Basilisk: The Kouga Ninja Scrolls

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.

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.

Just when I thought I'd seen the worst anime of all time I try watching this boring, useless, poorly written and sloppy animated garbage. This is truly the worst anime I've ever seen which is saying a lot. Not only is the action not in the slightest bit exciting but there is literally no storyline, no plot, no character development and no clever dialogue. It's got all the making of an award-winning "worst anime of all time" title. DO NOT WATCH THIS GARBAGE!!!

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.

It is simply an amazing show. Very well written. The story is about two ninja clans, the Iga and the Koga, who are ordered to assemble their ten best warriors to kill each other until only one side lives. Apparently there are two illegitimate heirs to the shogunate and whichever side wins will determine the next shogun. Meanwhile, the plot addresses a beautiful love story that is doomed, politics, martial arts, and philosophy. The artwork is superb. The music is decent. It is very similar to the script of the live action movie called Shinobi that came out not too long ago. It also has an association to the classic Ninja Scroll movie, where there are these ninjas who each have different mystical powers that are unique to them alone. It does great justice to Ninja Scroll, unlike a few other attempts to recreate that great story which is culled from myth. Of course, the myth was created because of the disappearance for many years of the real Jubei Yagyu when no one knew what he did during that time. He was the son of Munenori Yagyu, who was one of two or three instructors in the martial arts to the shogun Tokugawa Ieyasu and his family. Munenori's father Muneyoshi had learned the Shinkage-Ryu or "shadow art" based on psychological martial skills and created the Yagyu Shinkage-Ryu. In roughly the same part of the mountain ranges in the area where the Yagyu village still is was an area that had practitioners of the occult arts or voodoo. Many mythological traditions like to combine the two together because it makes for a wild array of skill combinations one person might have had. These stories are mostly fiction based on myths but they do have connections to real people and real events in Japan's history. Munenori left behind some writings about his art. In his book 'The Life Giving Sword' he says that you must make your mind clear like still water reflecting the full moon so that whatever thoughts are directed at you are reflected back upon the attacker and then you will be able to react with the proper counter measure to anything that comes at you and he says that this concept can be applied to more than just physical combat but also to business and politics and any walk of life. (or something along those lines)