Customer Reviews

Ghost Slayers Ayashi: Anime Legends

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It's hard to believe this anime has not received more critical attention and a wider audience in the West. Rivalling the best of Miyazaki's creations, it's some of the most beautiful artwork imaginable--if you are a student of the Japanese aesthetic, or just enjoy entertainment beautiful to the eye, you'll love this. Character design in particular is superior.

If you were to combine "Grave of the Fireflies" with "Dune," "Onmyoji" and "The Grateful Dead Movie," then set it in Bakumatsu Edo with every background and costume detail rendered to historical perfection, you might come up with something as delightful as this.

I suspect the reason this isn't more widely known may be that it's thematically so "Japanese" that many Westerners won't understand the cultural references. Steeped in fanciful evocations of Shinto,this is a feast for the culturally literate Japanophile and is definitely not "kid stuff."

This is an "official" release with properly done English dubs and subs; my one quibble might be that pronunciation of Jp. names could have been better in the English version, but this goes for dubbed anime generally. Enjoy!

Be warned, this anime contains a lot of history. Just watching it made my head spin from time to time. If you don't understand what is going on in Ghost Slayers Ayashi, this anime can get pretty boring, fast. Sure there are some action scenes and encounters with creatures that the Ayashi fight called Yoi, but it also takes place during the time of the Shogun era. Regardless, the power that the Ayashi use are called Ayagami and that power allows them to draw the names of characters in order to wield as weapons. With that said, I can't say that this anime was bad or good. I liked it, and I hope you enjoy Japanese History anime as well. To me, this was like a mix of 'Princess Mononoke' and the popular video game 'Okami' :).