Amon Saga

Here's a good old Sword and Sorcery inspired animation.

I would say, that is one of the cleanest ones that I ever watch. I just turned in my old CRT and that was great. Good fights and fantasy at the right level.

I definitely recommend this for low fantasy appreciators like me. Nothing like the good old barbarians and red haired mystic swordsmans, but yeah. The story is not that deep and the turns of events are pretty unscaled and not as great as another japanese animations.

It does really catches the 80s fantasy set up and it is really nice. But it has the japanese ... stories touch and i think that's a little bit forgotten nowadays, but they are really good at the dark fantasy thing. Maybe because of the domination of the high fantasy of the animation industry.

Amon Saga is a surprisingly rare example of pure fantasy anime in the 80s, a period where cannon bristling mecha and cosmos faring starships will muscle their way into any action/adventure anime; regardless of genre. One of the few other anime I can think of is Arion, released the same year but based more on Greek mythology than swords and sorcery type stuff.

This anime also reminds me alot of Eiyuu Gaiden Mozaicka with the vengeance seeking stoic bishounen warrior banding together an array of colourful personalities to take down an imposing masked villain bent on conquest. I'd call this anime extremely generic fantasy; in ... plot and art direction if it wasn't such an early example of fantasy anime as mentioned above. The art/animation is pretty much equal to the period's TV anime (but not say, Dirty Pair good) and we've seen this stop the villain from obtaining the ultimate power plot countless times.

There is a decent amount of fight scenes and likable enough characters to root for (blue haired bishies are always good to have). A few of my favorites scenes are:
-the giant city on a turtle, I wonder if there are earlier example of this trope
-the duel of the wizards
-the big bad's face reveal
-the pastoral look of the hallucination sequence where they ditch the black linework completely
-last and not least, beating the crap out of a pack of filthy furries

If you like classic anime fantasy with a satisfying side of cel shaded blood splatter and a yamaha powered 80s synth ost, this anime is an interesting historical footnote for you to enjoy. If you prefer your fantasy with rpg mechanics or god forbid, with visual novel aesthetics, stay clear away from this one!

Amon Saga is a ridiculous OVA from 1986. Yoshitaka Amano worked on the script and character design which was enough to pique my interest; he’s a great artist and I recommend you check out his work. Except maybe Amon Saga; I recommend you stay as far away from Amon Saga as possible. This thing is capital L Lame. A lot of anime from this time period has been derided for being unnecessarily violent, having questionable animation, and telling piss poor stories. Unfortunately Amon Saga fits the bill pretty well in all of these categories.

The film in a nutshell: Amon is involved in an epic saga. ... He wants revenge on a tyrant and ends up meeting a hot princess and having some weird, vaguely homoerotic adventures despite the hot princess. There’s some brief nudity and a possible Vampire Hunter D cameo (renamed Ekuna, but they can’t fool me). The dub is almost competent, a disappointment considering a horrible dub would have made the film funny, as opposed to boring. Oh so cliché and boring.

I’d definitely pass on this one unless you’re REALLY hard up for some fantasy anime, but even then you can do a lot better. Should you ever find yourself forced to watch Amon Saga however, I’ve got your back:

Amon Saga: The Drinking Game (believe me, you’ll need it):

1) Someone says “Amon”; take a drink.

2) Someone is punched, kicked, stabbed, whipped or generally hurt in some way; take a drink.

3) There are breasts on the screen; finish your drink.

4) You are reminded that the sorcerer is a sorcerer; take a drink.

5) A character's eyes do a weird thing; take a drink.

6) There’s a rock turtle on the screen; chug.

7) Amon has tears in his eyes; cheers!

8) Exxxtreme rules, experts only: An oily man has no shirt on; drink.

This will get you drunk, and possibly dead. Have fun.