The main male protagonist, Demon King Arawn whose atrocities makes Japanese World War 2 soldiers looks like Dora the Explorer in comparison.

The anime backlog I have on my hard drive doesn’t seem to be thinning, mainly because I downloaded just as much completed series at the same rate as the amount of what I have watched in the past two months. Even now I have Shangri-la in my Azureus queue (alongside some hentai titles). If not for the big hard drive crash I’ve encountered a couple of months ago, the queue is going to be bigger. This post then is for my review of Tears to Tiara, a 2009 anime that will challenge Wolf and Spice 2 for the ‘Anime of the Year 2009’ title. This anime is actually simulcast live in Animax Asia (which is available in my ASTRO subscription) but I don’t really view that channel nowadays (I mostly just watch the sport channels or History/Discovery Channel). Plus, the version I watched is in HD and highly likely not censored too.

One of his hobbies is to sink his lusty claws upon innocent young and helpless girls, like the one above.

Story:-
Rumors abounds in Divine Empire that the evil Demon King is about to be resurrected from his long slumber and destroy the world. The senators ordered the priests to do their thing and seal the Demon King permanently. But the head priest has other ideas and wants to revive the Demon King instead so that he can destroy the world. The priests then kidnapped a young naive maiden to be offered as a sacrifice for the revival of the malicious Demon King, while the maiden’s brother and his fellow clan members raced against time to prevent her slaughter and stop the revival of the Demon King. Alas, for once, evil prevailed and the Demon King is reborn anew. He then destroyed the Divine Empire and the world. The End!

This anime, set up in a medieval world where horses are the main means of transportation, has good promise early on as it starts pretty well for 6 to 7 episode or so. But after that great start, the anime’s ordinary story was eventually exposed, and that’s a shame because the story has a unique premise rarely seen in an anime, which I last see in Gokudo-kun Manyuki. In addition of the average story, this anime also suffered the same bad storytelling problems that Gosyusho-sama Ninomiya-kun has. While the problem is not as worse as the ones in Ninomiya-kun, this anime still have problems in scene transitions (a good example is the priestess’ kidnapping at the start of episode 12, which is completely disconnected from the preceding plot) and the pacing of the story (they become slower and slower as the anime went on). Bad storytelling means that some scenes that could have an impact upon the viewers if correctly presented lost their potential; an example is the first long flashback that spanned episode 20 and 21.

Character developments in this anime is surprisingly bad, with the exception of the priestess’s brother who is a slightly emo person. The main male protagonist is basically the same person from episode 1 all the way to episode 26 with minimum emotional and physiological changes, and virtually all other characters is not that different really. Only the aforementioned brother of the priestess (he being emo actually helps him a lot – making him the best character in this anime) and to a lesser extent, the blonde swordswoman too (thankfully she is not an emo character). The ending is lame, predictable and unoriginal; the less said about the coronation ceremony that resembles the ending of a certain famous movie trilogy which plot involves a couple of midgets throwing a ring inside a volcano, the better.

Expect plenty of violence in this anime, with blood being cheaper than water in some scenes.

Character Design:-
The character designs in this anime is excellent all around, there is nothing else I can say here. Black-hairs are rare though. Definitely a positive point for this anime.

Voice Acting:-
Unlike the character design, voice acting in this anime is simply average. There’s no one I think of that has good voice acting gigs.

Music:-
The OST is good but not so for any of the OP/ED themes or the insert song.

This anime is one of the most beautiful titles I have seen recently.

Animation/Direction:-
The animation in this anime is excellent, even in fast paced scenes. Choreography is just like the storytelling; could have been much better. Significant duels during the climax of certain plots, like the duel between the blonde swordswoman and her childhood friend on that windy cliff of the sea could benefit from a much better swordplay duel. The directing fails at thing I mentioned in the story section above, but he/she has provided some good fan-service moments with nifty usage of camera angles like the one in screenshot below.

Conclusion:-
6 out of 10. Wolf and Spice 2 easily beats the feeble challenge presented by this anime. I wonder whether the other anime that was simulcast on Animax Asia alongside this anime, Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood will fare better. You will have to wait until that anime concludes though, to know the result. That may only happen next year though.

During this scene, where will you look at; the far more important children or that blurry 'valley'?