A high school girl from modern Japan is mysteriously taken to a magical world, along with two of her friends.

The series is very close to Escaflowne, but with out the mecha. Neither does it have romance as major them. Evangelion fans many also like one of the female characters, who is very Rei-like.

The two female leads get most of the development in this Anime. The supporting cast seems flat by comparison. Also some really good sword fights.

The sound effects are standard fare and uninteresting. But it’s more than made up for my the stellar music which is a great sounding old world classical mix. The animation quality is also very high, lots of rich vibrant colors.

Objectionable Material:
Some bloody violence, magic.

Recommended Age Group:
Mid teen and up. The plot line is fairly complex and slows down at points. Younger children may not be able to understand some of the interrelationships of the characters, or may not have enough of an attention span to deal with the plot slow downs.

Second Opinion:

I’ve seen a good deal of anime (read: way much more than I responsibly should have). It ranges from train-wreck-bad to truly inspiring. This anime falls so close to the latter category that it belongs in my top 3 series. Very few animes can captivate a viewer to the degree where they don’t even stop to look at the time, where they don’t really expect the story/episode to stop. Every time I finished an episode, it always surprised me- I was so caught up in the story. The series is based on a number of well-crafted books which create a well thought out Tolkien-esque world. While developing this world, the series also finds time to develop its very interesting cast of characters. The music is also quite fantastic. The animation wins no superlatives, but it accomplishes its task quite well. The fight scenes, especially, are well animated. The one thing I worry about is the incompletion of the series. At 45 episodes, the story of the 12 Kingdoms is incomplete. I have been told that the 45 episodes effectively finishes the story of the main character- so some closure is reached. But 23 more episodes were apparently planned to reach an ultimate fate of the 12 Kingdoms- sadly, these will probably never be made. Still, this series is absolutely fantastic and not to be missed!

As far as the set goes…Animeworks never fails to impress, but they’ve truly surprised me this time. The case is very sturdy and features beautiful art from the series. The inside is just as impressive…more artwork from the series and a little glossary (yeah, the series is pretty detailed). It is clear from looking at the set that Animeworks cared about the job they were doing in bringing the series to the states. This is a very rare quality….so many U.S. anime companies spit out dvds with no respect for the original material, but Animeworks is clearly different.

Finally, the set is selling for a very reasonable price. If you pay between 70 and 100 for each of the sets, you’re getting 45 episodes for somewhere around 170 bucks…..for a series of this caliber, that’s a bargain.

I cannot recommend this series enough….its many beauties remain with you long after viewing the series. And now…you can purchase the series knowing that the original material has been treated with all of the respect it deserves.