Seirei no Moribito is definitely one of its kind. Well, more like this is a fine example of how anime should be. Back before I watched my first fansub anime, which happened to be Scrapped Princess, the existence of a low budget anime never occurred to me. It wasn’t a pretty experience finding out more than half of the series per season are usually poorly handled. Sadly that issue doesn’t seem to be getting better either. Just when I used to think Suzuka was as bad as you can get, they threw in Yoake Mae yori Ruri Iro na with characters that are beyond recognition. Now, unlike most of the “half-assed” shows as I would like to say, Seirei no Moribito matches how I used to view anime. Production I.G probably did everyone a big favor delivering a rare high quality anime. I mean, there’s a limit to how good an anime can with just the content. In anime, appearance does matter. Of course, in this case they did splendid in both. And not to mention, it feels good to see more shows pulling out fluid action scenes. I remember getting a bit disturbed like when I used to watch the first season of Shakugan no Shana. Unfortunately that’s still a problem in Geneon’s case. Action usually just means lots of shiny lights or some lazily designed monster no one would feel satisfied defeating.

Then there was the music, but I don’t know what to give on that. Fall season shows like this one and El Cazador de la Bruja suddenly got me interested in the soundtracks I usually never care about so I don’t know what to conclude. Are they really that good, or was this coincidentally the time I finally understood why people actually listen to OST’s? Well, maybe both. It’s just that I was never the type to get into the “background music” with no vocals. People used to all hype about those .hack//sign tracks before I even knew about the existence of fansubs, and I could never get into them. Currently in my drawer is a complete Cardcaptor Sakura OST set I bought way back on my first and last anime convention. I probably only listened to it once or twice. Then that was it. Waste of forty dollars unless I run into someone who wants them like what I did a Utada Hikaru CD long after I quit listening to pop. Well, which ever it is, who cares. I think we all agree certain scenes wouldn’t have been the same without the music.

Apparently some people think the show was slow, which I only half agree to. Slow is the wrong word to use here since people normally associate “slow” with “bad” when comes to shows. The word slow implies the series drags and doesn’t do anything for awhile. That’s not the case with Seirei no Moribito. Sure, conflicts die out for most of the series for the action hungry people, but that doesn’t necessarily equate to say it had a bunch of useless episodes and kept us yawning. Personally, there wasn’t a single wasted episode in the show. I particularly enjoyed episodes like the one where Chagum shutdown that Mon-Jin-Zen game. No progress in the story indeed, but there was still purpose in the episode to show Chagum’s charisma and proof that he has worth to live on and become king later. Those scenes made him more likable. Basically kind of a way to show that Chagum isn’t just someone who’s going to be a burden like Raki in Claymore. Then what about the episode about Saya? Yeah, some of the episodes about those side characters weren’t necessary except that one wasn’t a wasted episode either. I thought it was a pretty useful way to introduce us to the spiritual world Nayug rather than trying to force feed us a huge bite later on. We already had an idea of what Nayug is from that episode, so it got easier to intake when it became an important part of understanding the story.

In any case, the closing of the series was very exciting if not a bit awkward watching Chagum give birth. I don’t know, little disturbing there. The flamethrowers toward the end seemed out of place, but I didn’t mind the whole deal with Nayug at all. It’s different from how Scrapped Princess blew up in the end with all the sci-fi elements. Nayug implied something more along the line of what you would find in folklore, so it still felt attached to a semi-nonfiction setting. Uh, if you know what I mean. So if it’s some random samurai series, I would rather see a Kappa pop out of the water and pass that off as supernatural rather than see some anachronism. The conclusion was a little unsatisfactory since it pretty much said, “Okay, we saved Chagum. Now the story is empty and we don’t have anything else to do.” I think the ending would have been more interesting if Chagum actually agreed to that last question from Balsa (Mou ikkai!) and the whole chase started all over again. Yeah, stupid, but I prefer some laughs at endings. Oh, and someone please tell me I’m not the only who thought about the Evil Forest scene in Final Fantasy IX at the sight of all those horde of La Lunga’s.