Or - Now I'm Not Saying It Was Extradimensional Assassins...But It WAS Extradimensional Assassins.(...and you thought I was gonna make a joke about the lack of pants, didn't you?)
Well, this is a different sort of entry for this project, actually for a couple of reasons.
For one, this marks the first time reviewing something that isn't a one-off movie or an OVA. That's right, this week marks the first review of a full (on the shorter side) series.
It also marks the first entry on here where, going in, I already knew this wasn't going to be the bottom of the barrel. It's mainly getting featured here because I know this one gets a LOT of hate, so I figure, as a side project on this site, it'd be a nice interesting challenge to play devil's advocate to a few pariahs I feel get namedropped in these discussions erroneously. After all, once you've eliminated the shortcomers, finding the real horrors becomes much easier.
With that, we come to our first example of this with today's entry, the 1999 Rintaro helmed series Alexander Senki, better known to us as Reign: The Conqueror.
That's right...it's now officially pantsless o'clock
...suffice it to say, even though I didn't agree with such an assessment, seeing these responses (as well as many people on the site Anime News Network giving this the score 'Worst Ever') I knew I had to give it a go.
What I found was, curiously enough, perhaps the only series I've encountered so far where all the seething hatred can be traced back to just ONE thing.
But before we get to that, I should probably recap the show for anyone who isn't familiar with it, though I imagine that won't be as many thanks to the fact this one is among the few candidates on the waiting list to actually air on US TV.
Reign is based on a Japanese novel called Alexander Senki by Hiroshi Aramata, the novel itself very loosely based on the life of Alexander the Great. At least, I'm going to deduce that if the series is any indication, as here, while they do cover many of the aspects of his life and the mythos around him, there's also a strong sci-fi element laced throughout the series as well, hinging in no small part on the idea of a prophecy that Alexander will first conquer, then destroy the world.
This latter part results in a large subplot involving secret orders, famous philosophers such as Plato, Aristotle, and Diogenes, who are all now part of a secret society that seems to exist beyond reality as we know, and a Pythagorean cult who send shapeshifting assassins around as their apparent diplomatic baseline.
The fact this was adapted from a novel really does help put that latter part into perspective, as I imagine some of the metaphysical antics the show dabbles in whenever these elements appear probably would make more sense in a novel than they would a visual medium. This isn't to say these parts are on the same level as, say, End of Evangelion, for sheer "...the Hell just happened?", but there are some things that come across muddled in the greater scheme of things, particularly the end of the series, when Alexander's prophesied destruction of the world begins.
Despite this, watching the show I only ever really had one other explicit grievance myself - this show has quite possibly the longest opening sequence of any anime I've seen to date. The opening theme alone is a good 3 minutes long and left unedited. For the record, they also changed the theme song for the English dub (though still three minutes thanks to them leaving in the original video.) Of the two, honestly I'd say the US opening actually fits both the scenes shown in the OP sequence itself and the themes of the show a LOT better. This being my first time actually watching the original Japanese (first having seen the show on Adult Swim ages ago), Yuki Koyanagi's 'Anata no Kiss wo Oshiemasho' sounds like the end result of a secret Japanese attempt to presumably clone Celine Dion that went south, resulting an opening sequence that becomes unintentionally comical as ancient warriors are hacked and stabbed in combat to this J-Pop ballad about trying to get over love of someone. By comparison, the US version's 'Worthy of Your Soul', while feeling more mellow and less bombastic, seems to fit the visuals more and lyrically provides a better fit to the tone and plot of the show with lyrics that seem to more emphasize Alexander's ambition to conquer the known world as his destiny proclaims.
and to prove I'm not bluffing...and these are only a few select screens.
There's many more kills here.
Anyway, after the music video in either version, there's still another minute of introductory narration before we're finally given the show's title. This is easy enough to skip, and at least it's not grating to watch if you don't, but still...taking up four minutes of your episode on just opening credits seems something of a bad call, though that last minute at least has some voiceover to try and establish some narrative elements for the episode at hand.
On finally just sitting down and watching this series, I was surprised. For as reviled as this show seems to be by a lot of people, it was actually surprisingly watchable. I wouldn't say it's a great series that everyone needs to see, but it's really better than the groans it induces in some would lead you to believe.
In fact, in many cases I've found those groans all boil down to one reason why this show is so hated, and admittedly, it's kind of an odd one.
This man.
For those who don't recognize him on sight, this is Peter Chung. Most famous for his 90s TV series, Aeon Flux, Chung was picked to do the character designs for this show. It seems a LOT of people didn't fully grasp the ramifications of what to expect from art like this
Applied to a story like Alexander's. Resulting in:
Almost EVERY complaint I have heard about this show is about the characters. It's not even the art in general, though some of that CG has not aged particularly well, it's just the character designs and a large chunk of that centered around the fact they aren't really wearing pants.
It's curious this last part gets called on since, for one thing, it's technically one of the few areas where the show did kind of adhere to some loose sense of history. No, really. In light of considering this, actually looked into it. Apparently pants were more favored by the Persians and eastern nations at the time than the Greeks. For another, strangely these same people rarely seemed to complain years later when the movie 300 came out...and also adhered to the "No Pants in Greece" rule. In fact, that actually showed MORE male flesh than this series does (to the point the original comic has scenes of male frontal nudity) and got far less flak for it.
and...really, that's it. Almost nothing else about this show ever seems to come up in complaints. Hell, I've even had people admit the story is actually not bad, but they just can't seem to get over the visuals.Granted, the rest of the show isn't automatically great, mind you. The story's interesting enough in its premise, even if the execution varies, but the music's forgettable, and some of the individual moments in terms of dialogue and direction feel more overly dramatic than need be. The strongest example of this coming to mind would be most of the scenes involving Alexander's mother. I mean, I know the legends were that she was an insane cultist, but the show really lays that on THICK.
The cast, both in terms of acting and the characters they play, are overall not bad, if not necessarily anything spectacular. For the most part, Alexander and his team seem to fall into the classic 'team' archetypes: Cleitas as the friendly bruiser, Philotas as the team's sometimes voice of reason, Ptolemy as the token screwup, to name a few. They all have their roles in Alexander's plan and all are handled relatively well. Though I must admit, I'm still trying to make sense of why Hephaestion seems to be Macedonia's first and only ninja
...as well as what purpose having that metal headguard cover one of
his eyes serves when his specialty is throwing things.
his eyes serves when his specialty is throwing things.
Coming back to the acting, watching this in Japanese for the first time proved quite surprising as well. While the English dub wasn't bad (and sported a couple of fairly recognizable voices, in particular John DiMaggio of Futurama fame as King Phillip II and Star Trek's Dwight Schultz as his scheming aid Attalos) it really feels lacking compared to some of the star power the Japanese version managed to garner. With seasoned veterans like Toshihiko Seki, Hochu Otsuka, and Shuichi Ikeda making up members of the principle cast, it's a pretty strong spread for the vocal talent there.
The writing, while I again suspect it probably plays a lot better in a novel where they can afford to explain half the things going on rather than rely on some vintage CG geometry, isn't even that bad either. I'm not gonna say it's one of the finest shows I've watched on this front, but its writing is pretty par for the course. Everyone kind of falls into their roles nicely. About the worst I can say for characterization on the script's part is the fact that at times Alexander just feels like something of an annoying cipher compared to his comrades. Otherwise, it mostly just does its job fairly well.
I can't even rightly nail this show to the wall for its historical inaccuracies. Yes, they're there, but it's not like the show was trying to be History Channel grade, though by their current standards, it could have a shot. From the start one can see they were going less for 'the history of Alexander the Great' so much as 'The Legend of Alexander the Great, as re-envisioned by...' It's stylized and so one can feel the need to grant it a little leeway.
Plus, it'd be pretty hypocritical of me to call out just this anime on colorfully reinventing history, when the industry there does it with almost the same frequency as the American film industry (ESPECIALLY when World War II is concerned.)
I tried to find things wrong with this show beyond just the character design. I mean, I tried to tell myself that maybe my first impression was wrong and I went through this again hoping I would come across something else that would explain the knee-jerk hatred for this beyond 'it looks odd.'
Despite that, all I get the sense of here is an average show that people only really hate because of its different look. It's almost disappointing, in a way. I was really hoping maybe I'd missed something for all the contempt here. Even the character art I can't say I necessarily hate. I'll agree it looks physiologically odd and many of the men look more effeminate than they probably should, but even then, I have to at least give the showrunners some credit for trying something different from the usual 'anime' style.
That said, for the number of people on the web who derogatorily call this show gay, there's a surprising amount of female nudity in it.
In the end, Alexander Senki largely just amounts to a pretty standard late 90s anime series whose only real slip up was changing up the visuals to a rather polarizing style. With more typical character designs, this would likely have had a small following for a short time before dropping off the radar as another pretty standard anime.
Well, no dice this time, but to be fair, that's what I was expecting.
Here's hoping next test subject will yield some slightly more rotten fruit.
Until next time, that will hopefully be sooner than later.
and in closing, OK, even I'll admit this one overdid the 'rule of cool' style.
This one actually even bests the movie Caligula for most over the top execution machine.
This one actually even bests the movie Caligula for most over the top execution machine.
