Basara

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Basara
Original title バ サ ラ
transcription Basara
genre Shōjo , science fiction , fantasy
Manga
country JapanJapan Japan
author Yumi Tamura
publishing company Shogakukan
magazine Betsucomi
First publication September 1990 - June 1998
expenditure 27
Television series
Country of production Japan
original language Japanese
year 1998
length 25 minutes
Episodes 13
music Fumitaka Anzai , Toshiyuki Omori
First broadcast April 2, 1998 - June 8, 1998 on Chiba TV
synchronization

Basara ( Japanese バ サ ラ Basara ) is a manga by Yumi Tamura , which was also implemented as an anime series . It can be assigned to the Shōjo genre, but also contains classic Shōnen features with great adventure and combat elements .

action

Basara is set in a distant future when Japan is ruled by a 300-year dynasty of kings, with Kyoto as its capital. The only exception is the still democratic island of Okinawa . The king Ukon divided his kingdom into four areas, which he left to his four children. The Black King rules in the rich north. The residents of this area are still fierce resistance. In the east he installed the Blue King. He handed the area around Kyoto to his eldest daughter, the White Queen, and the southwestern area, which has now become a desert, is subordinate to his youngest son, the Red King.

The people are poor and the times are troubled when twins are born in Byakko village. The Prophet Nagi proclaims that one of the two children will usher in a new era as, as an adult, he will rise up against the tyrannical royal family and overthrow them. Everyone assumes that this is his son Tatara and so he is prepared for his difficult task from an early age, while his twin sister Sarasa grows up in his shadow. On her 15th birthday, however, the Red King attacks the village, destroys it and kills Tatara. So that hope for better times does not die, Sarasa slips into the role of her brother, swears vengeance on the Red King and sparked a rebellion against him that spreads across all of Japan.

Tatara's sword Byakku, like the three swords Seiryu, Genbu and Suzaku, is the work of a famous royal armorer who rose up against the then king with others. The rebellion was crushed, but the will for independence remained in the swords and so Sarasa's main task is to unite the four swords and with them the people who, like them, want to fight the royal family.

Between Sarasa and Shuri, the Red King, a sensitive and at the same time comical relationship developed right from the start. Neither of the two knows the identity of the other - Shuri as the red king who had Sarasa's brother killed, and Sarasa as Tatara who wants to overthrow the monarchy - and so the two fall in love, but fight each other at the same time.

Publications

Manga

The manga series was published in the Bessatsu Shōjo comic magazine of the Japanese Shogakukan publishing house. The first 25 volumes deal with the story itself, while two other volumes under the title Basara no Gaiden contain short stories about the main characters.

The series has been fully translated into Chinese, Thai, English and German. The German edition was published by Egmont Manga and Anime from 2003 . After the 18th volume, Basara was suspended by the German publisher due to insufficient sales. Publication continued in April 2008 and the last volume was completed in January 2012.

Anime

The manga served as a template for the anime television series Legend of Basara with 13 episodes. A short film came out in 1993 after the template received the Shogakukan Manga Prize . The anime series, created in 1998, only covers the history of the first five volumes, but is based heavily on the original. Directed by Noburu Takamoto , the production took place at Studio KSS . The character design was created by Keizo Shimizu and the artistic direction was taken over by Shichiro Kobayashi.

It was first broadcast from April 2, 1998 to June 8, 1998 on Chiba TV in Japan. The series has also been translated into Russian and Korean. A German version was published by OVA Films in 2003 .

synchronization

role Japanese speakers ( seiyū )
Sarasa Akiko Kimura
Shido Jūrōta Kosugi
Ageha Kaneto Shiozawa
Shuri Kazuhiko Inoue
Asagi Nozomu Sasaki

music

The music for the series was composed by Fumitaka Anzai and Toshiyuki Omori. The opening credits were underlaid with the song Endless Loop by Rouage. The final title is Plumeria no Saku Basho e by Nakayama Kanako.

reception

The series won the 38th Shogakukan Manga Prize in 1993.

Jason Thompson praises the manga as an ambitious war and love story with many strong moments, an interesting main character and implemented with a bold, unconventional line that gives the series an "elegant, glamorous atmosphere". But after a while it becomes clear that the good-looking protagonists are practically immortal and the story cannot be resolved satisfactorily. The German magazine Animania describes Basara as an "adventurous Shōjo-Manga" with a "good mixture of tension, tragedy, humor, action and romance" . The characters are lovingly worked out and went through a complex and sensitively narrated development. The diverse characters would offer every reader a “favorite”, especially with “the male characters represent the whole range from androgynous bishons to“ real guys ”” . The manga contains a lot of violence for the Shōjo genre, but most of it takes place on an emotional level. Narrative techniques and drawing styles of the Shōjo are also used intensively. In partly feature film-like image settings, Tamura conveys an “aesthetic of the dreamily ephemeral by making use of a delicately melancholy symbolism of nature” . In doing so, she takes up elements from many cultures - ancient Roman, oriental, Japanese and European - and thus creates an enigmatic and also outstandingly complex story.

According to Animania, the anime implementation is “quite successful” , even if fans of the manga might be disappointed by the less detailed characters. Many well-known seiyu were hired as speakers and animation has been a “good TV standard” . The anime depicts the fights more discreetly and relies heavily on dialogues. Despite the weaknesses of the anime compared to the manga, the series is an “exciting fantasy story [...] in beautiful pictures, with occasional action and comedy interludes” . But the designs are too bright compared to the original, "the soundtrack is not very remarkable and the intro is not very atmospheric" . Therefore, the series was not a success in Japan.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Jonathan Clements, Helen McCarthy: The Anime Encyclopedia. Revised & Expanded Edition . Stone Bridge Press, Berkeley 2006, ISBN 978-1-933330-10-5 , pp. 46 f .
  2. ↑ a b Animania 6/2000, p. 48
  3. ↑ Jason Thompson: Manga. The Complete Guide . Del Rey, New York 2007, ISBN 978-0345485908 , pp. 22f. (English)
  4. ↑ Animania 5/2000, p. 38 f.
  5. ↑ a b Animania 11/2003, p. 23.

literature

Web links