I don't think you should be openminded, Silverwolf0, what's wrong with having a standard. And your right about crap fantasy anime, it has been a bad run for that genre. When i look at past episodes of Slayers, i get tears in mine eyes. What quality of storytelling, great cast of personalities. Now i have to be glad if the anime has nice animations:(. We should be discussing about the great storyline and the great cast, not about why cecily doesn't have bigger boobs:heh:

Opinions are opinion but I really hope that most people don't see Slayers as the ceiling for fantasy anime.

I totally argreed with you. Everything that i wanted to say you've said them :)

The way cecily talked and acted are annoying. Well at least they're annoying to me.

p/s: i think this is a 13 ep show.

Seiken no Blacksmith is certainly a fantasy series of the lighter fare. I think the first episode has done a good job of showing the viewers what to expect of this series. It's best not to be expecting something ground-breaking unless one is a masochist for utter disappointment.

And yes, the same goes for Slayers. My opinion is the same as animeboy12's with regard to this one.

For the fantasy genre, I would go for:

- OVAs of Record of Lodoss War (old-school)
- Seirei no Moribito (more modern with character-driven drama)
- The Twelve Kingdoms (fantasy with themes of history, politics and fatalism)
- Magicknight Rayearth (ok-ish, shoujo fantasy)

I'm sure there are still a few good ones I'm forgetting, but it's a good list from the top of my head in my opinion.

I understand what you mean. It's like something I've heard in a JRPG or a similar series from long ago.

Dear Animators: That's not what 'breastplate' means...

tbqh i picked this up due to breastplate. but after ep1 i doubt that will keep me watching. will stick around for 2-3 more eps though. but this season is pretty packed already so who knows.

Did you miss the brown haired girl in the green top/skirt?

yeah, that's the weirdest looking breastplate I have ever seen in my entire anime life lol.

I'd say that as far as I am concerned, Seirei no Moribito is _the_ best fantasy anime out there. YMMV of course. Then there is Berserk which is also great but loses points because of very low budget animation.

If you want to expand the fantasy genre beyond the usual "swords and sorcery" then you'll start including things like Spirited Away and Mononoke Hime and Wolf and Spice and Full Metal Alchemist...

I thought about mentioning Berserk too, but I was thinking that it's better to include it if we're specifically talking about manga.

It seems to me that titles like Berserk or Claymore are more loved for their manga versions.

YAY!

Sure, but Berserk was a very faithful adaptation of the manga. I watched a couple of episodes of Claymore and couldn't get into it, so I can't comment on that series.

Sort of a generic anime, 1rst chapter it's predictable but still fun to watch it does his job well it entertained me but still probably this can get better i'll keep watching this.

Good, so now i know it's not just me and that i'm not going crazy :heh:. But it's really starting to bug me, i can't remember what it's from...and i really want to know :X.

This isn't too bad. Watchable but a few things thay don't feel right. Namely Cecily's weird and impractical armor and how the demon simply waited there while Luke "forge" the katana. (Maybe he is curious like Cecily)

the music around 14:00 when she was begging luke to forge the sword, blahblah sword of my father blahblah

from aria clothes is she a mage or something ?

holy cow Aria "Saiyan fusion" with Cecily or something :eyespin:

This show is amusingly straightforward about it's Katanas Are Just Better message. My opinion on the overall series will depend entirely on how Cecily develops as a character. She's pretty annoying right now, but if she gets better it'll be okay. If not, I'll probably stop watching.

I found that perfectly likable and charming-ish, if nothing profound. None of the characters annoyed me and the ED was rather good. I sense we may see something of a role-reversal from normal anime convention here, a la "Good Witch of the West" - the female lead is somewhat vanilla and the male co-lead edgier and more interesting, and thus becoming the fan favorite. Too early to tell if Luke is another Roux, but he might just be GAR.

Just mentioning that I'm in the same boat. When I first heard it I started thinking what it sounded like too. Definitely familiar.

I'll get back to you if I ever get something concrete to come to mind ;)

Well, Slayers was the definition of a generic anime, albeit done pretty well and followed well upon. Except the last two seasons of Slayer (Revolution series) sort of showed that it doesn't have too much legs to stand on unless it concentrates a lot harder on either the serious action or the comedy. Unfortunately, it couldn't really do either.

As for the fantasy genre, I still don't think there's a single standard yet. Seirei no Moribito was great, but it basically threw away all forms of possibly awesome combat scenes for slow, slow, slow character development. To me, that sort of goes against what a fantasy anime is, since it should be all about the world's environments, the fantasy of the world (not something pseudo-real-world like Full Metal Alchemist. I would not consider that a fantasy.. more like some adventure-anime) and the BATTLES that a fantasy anime requires.

So far, I don't think we *quite* have that kind of epic, except the first three seasons of Slayers came damn close. It had its flaws, but it almost had everything. It came really close to being an unmissable classic, though its cheesiness and genericness in terms of the character archetypes sort of hurt its credibility a bit.