(L) Tatakau Shisho (The Book of Bantorra)

[gameboy234]

I don't get the mirepoc part. Her hair turned purple, and she gain power.
What is the power and how? Can some1 elaborate?

[Ghostfriendly]

Originally Posted by Bridei

Just finished the whole series, and i must say it is amazing! Loved the concept, ideas, the unusual storytelling..... everithing!

There is just one thing that i didn't grasp: why did Ruruta transfer his powers to Nieniu? I mean, i understand that all he wants is to protect her and make her happy, but if that was what he was trying to accomplish with the power transfer, why didn't he do it before?

I must thank everyone in this forum for your posts and viewpoints! I feel that part of my understanding of this anime is because of you!

PS: I'm dying for a soundtrack release, it's relly awesome!

I think he transfered his powers to Nieniu because he couldn't stand losing to Hamy, and he was resigned to her destroying the world if she woke up. Ruruta hoped she would be happy if the world was destroyed, even if that made everything he'd done to protect it pointless, but by that time Nieniu was incapable of happiness, or imagining that anyone could really be happy (bit self centred).

Originally Posted by gameboy234

I don't get the mirepoc part. Her hair turned purple, and she gain power.
What is the power and how? Can some1 elaborate?

She gained Chacoly's power to cause her own emotions to be felt by others, in case sound-the-bugle-now awakening and shounen spirit.

[Boduar]

Finally came back to watching this after being disappointed with first few episodes and have to say it was worth watching. Its really too bad the first 2-3 episodes for me at least just seemed really meh, personally because of the "meats" concept which ended up on the back burner after the first few.

[gonzo562]

i dropped this series after the first few episodes to
guess i give this series another try

[roriconfan]

Ok, I finished this one. It was a pile of very good ideas and very bad presentation. Their line of thought made no sense no matter how much I tried to explain it. And I'm no rookie in weird stories. Obviously the scriptwritters didn't know what they were doing.

[Nayrael]

What are you talking about? All the staff I saw in this series made sense.

[Master_Yoma]

Awesome series it didnt disappoint at all

[kemal_1915]

Originally Posted by Mizuno

I wish they kind of touch upon where the dead really goes. Since the "heaven" turns out to be just Ruruta. So after they disappear, where can their spirits find peace?

Rest in our soul.

Originally Posted by LaiShin

Epic, epic episode. Had adrenaline rush throughout this episode. Props to the anime team for doing a good job.

If it was given more budget, it should easily surpass code geass/death note through just storytelling alone. A shame it's not getting the recognition it deserves.

When I was in the college, I have taken a "popular culture" course. My professor gave me a useful point.
It is very common that popular culture is flooded with those "low-class", cheesy kinds of work. People wants to be entertained so they flourishes. It is okay for this. However, at the same time, do we give enough chance for other kinds of work survive? That is the problem.
I admit that I also like watching anime for moe and fan-service. I watch K-on!, Queen Blade... At the same time, I watch this series and I will support Yamagata-san to make more good stories.

Originally Posted by Ghostfriendly

Did Hamy have some hand in Noloty's death then? I thought it was just the Governor of Paradise. BTW, did Hamy's final power get any sort of foreshadowing in the novels?

It seems that love can survive without memory, in Mirepoc and Volken's case. But as with Ruruta losing his memory of Nienu and killing her, leaving your memories leads to bad results. The mission of the Armed Librarians was to conceal the truth of the past and in the end Ruruta lost the significance of what they were doing, and caused so many atrocities Nienu could never forgive him. It seems that while past events are remembered (if a record exists, that means forever) the emotions they inspire will exist too. There definately could be more forgiveness in this philosophy; the overlaying of old memories by new one seems to be the only way people change their veiwpoint.

Spoiler for an unconfirmed spoiler in volume 10:

Hamyuts sent Noloty to deal with Enrique because she wanted Enrique to kill Noloty. I don't know it is true or not.

That part (Mirepoc lost memory) is original and I think it didn't fit in the whole theme. Love/emotion = past/memory is valid in the whole story. Acutally, in arc 5, the wizard Charlotte (the fat wizard) said to Olivia, "You don't love anyone because you have forgotten." When Olivia (and those meats) got their memories back, she then knew that she loved and was loved.

Originally Posted by Bridei

There is just one thing that i didn't grasp: why did Ruruta transfer his powers to Nieniu? I mean, i understand that all he wants is to protect her and make her happy, but if that was what he was trying to accomplish with the power transfer, why didn't he do it before?

Hamyuts killed the people inside him and made him lose his abilities. He couldn't stop her and he would die soon (Hamyuts wouldn't let him live). Giving Nieniu's ability to her could stop him losing and Nieniu's wish could be fulfilled too.

Originally Posted by wandering-dreamer

WOW, that last episode had more Crowning Moments of Awesome/Badass than I could count, felt pretty satisfying in that way (even though the power of prayer becoming important did seem cheesy...).
But one question I don't think ever got answered, did did Hamy say (multiple times to) "if you kill me you can save the world?" Did that mean that then she would be able to go into Rurta and draw the other books in for the final fight? Would her book have satisfied Neinu instead?

I think the "power of prayers" thing can be explained in this way. In Ruruta's dimension, the will power is more important than the real power. The power is stronger as the will is. So, they can the will power of the whole world to defeat Nieniu.

Yes, that was what she meant. Chacoli and she didn't know Nieniu before they got into Ruruta. So, they planned to kill Ruruta but not satisfy Nieniu.

Originally Posted by raiden7

Highlights of the Final Episode:

"I will mourn your death and celebrate your salvation" - Volken

Ireia --- super hot and super strong -> maybe her younger version is as stonger as Mokkania, which would make her as strong as Hamyuts

My Favorite Characters:
Volken, Colio, Ireia (Younger Version)

and maybe Chacoly and Hamyuts aren't so evil as first perceived

I want a spin-off of young Ireia!

Their life were twisted so they minds were twisted too.

Originally Posted by roriconfan

Ok, I finished this one. It was a pile of very good ideas and very bad presentation. Their line of thought made no sense no matter how much I tried to explain it. And I'm no rookie in weird stories. Obviously the scriptwritters didn't know what they were doing.

The adaptation is not good enough.
Try the novel. Someone is translating it.

[roriconfan]

Review time! Feedback appreciated.

Spoiler for tl;dr:

Enjoyment & Value: 5
Let me sum up my thoughts in few lines and spare you the details if you don’t want to read all the wall of text that follows. This series is in a few words full of great ideas as well as full of terrible storytelling. I really liked the themes of the story and the development of the cast but at the same time I was alienated by their illogical actions and the unsupported line of events. It is very good on a mental level and good to watch once but plain mess when seen in action or repeat.
Want to read more? Here come the rest.

Animation: 8
I really have no complaints here. Both characters and backgrounds have a pleasing to the eye amount of details and set of colors. They even have smooth animation and cool visual effects that blend good with the action. Very nice if you look at it without thinking much.
The problem comes when you try to excuse all that. For example, each Armed Librarian wears clothes that hardly fit in the setting. The world they live in is like England of the mid 20th century (giveaways are the aristocrats and the shape of the airplanes). So what does a group of people like a cowboy girl, a Hindu girl, a masked ninja and a woman running around without bra doing in here? They feel like they popped out of an rpg.
This is a minor issue really. It is just blending real history with magic. After all, it is a world where magic is far more important than technology. Yet, they seem to be wearing the same clothes almost all the time. This is again not much of an issue but imagine a woman dressed all the time as a maid in the library. She needs to go to battle. Guess what, she still is dressed as a maid. The characters simply seem to be dressed in their battle uniforms all the time… even if they are just a maid suit or a cowboy uniform. Weird…
Still, there are other issues as well, such as pretty girls always wearing revealing clothes. It’s just a minor form of fan service of course but it’s still seems like they put it there without in-story excuse.
All these seem like peanuts of course but it matters on an aesthetic level. There is no uniform or blend in all that. If you don’t try to think about it too much, it is fine.
I still take out some points for the unsupported blend and the unneeded fan service. The series would look more creditable with uniformity and not-sexualized uniforms.

Music: 8
I have the same things to say about the music. The music themes are actually good, despite being depressing. They fit the mood. Voice acting is also quite good, with almost no ridiculous pinches in voice. Still, many young and naive girls have a silly voice it may feel bad if you don’t fancy that. Sound effects during battles? No complaints.
Now the thing I really didn’t like. The talking! So much of it! They went overboard with the things a monologue can achieve. It feels like the plot is driven by long philosophical monologues and not by the power to blow up entire buildings.
It wouldn’t be an issue if the dialogues were great and excused … but they are not. They are ridiculously cryptic, symbolic and in the long run unneeded to the point of confusing you for no reason. This is obviously done to make the series feel more mystical and it works up to a point. Still, since the story is one big mess of out-of-place events, all that talking is actually quite superficial despite the really psychological and philosophical issues it encompasses.
So I take out some points because of the ridiculous use of all that talking. Keeping it more simple and working on the actual line of thought would be far better.

Story: 3
So much potential, so much BS ruining all of it. Just like the previous sections, it looks gorgeous if you don’t think about it much and yet it makes no sense if you do. First of all, it is like the entire story is made to be a mockery of ideals and high expectations. Take that, politically correct idiots! I liked that. The main idea is rather original, believe it or not. It is a world where you turn to a stone tablet, simply called a book, when you die. Anyone touching this book can see all your memories and practically learn from your life experiences. That is a wonderful concept. So the clash in the story is two religions, one that gathers and stories all books in a library and one that abuses them in order to advance in life and reach heaven (enlightment). It sounds so awesome at first that I was expecting to see some really deep and mindstorming stories. And I did up tot a point. But the excuse of all that… Nothing. Everything felt so unsupported that I lost track and gave up trying to be emerged in the world.
So what’s with the library? The good guys, called Armed Librarians, store the books in a dungeon full of monsters in order to protect them by those who want to abuse them. Yet they need to fight those monsters themselves when they want to get a book for any reason and that counts as training. All that in order to be strong against the New World religion, a bunch of fascist bastards who believe that there are real people who deserve their book to ascend to heaven and treat all those not worthy as cattle, soulless piles of meat they exploit in the most inhuman ways possible. This is where most of the interesting themes of the series come from. Many bottom level people are tortured and abused to turn to mindless weapons and murderers and the shock value of watching them doing all those horrible things in the name of their leaders is something worth paying attention to. Many of these Meats as they call them are turned to human bombs, with sole purpose to grab an Armed Librarian and turn kamikaze. Others are tortured to hone their magical powers only to be used as batteries by their True Human leaders. All that create a very interesting story generator.
It feels like I am talking about the characters and not the story all this time, right? Well, it is expected as the story is 100% character driven, leaving the backdrop story as an excuse for the human tragedy to unfold. Which is also the downfall of the story as well as in all honest makes no sense at all.
The first three episodes are used to explain to the viewer what is going on in this world. How do they do that? By monologue! Instead of showing us all that in practice, they blabber for several minutes explaining things they normally have no reason to mention as they are all self-explained on their part. What a cheap way to be introduced to the story! The scriptwriters really didn’t bother showing us, they just threw in a blunt monologue and forcefeeded us all the backdrop story.
“Hi, I am this and I do that and that one works like that and the other one is like that.”
Well, thanks guys, that shows how stupid you think we are!
So the first episodes feel really bad in terms of pacing. The mid episodes are in fact the peak of interest as they are all practically flashbacks of all the characters, showing their stores and present status. This is a really interesting part as rarely do you see such strong character emersion in such short amount of time. It still feels disjoined of course, as it happens almost at random, but it is still cool.
The final episodes is when we finally return to present time and see the final confrontation of… em… of… Ok, I have no idea what is going on in the last arc. I mean, I see their motives, I see their thoughts, I see their strategies… and it makes no sense! Going from point A to point B happens in a totally unsupported way. And I’m no rookie in weird and complicating stories. I watched NGE, SE Lain, Ergo Proxy and many more. I got all their line of thought and motivations there. They made sense. Here? I DON’T GET IT AT ALL!

Spoiler:

There is this savior who saves the world by killing everyone and then for no reason he loses his memory and people are born again, and then two religions fight to kill one another’s leaders but it is all a set up as they both work for the same goal and the memories are needed to empower something and triggered by the love of a little girl and there are android super soldiers, and there is a mind controlling lizard and a spell that makes snow appear that makes everyone fall to a coma, and a bioorganic weapon made to stop him and she loves death and death is salvation and there is a disease and a witch of the past and monsters in the dungeon and lies, tragedy, deception, DOOPIDY DOOPIDY DOO, I DON’T UNDERSTAND ANYTHING.

If an experienced viewer like me has a really hard time to understand the story, I can only imagine what a problem it will be for everyone else. Heck, it makes Xamdou Lost Memories to feel like a walk in the park. I have heard over the net various explanations and speculations and they all sound fine while reading them. That still does not change the fact that in-story it is a big pile of nonsense and it would really help if you simply don’t give a damn about the story at all. Pay attention to the characters and NOT THE RIDICULOUS STORY.
Do you know what I say about all that pile of BS I lost hours thinking about? Read the following only if you have watched the series.

Spoiler:

The lover of the savior was killed for no given reason. That triggered a line of events that happened for no reason. And then the current director of the Armed Librarians, ms. Huge Boobs, was there to kill the savior from day one. Well, why didn’t she? He was right at the palm of her hands and he was defenseless and oblivious to his powers; why did she need to wait for decades until the world is about to end in order to do something? And why did all this mess happen in the first place? Why didn’t they just tell the truth about what happened in the past? They had the witch’s book that proved her innocence; they also had a billion other books revealing the past. That is why they were gathering the books, right? To learn from the past. Why didn’t they? What the hell is all that?

So please, pay no attention to the story. It is quite obvious that it will be shitty to begin with if it includes amnesia, mind control and magic gismos. No well-written story would implement amnesia to slow down the plot, magic to allow the bad guys to appear and disappear at will. And in no chance in hell would it forcefeed us all the backdrop story through monologues in the first episodes!

Characters: 7
Few, now that I got that out of the system, let’s move to the cast. Half there is to be said is already in the story section. Most characters receive a great amount of attention. Each one has this long flashback in the mid episodes that excuses his/her motives and fleshes him/her out. Very good work indeed; it even shows them holding items and mentioning quotes that play a role in later episodes. Not everyone gets one though; that cowboy girl is just a cowboy girl. But in all you do feel something for the characters. They even show them having sex! How big balls does a series needs to have in order to show them having sex? PG15?
Too bad the ridiculous story ruins their credibility. How was that boy turned to a mind controlling lizard? Why was the leader of the opposing religion making his head invisible? The oversexualised image they gave to females also hurts as it turns them to fapping material that detracts a lot from the sympathy you could feel from them. And then there is the drone-making gizmos. Boy, do I hate drone-making gizmos! What on Earth does a mind controlling lizard doing in a character driven story? It flushes down the toilet all sense of personality importance if it can turn people to mindless killers in a few seconds. Yes, you heard me right, one moment they are good villagers minding their business, the exact next they are suicide bombers, brainlessly wasting their lives by dropping into the heroes. Where did they get all the bombs anyway? Was bomb creation arts part of the brainwashing package? Wow, great deal, be brainwashed now and get the knowledge to create bombs for free. Order now! But it doesn’t stop there. No, really, it doesn’t. A few episodes later, snow is falling from the sky that throws people to coma. Yes, magic comatose snow. There goes the importance of characters again, they just threw in another gizmo to mass control them. In practice, it was just a cheap way to keep everyone out of the way during the final battle. Boy, that was an insult to my intelligence!

That concludes my rant for the day. It all comes down to tastes as usual and this was in all a mixed bag. Smart and stupid at the same time. A normal anime that is. I would recommend this to people who like watching anime without thinking much about it and fancy character emersion and political incorrect stories. I would not recommend it to people who want easy to digest or rationalized anime. Take your pick.

[golthin]

Originally Posted by raiden7

Highlights of the Final Episode:

"I will mourn your death and celebrate your salvation" - Volken

Ireia --- super hot and super strong -> maybe her younger version is as stonger as Mokkania, which would make her as strong as Hamyuts

My Favorite Characters:
Volken, Colio, Ireia (Younger Version)

and maybe Chacoly and Hamyuts aren't so evil as first perceived

Sad that all my favorites died. I was hoping for some kind of miracle at the end but once I saw Hamyuts poof, I knew it was not coming.

[Battler-kun]

Cheesy ending, but i am not unhappy.

Mirepoc after 10 years is really hot.

But i wonder what happened with the rest like Enrique?

Is it covered in the VN?

Who did Mirepoc marry?

I really want to know.

[klare]

finally finished this, it was a funny experience which can be described as:

the first few episodes were like they tell their story and dont care what u think, very confusing and chars with funny names... but somehow managed to keep we following

the story gets better at the mid-way point, especially the sad ones, started to get used to the chars and the way they act

the ending is acceptable but not really great, i guess it is hard for me to believe so many chars go from "im gonna kill u" to "i will protect u" in such a short time

overall i think this is the surprise title of the last 2 seasons, worth to watch

[OkamiNoKaze]

Finished this series, it was great, definitely a sleeper hit. There aren't many anime out there with a mature, thought provoking story like this series had. Noloty was my favorite, her fate was sad, but I was glad to see her again in the finale, I think a story focused on the cowgirl would have been interesting, she seems a character I could have liked more if she was fleshed out a little more. The ending was great seeing all them characters

[Shiroth]

Listening to the soundtrack, and wow does it deliver. All the pieces i wanted from the series are here, together with some i don't remember all that well. I think a rewatch is in order, especially seeing as though i wouldn't mind watching it again.

Anyone else listened to it yet?

[Black-tsundere]

Originally Posted by Shiroth

Listening to the soundtrack, and wow does it deliver. All the pieces i wanted from the series are here, together with some i don't remember all that well. I think a rewatch is in order, especially seeing as though i wouldn't mind watching it again.

Anyone else listened to it yet?

i havn't yet, did you buy it. i've only continued to listen to the music the play's in the trailer, and it's just epic. i can just imagine how epic the ost is going to be

EDIT.
no worries i found it

[OkamiNoKaze]

Nothing really stood out for me scorewise, though it's rare if it does. I did like Ali Projects Opening song though.

[LKK]

Sentai Filmworks has licensed the series. [ANN]

[kyouray]

Finally ! Great news.

[cerrian]

I'm really surprised that it got licensed. As much as I love this series, I thought that the general lack of fans during the initial showing would forever doom this series. So many people missed out on this one because it defied quite a few of today's conventions for anime story-telling.

News of the licensing has given me reason to re-watch the show and damn...a 2nd viewing of this show is definitely recommended to see how the seeds of future events were planted and then woven into a complex tapestry.