Basara Manga and Anime Mini Review & Store Updates

We're doing bunches of store updates now in an effort to reclaim some of our long lost shelf/floor/closet space. We're starting with our manga collection though it's proving a bit difficult to part with too many, is there some sort of 12 step program for manga addicts? Actually book buyers in general I can never pass up a decently priced interesting looking book of any sort and now they're kind of eating the house. But, I'm getting pretty off topic here.

Anyway, the largest manga collection in our shop wasn't even something we had to decide to part with, it's doubles from buying a lot to complete our collection. *sigh* But, it's well worth reading and well worth featuring: 12 volumes of Basara in English.


If you haven't heard of Basara, I would liken it one of my personal favorite manga/anime, CLAMP's masterpiece, X. Beautiful, bloody and emotionally complex. At first there seems to be a clear wrong and right, but as you progress you can see that everything is bathed in grey, both sides have valid points and arguments and are fighting for what they truly believe in. There's much more of an emphasis an the romance aspects than you see in X, but even for someone like me who often feels romance ruins an otherwise great manga, it's well written and really helps develop the characters. Basara is shoujo fantasy epic that supposed to be set in a distant future post apocolyptic Japan but looks much more like a medieval inspired fantasy kingdom. It follows the story of a young girl named Sarasa. Sarasa's twin brother, Tatara, was predicted to be the "child of light" who would lead the people to revolution and freedom. However, the hated and feared tyrant of their land , the Red King, sees to the end of Tatara's prophecy. Before anyone realizes what happens to Tatara, Sarasa decided to take up the revolutionary fight, calls herself Tatara and vows to fufil the prophecy on her own without anyone knowing the truth. Sarasa is not your typical crying helpless herione who thinks about nothing more than shopping and her next date. She has the fate of her land and her people on her shoulders and doesn't even get a magic wand. It's a far cry from the magical girls and high school drama one usually associates with the Shoujo genre. Though like you would expect with a Shoujo, there is romance and most of the story is told in, feelings, emotions and chance encounters rather than epic battles.
The entire Manga series runs 27 volumes, but these 12 are good place to start. :)

There's an anime as well, titled as Legend of Basara, it runs 13 episodes and covers the first 5 manga. It's a pretty true telling compared with the manga and well worth tracking down, we watched the entire thing in one sitting, it was THAT complelling. Sadly, it hasn't been released outside of japan, but fasubs are pretty readily available (We've got it on fansubed VHS , we're old like that). My only complaints about the anime are :
1) The art is pretty inconsistent, a third of the time it's beautiful, a third of the time it's terrible, and the rest of the time it's pretty "meh".
And 2) It also end very early on and with a cliffhanger. So I highly suggest at least having some of the manga on hand if you plan to watch the anime first or you will find yourself wandering online bookstores when you finishit late at night hoping to find it ASAP. I speak from personal experience on this one. ;)

Lots of other manga are headed into the store in the next few days as well so look for large portions/complete sets from: Judas, oh/ah my goddess, a slew of sailor moon comics and lots of single volumes other great titles.
A few other fun things that aren't so manga shaped will probably make their way in too , like this cute mint on card Sailor Neptune Figure.


So go shopping! and don't forget to use may's coupon code: MayBlog for a nice discount!

~Stephanie