One of the most popular heroines in manga never got very far
in anime. This short series, featuring the beginning of Sarasa's adventures as
a rebel leader in a post-apocalyptic desert world, introduces the main players
and the major conflicts, but doesn't have the time to really resolve anything.
Still, there's ample evidence from this introduction that the series could have
sustained a very long run had there been the demand. The central characters are
all excellent. Sarasa is one of the strongest anime heroines in a long time, and
wonderfully human in the face of her formidable trials. The Red King, Shuri manages
to be a convincing adversary and love interest for her without any sense of discrepency.
Their story is more or less a plain old-fashioned adventure epic, and quite a
good one too.
Though nothing fancy, the limited
animation is perfectly serviceable. The designs are the real treat here, done
in a shojo style full of fun details and ornamentations. The plot moves along
at a breakneck pace, often much too fast for important characters and events to
leave much of an impression, but the really important elements usually survive
unscathed. Like so many other short series, there's simply too much story and
too few episodes to shoehorn everything into. One of the best parts of the series
is the use of the desert setting to define the culture of Sarasa's world, recalling
the past far more than it foretells the future. Thus, the closest counterpart
to Basara would be the Arslan OAVs, which share quite a similar
plot and atmosphere.
(3.5)
