General Information

In the beginning of the 21st Century, our highly developed civilization was destroyed, leaving the people of Japan suffering under the rule of tyranny.

After several hundred years a set of fraternal twins were born in the villiage of San-in. The boy was named Tatara and the girl Sarasa.

On the day of their birth, the prophet Nagi fortold to the villiagers:

"This child is the destined one who will lead the country to freedom when grown."

The people of the villiage believe the destined one to be Tatara. But is he really the one?

When the Red King kills Tatara and destroys her village, Sarasa takes Tatara's identity, declaring she will avenge her family. Meanwhile she and Shuri, the Red King, meet and fall in love -- neither knowing the others true identity.

The Legend of Basara is a 27 volume manga series by Yumi Tamura. The first five volumes were made into a 13 episode anime series by KSS.

Unlike many other anime/manga series, there is no clear border between "good" and "evil". Yumi Tamura does a wonderful job exploring the depths of war and how, in war, there is not always a right and a wrong side. There is an astounding cast of characters to surround a fairly complex plot and the romance of Shuri and Sarasa is amazingly funny and intensely emotional at the same time.

I can't say enough good things about Basara. The characters are fascinating, the artwork beautiful and the plot is one of the most poignant and fascinating plots that I've ever seen. It's amazing. Yet, this work is little known (at least in the U.S.). Since there were so few webpages dedicated to this series I decided to create my first anime/manga webpage ever. Hopefully this will raise awareness about this series and prompt more people to watch the anime and buy the mangas.