thinpak — my shelves are overflowing, so I appreciate any reduction in case thickness. Downside, jewel cases are pretty fragile. The release is extras free.
I watched it as it was airing, and they have a wonderful opening, spears make interesting weapons.. but I guess I was more interested in way the anime gave off a Korean-feeling..but I think that was historically accurate.
The story of her protecting the prince sounds similar to Scrapped Princess, Which I enjoyed. Animation is beautiful, and the action clips look fantastic. Thanks for the review. I think I’m hooked.
Seirei no Moribito was awesome. The OP was only released this year though lol, more than a year after the anime had started airing. Some felt the ending was a little rushed, but I felt it was fine. The only nitpick I had was when she said “performance” (out of all the Japanese) in the entire show, when they were not supposed to know English at the time. -_-
I’m not familiar with Korean tradition and history, so I missed picking up on that, so I was feeling more of a mixed thing with some Chinese style with the style, but that’s just based on martial arts movies than any real knowledge.
I hadn’t thought comparing Moribito with Scrapped Princess, but there are similarities as far as the guardian protecting the potential scourge of the land type thing. The tones feel pretty different to me though.
Well, Panther, I’m loving it so far. Endings tend to feel rushed in most shows, I find.
I saw lots of good review at anime-source.com, now I’m really tempted to follow this series.
This was one of the best shows from 2007 (along with Dennou Coil and Gurren Lagann) and it’s a shame that, from what I could tell, it got so ignored. I checked this show out after hearing it was similar to The Twelve Kingdoms. I think TTK is a better story with better world and character development and better pacing, but Seirei no Moribito was still very good; it has a very steady and solid story with some really amazing fight scenes (and beats TTK in animation hands down).
My main complaint about the show, though, is that after around the halfway mark the cast dynamics change drastically (can’t say more without spoiling) and while none of the characters really go “out of character” I still feel like the shift really removed what made the first half of the show so engaging; namely the ongoing manhunt for Balsa and Chagum. I didn’t think the ending was rushed at all (abrupt, perhaps, but not rushed); rather, in a sense, you could argue that the whole second half of the show is falling action, which to me gave the show a bit of a dragging-out-a-tad-too-long feeling.
I’ll be picking this one up when a boxset is out, it’s a winner of a show.
The name “Chagum” sounds somewhat korean, I think. So yeah, I agree that there is this very nice korean feeling.
I too am in the middle of watching the series, and I love it for the exact same reasons as you. Weren’t the fighting scenes in episode 3 just too perfect?
I like the fact, through the video snip you linked, that the fighters are good but not invincible. Even the weapon breaks but they keep going. There’s a part of me that sours on many anime fights due to ‘fake’ looking weaknesses, but this doesn’t seem to have this feel.
As you said, it has a different art feel but it’s refreshing to see ‘uncommon’ style like that, goes well with the darker, more ‘desperate’ feel of the scene – probably the whole series along with.
I’m going to be getting this DVD in the new year, I do think. Seems like a story I’d enjoy.
Yeah, in a lot of anime, when the weapon breaks, they’d break out into talk about how they’ve got them now.
Now you’ve made my weapon lighter and that makes me ABLE TO USE MY SECRET FORBIDDEN TECHNIQUE.
I promised my master i’d never use it but I don’t care because ‘AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHH’ *chargeup chargeup*
I’d keep typing more, but my brain is rioting against me making most of the right side of my body twitch violently… so… I’ll stop there.
“I see it’s time to get serious now!”