The Book of Bantorra

Today, I got an oldie but a goodie for ya. Let’s chat a little about the 2010 anime, The Book of Bantorra! 

This anime was a fast, wild ride about Gods, wars, lies, and no to mention, books. However, we’re not talking about your average hardback book or even your digital book, what we’re talking about is stone tablets with a person’s entire life recorded on it. The “books” are from those that are dead and they’re collected in the Bantorra Library which is what this whole anime is based around. The books can do more than just tell a story however, they can even be used as weapons for magic or even drive one mad.I’m all for technology but this might be a little much even though this anime is based in older times.

In this series we follow our protagonist, the Armed Librarian, Hamyuts Meseta in a world at war over these books. The Shindeki Church  and its True Man commit the horrific acts usually concerning slaves or meats as the call them in the quest to find happiness which will make their books some of the best ever told. The Armed Librarians from the Bantorra Library are trying to save it by stopping them and for the 1^st half of the series you would think this is just your typical “good guys vs bad guys” routine. However, that’s where the plot twist hits and as the body count starts rising you never know what’ll happen next.

The way characters are drawn is great but nothing particularly special. I felt the scenery was drawn better than the characters in this one but I wish the library’s underground labyrinth was given more details in the series. They describe it as the biggest library in the world but you don’t really see too much besides a few specific rooms and some random hallways with monsters.

The Armed Librarians are the ones who maintain the library of Bantorra and so they are also the ones who fight the beast that were created to protect it long ago along with there sworn enemy, the Shideki Church. You have to fight random beasts supposedly created by a god so you can reach certain levels where of course the importance of the items in the library increase depending on how far down you go. The Armed Librarians are not just a bunch of violent people but a mixture of characters with quite different personalities.

Some of my favorite characters from this series are Hamyuts, Matt, Noloty, and Enlike to name a few. You don’t get the stories on all the characters from the church or the library but they do give you a good amount of details on more than a few. In my opinion, there were a few characters I would’ve loved to hear more about but it wouldn’t have really effected the overall story one way or the other so I’m not gonna whine too much about it.

I’m not gonna drag this out too far. For a series that 27 episodes long, it’s fast, bloody, and leaves no room for fillers.  Almost every episode was jam packed with action and drama andtoo my delight, action got the bigger role. You won’t be bored with this one. I highly encourage you to give this anime a long look if you haven’t already. It’s definitely worth it.

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