Rating summary

Movie		3.0
Video		3.5
Audio		4.5
Extras		1.0
Overall		3.5

The Twelve Kingdoms: Part 3: A Great Distance in the Wind, The Sky at Dawn Blu-ray Movie Review

The long and winding road comes to an end.

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman February 8, 2012

The Twelve Kingdoms is perhaps the only anime release in recent memory that came supplied with its own Encyclopedia helping to explicate the seemingly endless array of terms, characters, and settings the series throws about with seeming abandon. This is not television viewing for the faint of heart or deficient of attention. Culled from a best selling series of light novels of Ono Fuyumi that are more than a bit reminiscent of C.S. Lewis’ Narnia novels (as I’ve mentioned in my reviews of the two previous releases of this series, The Twelve Kingdoms, Part 1: Shadow of the Moon, The Sea of Shadow and The Twelve Kingdoms, Part 2: Sea of the Wind, The Shore of the Maze. Kids whisked away from their everyday lives into magical lands where they realize they’re royalty, often accompanied by giant talking beasts, might make any Lewis Estate attorney be thinking about possible plagiarism, but The Twelve Kingdoms is its own creature, for better or worse, an often incredibly complex simultaneous unfolding of several stories that may in fact not totally exploit all twelve kingdoms of Ono Fuyumi’s original conception, but which certainly traverses enough territory, geographically and story wise, to keep most people in need of a flowchart to manage the incredible array of characters and plots. Despite this series actually having quite a few episodes to tell its story, because of the elaborate nature of Fuyumi’s source novels, even with the extended running length of The Twelve Kingdoms, some may feel like something was left on the cutting room floor. That’s especially true of this last set of episodes, which actually spends a lot of time covering old material or recasting it in new light, sort of quasi- Rashomon style. For the patient and perseverant, though, The Twelve Kingdoms has some very interesting elements, though truth be told, they can easily get buried (or at least forgotten) in the mad rush to figure out why some characters go by two (or more) names or what in heaven’s name a kirin is.

The second set of episodes, The Twelve Kingdoms, Part 2: Sea of the Wind, The Shore of the Maze, ended with things in disarray in several of the kingdoms, including assassination plots, miscommunications and hidden identities muddying the waters in an already complex story field. The Twelve Kingdoms, Part 3: A Great Distance in the Wind, The Sky at Dawn continues with that tendency, resolving several of the lingering questions of the second arc while of course introducing new tensions and problems for Youko (also transliterated Yoko) and her various cohorts in the series’ many settings. To further the Lewis analogy, this particular arc has its own sort of Prince Caspian character, a conflicted king who feels he may have come to the throne illicitly, through the heroic actions of another rather than through his own intrinsic worth.

The Twelve Kingdoms, Part 3: A Great Distance in the Wind, The Sky at Dawn is perhaps hobbled a bit by the fact that it stops and starts in fits as it winds its way to a not especially gratifying conclusion. Over and over again, the many storylines that are unfolding more or less simultaneously will come to a screeching halt while a tangential subplot is explored, a recap from a different point of view is shared, or other extraneous material is introduced. This is especially confounding as the series is so stuffed to the gills anyway with characters and various political machinations among the characters and the competing kingdoms that these sidebars become kind of annoying, drawing attention away from the major thrust of several of the rulers’ attempts to bring peace and prosperity to their kingdoms.

A lot of this arc’s interest comes courtesy of the Province of Wa and the rebel leader Koshou, who along with his brother Sekki are attempting to deal with a corrupt government. In fact several elements in the second arc of the series had led to a climax putting both of these characters in danger, and that resolution is rather swiftly provided in this third set, while the ultimate outcome of the rebellion takes quite a bit longer to settle. While Youku is still the putative focal character, there are so many characters by this point in the story that her screen time is actually whittled down significantly from even the second release, which in itself saw a diminution from the first set of episodes, which focused rather exclusively on the red haired girl and her new adventures in her own magical kingdom. But there's an overriding theme of sorts to this set of episodes, and in fact probably the series as a whole, which shows (to coin a phrase) "people yearning to be set free." Many of the various kingdoms' own plot arcs play out within the confines of this general idea.

As confusing as The Twelve Kingdoms often is, it’s also a rare piece that actually repays (with interest—no pun intended) the viewer’s attention. It may in fact be necessary to refer to the first two volumes’ Encyclopedia to completely ferret out some of what’s discussed (I know I personally had to look there more than a couple of times to get more information), but if you can make it through the first set of episodes, you’re largely set for the rest of the journey, at least as far as vocabulary goes. The series still keeps introducing characters and back stories for quite a while, to the point where sometimes older storylines can seem somewhat stale by the time they’re gotten back to. But like a good novel, The Twelve Kingdoms is filled to the brim with memorable characters and some intriguing politically tinged stories. It may in fact not be quite at the literary level of Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia, and it certainly doesn’t have that franchise’s outright religious sensibility, but The Twelve Kingdoms is a rare piece that offers depth as well as scope.

The Twelve Kingdoms: Part 3: A Great Distance in the Wind, The Sky at Dawn Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

The Twelve Kingdoms, Part 3: A Great Distance in the Wind, The Sky at Dawn is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Media Blasters with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.33:1. This third volume follows in the footsteps of both The Twelve Kingdoms, Part 1: Shadow of the Moon, The Sea of Shadow and The Twelve Kingdoms, Part 2: Sea of the Wind, The Shore of the Maze, and exhibits pretty much the same strengths and weaknesses of the first two volumes. What was evidently an SD native source prevents this image from ever fully popping in a true high definition manner, but overall, especially with regard to color, there's a lot to like here. While the results are soft more often than not, there's a pleasing texture here and line detail is also surprisingly strong most of the time. As with the first two volumes, the series continues its odd, schizoid combination of animation styles, where some sequences (in fact, perhaps even most sequences) are beautifully animated, while others seems to have been scrawled by some part-timer under the threat of a deadline. While results here are mixed, there's nothing horrible about the transfer given proper expectations.

The Twelve Kingdoms: Part 3: A Great Distance in the Wind, The Sky at Dawn Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

The Twelve Kingdoms, Part 3: A Great Distance in the Wind, The Sky at Dawn features the same three lossless audio options that the first two volumes did, namely a Japanese language track presented in both DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 and DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 mixes, and an English dub presented in a DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 mix. As I've stated in the two previous reviews, while both 2.0 tracks have excellent fidelity and there's nothing to complain about with regard to either of them, few other than those opposed to reading subtitles will probably want to stick with either of them given the nice surround rendering the 5.1 track offers. As with the two previous volumes, the 5.1 track offers some really nicely nuanced immersion, with a glut of ambient environmental sounds and good oomph in some of the more busy action sequences. The best part of the 5.1 track, though, remains the absolutely sumptuous score by Ryo Kunihiko, a beautifully evocative achievement that uses some touching ethnic instruments (like the shakuhachi) and an elegant orchestral setting.

The Twelve Kingdoms: Part 3: A Great Distance in the Wind, The Sky at Dawn Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

Staff Interviews (SD; 15:02) offers some interesting comments from Producer Ken Suekawa, who talks about having been introduced to the light novel series years previously and how that series came to be adapted as an anime.

The Twelve Kingdoms: Part 3: A Great Distance in the Wind, The Sky at Dawn Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

The Twelve Kingdoms isn't a series you can just sit down and enjoy, at least in the early going. This is a show that because of its arcane vocabulary and tendency to give characters multiple names takes a great deal of concentration to fully understand what's going on. While things settle down by the second volume of this release, as least relatively speaking, there are so many characters to keep track of and so many simultaneously unfolding plotlines that some viewers may either give up or simply not be able to follow the extremely convoluted story arcs. All of that said, there's a lot to like in The Twelve Kingdoms, especially for "fantasy world" lovers, and perhaps most especially for lovers of C.S. Lewis' Narnia books, which The Twelve Kingdoms bears more than a passing resemblance to. My best advice after having watched all three volumes of this series is to take your time, watching an episode or two, visiting the Encyclopedia included on the first two volumes, and then proceeding slowly until the major characters have been introduced and developed. The Twelve Kingdoms isn't a show for everyone, and in fact if you only like slam- bang, attention deficit disorder sorts of entertainments, it's most definitely not something you'll probably like. If, on the other hand, you don't mind taking your time immersing yourself in a foreign world with its own customs and language, The Twelve Kingdoms, while complex, is a journey worth taking. Recommended.