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R2 DVD Reviews
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Monday, 24 November 2008 00:00 |
 Ninja with strange powers, a centuries-old blood feud, a Shogun who needs to decide on an heir, and the love between a man and woman on separate sides of the divide. Take one part Romeo & Juliet, one part Ninja Scroll, mix well, and you've got the basic idea of Basilisk. Expect bloodshed...
1614, and the Tokugawa Shogunate's facing a succession crisis - two of the Shogun's sons are vying for power, each commanding the loyalty of sufficiently large factions that conflict seems certain. The Shogun has a solution: a battle between ninja clans representing each faction, historical rivals the Touga & Iga clans, will decide the succession. The leaders of the two camps are more than happy to return to war after years of enforced peace, but there's some history between them that may complicate matters a bit. You see, leader of the Touga clan, Gennosuke, and daughter of the Iga clan, Oboro, are very much in love, to the point where they're on the verge of marrying and ending the rivalry between the clans for ever. Will love conquer all, or is disaster looming for the young lovers?
On one level, Basilisk is a historical drama looking at the long-running and extremely violent rivalry between two clans - there are a number of scenes throughout these episodes that show just how much blood has been shed between them over the years, so it's clear this is no simple feud but something much larger and harder to control. Ironically, Gennosuke and Oboro's relationship isn't the first time the clans have almost come together - years previously, the current heads of the clans, Danjou and Ogen, were in a similar position until a bloody raid by the Kouga on the Iga village put an end to their dalliance. Even now, the feelings are still there, but there's just too much bad blood elsewhere for them to be the ones to bring the peace - they had been hoping their grandchildren would be able to do what they hadn't, but the Shogun's intervention puts an end to that hope, too.
As the central characters in the series, Gennosuke and Oboro are people you need to be able to connect to, and up to a point you can. Gennsouke is the strong, powerful yet honourable type, filling the stereotype of the ninja that's been seen in anime so many times before. Oboro, unlike most in her clan, hasn't been trained as a ninja and has turned out as a sweet and beautiful young woman - although she's able to be firm when she needs to be, and has a unique ability: one look from her steely eyes, and a ninja will lose their abilities.
"Their abilities?", you ask - which brings me neatly to probably my biggest gripe about Basilisk. The ninja of the Kouga and Iga clans aren't your typical ninja, fighting with guile and human physical ability - instead, each has their own mystical ability that makes them a formidable fighting machine and often gives them aspects of animals or some other physical deformation - from the man who looks more like a spider and who can trap his opponent in webs shot from his mouth, to another who appears heavily overweight but has most of the properties of a high-bounce rubber ball, very few of the fighters on show are what I'd call "normal". It's a gimmick that's used quite often in ninja shows, presumably to liven the battles up a bit so that there's more possibility to make them different or more exciting, but it's an idea that's never really worked for me. Your own mileage may vary, but it's such a central part of the series that if you don't appreciate that style of fighting scene, then it's going to affect your enjoyment of the show.
The fighting - and the scheming that goes on around it - also takes up so much of the available time that it takes a while for any of the characters to really develop - and even then, only Gennosuke and Oboro (and to a lesser extent Tenzen) get anything more than a paper-thin personality. The rest of the cast seem to be there simply to fight, with little more than an aura of just how evil they are to differentiate them (beyond Gennosuke and Oboro, pretty much everyone in Basilisk seems to be portrayed as evil to some extent or another). Sometimes it seems that no sooner is a character introduced than they're on the receiving end of a nasty death, as the war's death toll mounts.
For all that the fighting side of the series soon gets into a rut, though, the portrayal of the relationship between Gennosuke and Oboro is good enough that it almost saves the series. This is where the Romeo and Juliet connection comes into play, as they truly are the star-crossed lovers doomed to seeing their love fail, and it's the scenes that build & develop them really being the ones that make the series for me.
If there's something that annoys me about Basilisk more than anything else, it's Tenzen - fighting commander of the Iga, and the man who simply will not die, no matter what injuries are inflicted on him. Every time he fights, he loses, and each time you're left thinking that's it, surely they must have got him - but no, like a bad dream (or Gauron from Full Metal Panic!, for a good comparison) he keeps coming back again and again. While he does finally get his come-uppance (especially welcome given the nature of his actions, past and present), it really does take far too long to get to that point, and the whole saga really tries my patience. It's a classic case of suspension of disbelief being stretached to breaking point, and in this case you quickly reach the stage where, whenever Tenzen fights, there's a mental "here we go again..." as you know exactly how it's going to turn out.
I'm not a fighting fan, so Basilisk always faced an uphill battle to impress me. It never quite managed to do that, or to convince me that some of the hype that surrounded it was truly justified - there's just too much fighting and not enough real story in there to make it more than a passing interest. It does have its moments, and on the rare occasions when the personalities take centre stage, it shows what it can do and does make you genuinely feel for its characters. Put it all together, though, and the bad balances out the good and leaves the whole as simply a competently-done fighting show. If that's your thing, then Basilisk won't disappoint, but if you're looking for something more than that, there are better titles out there.
For full episode summaries and screenshots, check out the reviews of the individual releases:
» Volume 1: Scrolls of Blood
» Volume 2: The Spoils of War
» Volume 3: The Parting of Ways
» Volume 4: Tokaido Road
» Volume 5: The Shades of Night
» Volume 6: Fate's Finest Hour
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