Basara

Title:  Basara
Mangaka:  Yumi Tamura
Length:  27 Volumes (Completed)
English Translation?  Yes, all volumes have been released by Viz Media.
Demo/Genre:  Shoujo/Sci-Fi/Romance/Adventure/Drama

How did I find out about it?  My college otaku buddy recommended it to me!

The story takes place in the future in a post-apocalyptic Japan.  The country is now run by a powerful Emperor and his four sons.  In a small village, it is prophesied that the "Child of Destiny" will be born.  When twins are born, the people of the village assume the male child, Tatara, to be the fated child.  The other twin, Sarasa, is raised living in her brother's shadow.  When they are fifteen, the Red King attacks their village, kills their the village chief (their father), and beheads Tatara.  To steady the villagers, Sarasa cuts her hair and claims to be Tatara, stating that it was Sarasa in disguise who was murdered.  With very few people knowing that she is really Sarasa, she begins her quest to seek revenge upon the Red King for destroying her family, but her journey soon grows to encompass the future of all of Japan.  Along the way, she meets a confident (coughegomaniaccough) young man at a hot spring.  When she's with Shuri, she's able to be herself, and the two soon fall in love, neither one realizing that they are in fact enemies, since Shuri is actually the Red King.

The artwork took some getting used to.  It did tidy up a bit as the series progressed, but it was never what I would call "beautiful."  I hesitate to label it "ugly," though.  It's just...a little unconventional.  As I read Basara, I grew accustomed to it and really came to appreciate it (and I still believe that Shuri is a handsome man!).

The series was maybe a little slow to start, but once it got going, I was completely swept up in it.  I loved the sheer scope of it.  As Tatara, Sarasa must travel all over Japan in search of the Four Swords in hopes of uniting the various peoples of the country in her battle against the tyrannical rule of the Kings.  This manga really had a sense of adventure, and I loved that about it.

What was truly the highlight for me though was the lead characters and their romance.  In the beginning, Sarasa's only goal is to slay the Red King.  She trains, she leads her people, all in the hopes of having a face-to-face encounter with him.  After that, she figures she'll just tell everyone the truth about who she really is, then try to start a new life.  However, as she proceeds along her journey, she realizes that it can never be as simple as that.  The Red King isn't the source of their problems, and her people have come to rely on her (or on Tatara, rather) to bring about a change in the world for the better.  She knows that it's selfish to pursue only her own revenge and ignore the suffering of not just her village but of all of Japan.  Something else we also see in Sarasa is her psychological struggle.  She's never allowed to be herself.  In the eyes of the public around her, she must always be Tatara.  She can't even relax around those few who know her secret because they are constantly pushing her forward with things like: "What's next?"  "Where do we go?"  "Think of what Tatara would do."  No matter who she's with, she can't behave like a girl, she can't be herself...except for when she's with Shuri.  She met him by chance, and he had absolutely no reason to make a connection between her and Tatara, so she was free to be Sarasa around him.  Likewise, as the Red King, he finds it refreshing to be around a girl who treats him like a regular man, so he doesn't feel the need to reveal that he's royalty to her.  I really loved Shuri.  Yes, he was over-confident and could be a real pecker sometimes, but he truly was a kind and just man.  Why did he kill her family if he's so "kind?"  A means to an end, which brings me to my next point.  Without realizing it, Tatara and the Red King had the same goals.  They just sought them in different ways.  Shuri hated the way his father and brothers ran the country.  He wanted to do away with them and anyone else who stood between him and the throne.  Once he had gained the crown, he planned to revamp the way Japan was run and make it a better place for the people.  Any lives lost along the way were merely a price that had to be paid.  The legends surrounding Tatara as being one who could topple the royal family made him an obstacle that had to be removed if Shuri were to seek the throne.  On the opposite side, Sarasa/Tatara also sought to make Japan into a place where its people could live in peace.  However, she loathed the loss of life and naively hoped for a way to change the world without throwing away lives (except for the Red King's, of course).  Though they did not know each other's identity, their ideals bled into one another.  Shuri came to value human life and seek more peaceful ways of going about his agenda, and Sarasa learned that she cannot fall apart when blood is shed in a war.

I feel like I said a lot there, but I only scratched the surface of what I loved about this manga.  Was it perfect?  No.  The side characters left something to be desired.  There were a couple that interested me, but for the most part, many of them felt like they were only there to move the plot along.  Nevertheless, I loved this story.  Will I collect it?  Yeah, I plan to.  It will be difficult though.  A couple of volumes have reached "very rare" status.  I still haven't decided yet if I'm insane enough to spend $100 or more on a single volume of manga.  Maybe I'll just collect what's reasonable and then search like mad for a drop in price on those two volumes...I dunno.  I guess I'll cross that bridge when I get there.

As a side note, the music nut in me often stumbles upon songs that fit the situation (in my opinion, at least).  My favorite song for Basara was TRANSMISSIONS' "My World."  For me, it was Sarasa's theme, mostly for the second half of the manga.