Video Backlog: “Tears to Tiara”

Publisher: Sentai Filmworks (USA)
Format: Region 1 DVD, NTSC, Japanese Dialogue with optional English Subtitles
Length: 26 Episodes x 24 minutes
Production Date: 2009
Currently in Print (as of writing): Yes

A village populated by a group of people known as the Gael who live on Erin Island is invaded by the imperial army of the empire commended by a solider named Drwc. Much to their surprise the village is completely empty, except for the village priestess Rhiannon. Drwc manages to capture two Gael children and blackmails Rhiannon into telling him her “true name”, which he then uses her to put into a trance. His objective is to use her as a sacrifice to resurrect the demon king Arawn from his tomb. When the village’s proxy leader Arthur, sister of Rhiannon, discovers she has been kidnapped, he rallies the villagers in order to rescue her. But despite their best efforts, the demon king Arawn is awakened and takes the form of an albino man. Unfortunately for Drwc, Arawn releases Rhiannon from her trance, doesn’t take her as a sacrifice and kills him. Despite saving his sister, Arthur is highly suspicious of Arawn and attempt to fight him, but Rhiannon declares that she has chosen Arawn as her husband and therefore is chief of the Gael tribe. Arthur has no choice but to accept.

Arthur knows that once the empire discovers what has happened to Drwc and his platoon and will consider this as a rebellion, they will set out to destroy the Gael village. The group set out to prepare for this upcoming war and manage to pick up a motley crew of supporters along the way. Arawn leads them to the castle on the island of Avalon, former capital to elf race and still occupied and run by a small number of them. The elves are surprised to learn that Arthur and Rhiannon are descendants of the elf king Pwyll. The Gael tribe soon set up camp in the castle. Unbeknownst to them is the fact a fleet from the empire is heading straight for Avalon castle.

For many anime fans my age “The Record of Lodoss War” is the benchmark for fantasy anime. This is probably a bit unfair on many titles but for me, that’s the way it is. I knew that “Tears to Tiara” was based on a computer game, but it was only after I watched it that I discovered that the game was based on eroge game. This doesn’t really change my opinion of the series, but it does explain a lot of elements of the show, namely the number of women in the show, who don’t really add much at all to the plot. In the early part of the show there’s at least one character added to the cast every episode. But as I said before, the great majority of them don’t add anything at all to the show or the overall story. It would seem that they are just there to add a bit of humour or for specific filler episodes. The character designs were quite appealing, but really felt rather generic at the same time. The battle scenes are the show’s greatest strength. They’re really well choreographed and extremely well animated for a TV series. It’s quite interesting that despite being a fantasy series, there are very few battle sequences involving magic. The animation is quite good too. Towards the end of the series, the quality of the animation dipped quite a bit and as a consequence the battle sequences were a bit flat. However things turned around with the finale with the final couple of episodes being up there and possibly beyond the earlier battle sequences.

The story doesn’t quite fair as well as its animation and battle sequences. I felt it was all a bit “paint by numbers”. Apart from the women and girls in the show who don’t do a great deal at all, I also had a lot of problems with Arawn. He’s a demon king, but he hardly shows off his powers, which was a bit odd. Sure he’s seen as a leader, but he makes for a rather mediocre one really. You could say that Arawn is using his demon powers to make Arthur a king, but there’s little evidence, overt or subtle, to show this. In the latter episodes, it is revealed that Arawn is defying the gods who rule the world leading humanity on path to greatness. For me I felt it was all a bit too much to take seriously. It felt rather silly, especially when it was quite hard to distinguish between humans and other races. For example the elves are pretty much indistinguishable from humans (no pointy ears here). Overall I felt the show was a bit of a chore to get through, especially from mid-way through the series. While the story was a bit clichéd and daft, the animation and especially the action sequences made up for a lot of its short comings. 6 out of 10.

Remaining Backlog: 28 months (it's much easier this way than listing the number of discs).