Rating summary

Movie		4.0
Video		4.5
Audio		4.0
Extras		1.0
Overall		4.0

The Book of Bantorra: Complete Collection Blu-ray Movie Review

When these librarians tell you to be quiet, you'd best listen.

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman May 24, 2014

Libraries are repositories of human knowledge, compendiums of everything Man has learned, or thinks he’s learned, over the vast millennia of recorded history. Aside from exploring any given subject in a library, there is of course the biography section, where readers can revisit the lives of both the famous and the more common folk. Autobiographies provide a given individual’s own account of their lives, which can either be revelatory or obfuscatory, depending on how much that person really wishes to share about what they’ve been through. But what if a “reader” could enter the life of someone else by simply touching an archival record of someone else’s life? That’s just one of many conceits that inform The Book of Bantorra, an unusually dense and convoluted tale that blends together a number of different time periods, mythologies and cultures to craft an admittedly labyrinthine tale of so-called Armed Librarians who are charged with protecting stone-like tablets that contain the literal traces of lives. Seeking to get access the to the tablets—and the occult knowledge they contain—are a bunch of cult members of a group called the Shindeki Church (the subtitles translate this as The Church of Drowning in God’s Grace, which may more accurately reflect the martyrdom the church’s acolytes espouse). The Book of Bantorra accrues what might be described as a certain plot heaviness as it moves along, detailing various backstories and interrelationships between the characters, and some of the baseline points are never really adequately explained, but the series benefits from managing to invest a more or less traditional battle approach with some really interesting tangential elements that may make the show more palatable than it might otherwise have been.

There’s a trend in anime to begin series in media res, thrusting the viewer headlong into the story with little or no context or preexisting information, and to then slowly dole out enough data to start to make things relatively more clear. That’s certainly the case with The Book of Bantorra, which in just its first few minutes introduces the viewer to a veritable glut of characters and ideas, with virtually no explanatory flourishes whatsoever. In rapid succession everyone from a hapless young boy named Colio Tones, who is evidently being brainwashed somehow to kill someone named Hamyuts Meseta, to a busty woman who is evidently psychically gleaning events that are far removed from her cliffside perch, to a coterie of what we ultimately learn is the Armed Librarians, is trotted out and given a few seconds of screen time before the show careens on to its next scene. It’s a probably deliberately confounding opening that may put some people off of the show before it really gets underway.

Those with a little patience who can make it to around the third or fourth episode will at least have many of their basic questions answered. It turns out the busty female is Hamyuts Meseta, and she is in fact psychic, sending out mental “fibers” that are able to travel and impart information back to her. Hamyuts is the Acting Director of the Bantorra Library, and it is she who manages the Armed Librarians, sending them into battle against the nefarious (and kind of zombie like) forces of the Shindeki Church. Many of the Church’s grunts have been surgically implanted with bombs, more or less hypnotized to have the sole purpose of killing Meseta, and then sent out into the world at large to find her and “finalize” their mission. Meanwhile, the show gives passing but still helpful content about the history of this world, one where three Gods presided over Present, Future, and in the case of a deity named Bandorra, the Past, hence the library which contains innumerable stone tablets that are the remaining records of lives. The Armed Librarians, who share Hamyuts’ psychic abilities, can “access” these lives and relive experiences that are contained within the tablets. So, it turns out, can Colio, who begins having visions culled from a tablet containing the life of a woman named Shiron Byacornise, who was evidently a witch who may have met with a rather gruesome fate.

There are a lot of subplots swirling around and through The Book of Bantorra, perhaps indicative of how many characters there are. Some of the Armed Librarian interactions have the feel of traditional shōnen, and at times the series tends to feel like pretty standard “summoning” fare, with each specially powered Librarian able to call forth various powers and, as the series progresses, even other characters. The ballast of all of these characters and intersecting plots may feel like overkill once the series finally works its way toward its endgame, where a rather simple moral of the story is presented, one that may not feel like it required quite so much buildup.

But there are also a number of ways that The Book of Bantorra is rather interesting. First of all, it blends several different time periods together in a surprisingly seamless and organic feeling way. A lot of the show has design elements that would probably brand it “Steampunk”, including late 19th century flourishes to many of the costumes, and an “old timey” feel in terms of some of the technologies employed. But then right there in the same frame as a bowler hat and ruffled petticoats will be a supersonic jet that a character will pilot, and it doesn’t feel particularly out of place. What is probably The Book of Bantorra’s most singularly distinctive characteristic is how “meta” it all becomes as it goes along. The story being told becomes one of the very books that inhabit the library, with one character in particular commenting on the action as it’s being “read”. The “meta” aspect can actually get downright confusing, as in the climax, where one so-called Book Eater’s interior world becomes the location of a final showdown, with several planes of alternate realities playing out simultaneously, to an occasionally confounding effect.

One of the peculiar things about The Book of Bantorra is how it plays with audience expectations of which of the many stories is supposed to be front and center. Hamyuts Meseta’s tale is featured up until literally the last episode, and yet as more and more revelations take place, as fascinating (and evolving) as the character is, she’s shown to be a cog in a much larger wheel. One of the librarians named Mirepoc turns out to have a more important role in the overall story than might initially be gleaned, and there’s a whole subset of stories involving a so-called Book Eater named Ruruta Coozancoona that ends up playing directly into the series’ climax. Hamyuts’ nihilism (she has a “thing” for death) is nicely contrasted with a number of more hopeful elements as the series zooms into its final maelstrom, and there are several none too subtle references to the importance of sacrifice and love being able to overcome virtually every obstacle. It’s probably only an added side benefit that the series actually makes “reading” cool.

The Book of Bantorra: Complete Collection Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

The Book of Bantorra is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Sentai Filmworks with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.78:1. This is a really sharp and nicely detailed looking high definition presentation, aside from a few passing anomalies. The design aesthetic here is rather varied, with distinct (and distinctive) styles presented in the Steampunk sequences and, to give just one example, when Shiron's life comes alive when her book is being "read". There are also some really cool "negative" effects shown when Hamyuts' psychic fibers reach out into faraway locations (see screenshot 4). The series utlizes some frankly pretty soft and generic looking CGI (see screenshot ) which is blended with crisper, more sleek looking, traditional cel animation. Colors are really beautifully varied, offering everything from the peculiar green hair of a character named Volken Macmani to the orange drenched world of Shiron. There are occasional issues with banding, but otherwise this is a problem free presentation.

The Book of Bantorra: Complete Collection Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Some may wish that The Book of Bantorra had been granted a surround mix, especially once things begin to resemble traditional summoning spell series, but the two lossless DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 mixes (in Japanese and English) suffice quite well, delivering dialogue, score and the many sound effects clearly and cleanly. Both language tracks offer very similar amplitude and mix aside from the voice work.

The Book of Bantorra: Complete Collection Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Clean Opening Animations (1080p; 4:36)


• Clean Closing Animations (1080p; 3:04)

The Book of Bantorra: Complete Collection Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

The Book of Bantorra isn't perfect by any means, but it's rather refreshing and at least has a novelistic scope that helps to carry it through 27 sometimes stuffed to the gills episodes. Some of that "stuffing" may feel like overkill once the denouement is reached, as if Leo Tolstoy had gotten you through War and Peace only to deliver a homily about war being bad and peace being good. But the series has a number of really fascinating characters, probably none more so than Hamyuts Meseta herself. Some of the mythology is a bit complex and frankly a tad nonsensical at times, but the series very smartly weaves together a number of disparate ideas into a generally interesting amalgamation. Bolstered by some really nice design work, The Book of Bantorra is inviting from a purely aesthetic angle as well. While this Blu-ray set skimps on supplements, otherwise The Book of Bantorra comes Recommended.