The Twelve Kingdoms: Part 2: Sea of the Wind, The Shore of the Maze Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		3.0
Video		3.5
Audio		4.5
Extras		2.5
Overall		3.5

The Twelve Kingdoms: Part 2: Sea of the Wind, The Shore of the Maze Blu-ray Movie Review

Maze is right.

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman January 7, 2012

You might be forgiven if you keep looking around for a magical wardrobe portal as you make your way through The Twelve Kingdoms, Part 2: Sea of the Wind, the Shore of the Maze. As I mentioned in my review of The Twelve Kingdoms, Part 1: Shadow of the Moon, The Sea of Shadow, the ghost of C.S. Lewis and his epochal The Chronicles of Narnia haunts much of The Twelve Kingdoms, and that haunting continues in this second release of the anime series which was culled from the light novel franchise by Fuyumi Ono. If the first set of Blu-rays dealt largely with Yoko, a young girl whisked away from her ordinary Earthly life to a magical kingdom where she soon discovered she was royalty (sound familiar?), this second set of episodes starts giving us more of the back story of a young boy in similar circumstances, one Taiki. As this set opens, Taiki is being punished for some bad behavior and has been forced to stand outside in a snowstorm in his pajamas, where the boy is obviously quite cold and disoriented. He hears a weird whooshing noise and turns around taking a step forward. Tripping, he falls, but when he hits the ground, he’s no longer in his accustomed universe. In fact, suddenly he’s a long haired youth with a bloody face (the result of the fall), and even stranger, there is a gaggle of adults screaming that he’s returned to them after having been gone for a year. The Twelve Kingdoms, Part 2: Sea of the Wind, the Shore of the Maze continues to exploit these parallel universes as it proceeds to develop several disparate storylines, allowing the audience to glean dribs and drabs of information along the way that help to define who several central characters are and why exactly they find themselves in these peculiar environments. As with the first collection of episodes, The Twelve Kingdoms is by its very nature rather anecdotal, and it also requires a fair amount of patience, as it has a veritable universe of supporting characters it seems to want to introduce one by one, pausing each time to give enough context about that character to allow for some audience connection. What that amounts to is perhaps analogous to a “local” train versus an “express” train: The Twelve Kingdoms is most definitely a local, pausing at every stop to pick up a new character, and then proceeding for a few minutes until arriving at the next stop.

Those of you old enough to remember the era of the prime time soap opera, whether that be 1980’s (more or less) stalwarts Dallas, Dynasty, and Falcon’s Crest, or perhaps even more applicably the 1960’s television version of Grace Metalious’ Peyton Place, may recognize a certain similarity to the storytelling structure which is evident throughout The Twelve Kingdoms, Part 2: Sea of the Wind, the Shore of the Maze. Because there are, after all, multiple kingdoms to deal with, and various characters within each of those kingdoms (even though certain characters do travel from kingdom to kingdom), what tends to happen is any given segment of the series will focus on one story arc for a few minutes. We then get an establishing shot of the next kingdom and pick up the storyline from that kingdom before moving on to the next, etcetera ad infinitum. While it’s probably the only way to deal with so many characters in such a vast setting, it also means viewers almost need to have a score card or flowchart to keep track of what’s going on. There are brief narrated “catch ups” at the head of each episode which at least briefly orient the viewer to what has just happened.

Almost all of this middle collection of episodes from The Twelve Kingdoms deals with what might be best termed “palace intrigue,” with various factions vying for power and a number of shifting alliances creating a lot of the drama. Youko (also transliterated Yoko), for instance, has assumed the throne but finds that her troubles have only begun, and in fact she spends quite a bit of this arc of episodes trying to figure out if one of her main advisors is plotting against her. There’s also an incipient uprising on her hands, and similar plot lines play out in the various other kingdoms with the other rulers and the various characters with magical abilities. Several of these include shape shifters and the like, and there’s one, Rakushun, who is able to transform into a giant mouse (or perhaps more accurately is able to transform into a human from his original mouse form), who seems to have been cut right out of C.S. Lewis’ Narnia books. Wise, if a bit curmudgeonly, Rakushun slowly but surely becomes one of Youku’s closest advisors and helpmates throughout the series.

As is discussed in the interviews accompanying the main set of episodes on the multi-disc set, The Twelve Kingdoms references a lot of ancient Chinese mythology, and a lot of those references are fairly “technical,” for want of a better term. Though the set comes (as did the first set) with an onscreen Encyclopedia, actually watching the episodes can often be a daunting, even confusing, task, as various terms are bandied about and it can frankly be a chore to wade through the verbiage to actually get to the point. (It's also more than a bit logistically clunky to have to pull out the disc with the Encyclopedia on it, fire it up, and then get to whatever term you're attempting to look up, and then after that get back to wherever you were in any given episode). There’s an undeniably compelling story in The Twelve Kingdoms, but as the title of this set implies, it takes making your way through a fairly significant maze to arrive at it.

The Twelve Kingdoms: Part 2: Sea of the Wind, The Shore of the Maze Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

The Twelve Kingdoms, Part 2: Sea of the Wind, the Shore of the Maze is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Media Blasters, with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.33:1. As with Part 1 of The Twelve Kingdoms, results are mixed with this high definition presentation, some of which can be traced to the original, kind of schizoid, animation styles, and some of which can be traced to what was evidently a SD native source, though on the whole this second set of episodes looks at least a tad better and more defined than the first set did. As with the first set, there's some beautifully saturated color and some surprisingly strong line detail. There's less of the disparity between animation styles on this set, and in fact there's some very nice dimensionality added in several sequences courtesy of what could be compared to the old Disney multi-plane technique of animation. While there is still some softness generally with regard to the series, overall the transfer maintains a consistently clear representation of the source elements.

The Twelve Kingdoms: Part 2: Sea of the Wind, The Shore of the Maze Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Many of my comments about the audio on the first set of The Twelve Kingdoms episodes hold true for Part 2. The Twelve Kingdoms, Part 2: Sea of the Wind, the Shore of the Maze is presented with two lossless Japanese audio options, DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 and DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0, as well as an English dub in DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0. As with Part 1, I sampled both of the 2.0 mixes just for the review's sake, and they are both fine as far as they go, but once again there's no doubt that the preferred choice here is the Japanese DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 track. As with Part 1, the DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 track offers superior fidelity and some surprisingly consistent immersion, and the added spaciousness of the truly stupendous score (one of the strongest scores in the anime genre in recent—and maybe not so recent—memory) is more than enough to make this the default audio option. Voice work is exceptional (it is kind of interesting to compare the Japanese voice cast with the English voice cast) and the mix is extremely well prioritized throughout the series.

The Twelve Kingdoms: Part 2: Sea of the Wind, The Shore of the Maze Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Staff Interview 1 (SD; 7:58) features director Tsuneo Kobayashi, who discusses adapting the light novels to the anime idiom. He also make some interesting comments about Chinese mythology and symmetry, which he attempted to evoke visually with the animation style. Note that this is an audio interview which plays out to scenes from the series.
• Encyclopedia. As with the first volume of the series, the Encyclopedia is presented here, and is incredibly useful, though it's in an incredibly small font and also scrolls, so have your pause button on your remote at the ready.
• Staff Interview 2 (SD; 4:47) is with Character Designer Hiroto Tanaka, who discusses the challenges of adapting the original illustrations from the light novel. Again, this is an audio interview which plays out to scenes from the series.

The Twelve Kingdoms: Part 2: Sea of the Wind, The Shore of the Maze Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

I'll be frank and state that while I have an overarching understanding of what's going on in The Twelve Kingdoms, this second set of episodes often left me in the dark and more than a bit perplexed, if for no other reason than that there are so many stories unfolding simultaneously, and so many of these stories utilize one arcane term after another, including multiple names for various characters. This approach requires a certain amount of patience and not all viewers are going to have the requisite amount of tolerance to make it through these challenges. That said, the series features a really interesting use of ancient mythology and many of its characters are extremely well drawn (literally and figuratively), thrust into an often compellingly "strange new world." Though this second set of episodes is perhaps a bit too arcane for its own good, the series as a whole, and this Blu-ray release, still comes Recommended.