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Title:
  Moribito: Guardian of the Spirit Part 1

UK Distributor:  MVM

BBFC Certificate:  12

Suggested Retail Price (SRP):  £24.99

Episodes:  1-13 (of 26)

Audio Options:  English 2.0, Japanese 2.0

Subtitles:  English

Release Date:  20th September 2010

Reviewer:  Rich (Webmaster)
 

Back at the May MCM Expo MVM announced that they would be following Manga and Beez's policy of releasing anime in half-season sets, and now we have the first release in this new format - Moribito.

Set in Japan's superstitious past Moribito focuses on the spear-wielding female warrior Balsa, a woman who is given an offer she can't refuse after saving the life of the young Prince Chagum.  Court seers have been predicting a great drought and pinpoint the cause as a water demon inhabiting the Prince's body.  They advise that killing the demon is the only way to stop the drought and so the Prince is marked for death for the good of the country.  When Balsa saves the Prince's life following an 'accident' his mother asks her to be the boy's bodyguard and hide him from the court, but even with the Queen's support and the cover of a fire at the palace, getting away from the elite troops under the command of the Chief Stargazer is not going to be easy.  On the run from the most powerful of all enemies Balsa has few allies, but those she has will do all they can to help her.  With the prince in tow Balsa has to find a way to not only shake off her pursuers but also assimilate the boy into peasant society, it's a difficult task but with the help of the herbalist Tanda, the shaman Torogai and street kids Toya and Saya it seems that she has a good chance of hiding.  However, the court is not going to be easily fooled, their troops are everywhere and with the arcane abilities of the Stargazers and the power of the Mikado against them do a handful of commoners really stand a chance of protecting the Prince?
 

 I must admit to knowing next to nothing about Moribito before watching it, and afterwards I wonder why I hadn't heard much about it.  This first volume was excellent, the 'runaway prince raised as a commoner' story may be quite a standard fantasy plotline but rarely is it delivered in such a mature and engrossing way as it is here.  Moribito avoids many of the standard tropes of anime to create interesting and unusually believable characters, placing them in a ancient Japanese setting that feels realistic and steering clear of the fanservice and comedy that bogs down many modern

anime series.  The setting seems well researched, from the lavish palace of the Mikado to the summer festivals of the farming villages, but it's the characters that really bring the series to life.  The whole story revolves around Balsa, a conflicted and beautiful warrior who accepts the task of protecting Chagum as part of her personal quest to atone for the lives she has taken.  Despite her beauty Balsa is not your typical anime heroine.  She wears sensible clothes, she doesn't have frequent baths that the other characters can walk in on, she's quite surly, uses her brain along with her brawn, and her skills with the spear are the result of hard work and training.  There's no yelling out special move names here, and you know what?  The series is a hell of a lot better because of it.

I've gotten so used to energy blasts, special attacks, powering up and huge amounts of verbal description in anime that I'd nearly forgotten what it was like to watch a series without it.  It may be a part of why I liked this one so much, but it certainly isn't the only part.  The other characters are as good as Balsa, particularly the long suffering Tanda, a compassionate man who has supported Balsa both medically and emotionally.  The love the two share is beautifully understated, it's never spoken but obvious to those around them, particularly when they form a surrogate family with Chagum.  The young Prince himself is pretty underdeveloped early on, but it looks like he is the one who will grow the most emotionally over the course of the series.  As the volume progresses he increases in confidence with the support of Toya, developing skills and making friends in the hope of making himself useful enough to help support his protectors.  It's not just Balsa's group who are interesting either.  The Imperial court has its fair share of intriguing characters, from the pragmatic Mikado himself to the honourable Stargazer and Imperial tutor Shuga who hopes to find a way of preventing the drought without killing Chagum.  However the most interesting opponents for Balsa are the elite 'hunters', a secret group of warriors who serve the state from the shadows.  They are the initial force dispatched to track down Chagum and are talented warriors, but they're not superhuman and have to use their experience and skills to try and outwit their quarry.  Their tenacity and battle of wills with Balsa as she flees is one of the best parts of the series so far.
 

The animation and art is as good as the characterisation and writing.  The series looks fantastic and the character design is great,
with Balsa reminiscent of Blood The Last Vampire's Saya, whilst the music and voice acting is excellent too.  If Moribito has a problem it's that the overall story and some of the subplots are not the most original.  Although they are done brilliantly here, you've seen the 'rich kid proves himself to poor kids', 'kid stands up to bully' and 'warrior faces enemy from her past' plotlines many times before, and it's sometimes not hard to see

where these bits of the series will go.  However, an old story told well is still a story told well, and familiarity never detracts from the series as a whole.  One of the reasons for this is how well the world and setting is realised, as I said it seems well researched but unlike anime with similar settings such as Otogi Zoshi, it doesn't feel like the history is being shoved down your throat.  A problem many series suffer from is the need to explain everything in minute detail for the viewers benefit, if a setting is realised well enough the series doesn't need to do this - if you establish a world where certain things are possible then you don't need to explain how they happen.  It's because of this that the supernatural elements that the supernatural elements that are introduced to the story don't affect the feeling of realism the series enjoys.  If there's anything that shows how good the writing is, it's this.

Moribito vol 1 really blew me away with its quality of writing, characterisation and animation.  I came into it with no preconceptions and by the end of the thirteen episodes I was hooked, and can't really wait to see where it's going to go next.  It will be interesting to see if the supernatural elements will become more intrusive in the next volume as there are signs that there is a lot more of them to come.  However, as it stands this volume was an excellent advert for intelligent storytelling that's refreshingly free of the the fanservice and stupid costumes that permeate so much modern anime.  The action scenes are amongst the best I have seen for a long time, with a real sense of excitement and danger and real consequences - an life-threatening injury won't be healed by a magic bean here.  It's also refreshing to see characters having to train, to work, to get weapons fixed and gather food.  There's a real care and attention to detail in the series that sets it apart from the crowd and makes it one of my easiest recommendations of the year so far.  If the next volume can keep up this quality a series will have to go a long way to top Moribito as my favourite of the year.  Simply brilliant.

Extras:

Just trailers.  Anime this good deserves more.

Ratings

Feature:   Extras:
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