Tears to Tiara

Genre: Action/Comedy
Age Appropriate: Pre-teens+

Emotional Response: laughter, fun, excitement

Notable Features: Magic, epic battles, King Arthur, dragons!

Language: English
Length: 2 parts, 26 episodes total
Overall Recommendation: Top 5

"Whack, whack! They defeat the enemy!"

Tears to Tiara is an epic-type anime including Arthur, elves, magic and one Demon King to boot. It's actually quite an extensive cast. It's a story of the Gael clan (Irish) versus the "Diving Empire"(Roman), and the Gael clan's opposition to the Empire's occupancy.

The story begins when Arthur's sister, Riannon, is kidnapped by an Empire toady as a sacrifice to awaken the Demon King - with the expectation that the Demon King will help the little peon take over the world (of course). To force her cooperation, he uses small children to force Riannon to give up her "true name," thus granting power over her. True names are important later too. So, Arthur returns to their village, meets up with his clansmen and harries off to save Riannon from her terrible fate. As fate would have it, the Demon King awakens! A true turn of events appears when we discover that he's a pretty cool guy, with no interest in taking over the world with the jerk who stole Riannon. So, Arawn - The Demon King! - saves Riannon by waking her up in her magical dream state, kills the evil doer and then must face her brother Arthur. To save Arawn from having to fight Arthur - or save Arthur from hurting Lord Arawn - Riannon gives Arawn her red scarf. It is a symbol of clan leadership, essentially marrying Riannon to Lord Arawn and making him clan cheiftain. There is much bickering between the two until Arawn points out the problem of evil dead creatures coming after them. In their fleeing they hook up with Saint Ogham (mage) and fight their way out....it just gets more complicated from there.

The cast builds then to the elves, the emperials, another clan, some spare dragons, a necromancer, white spirits and a terrible foe. Also included: epic LOTR battles. Well, mini LOTR battles on the island of Albion (England), at the castle of Avalon.

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This is totally in my Top 5! It was a great follow up to the messed up-edness of Rin. It's funny, and exciting, and a little sad. I even loved the soundtrack - which is rare as I don't usually notice one. It's that kind of music that's heartening during a fancy speech or the end of the battle and haunting during sad parts and the beginning of battle.

I love the relationships between the characters. The whole brotherhood, warrior comraderie (not strictly for boys!) and family strength is awesome. If you look deep enough, and feel like seeing it, there's a little romance between Morgan and Octavia, maybe. Otherwise, not much blantant romance going on. It really does hit on a number of traditional characters needed for a good epic story. Serious when it needed to be, but fun when it didn't. It was one of those anime series that was really easy to get sucked into. I'm not sure if was the was terrible accents (haha) or the fact that it was in English, but my husband couldn't keep away from watching/listening. So, yeah. Highly recommended for the whole family. I only added a Pre-Teen rating because it can get a little bloody, but I think that the violence is softened with it being animated. So, if you need something light hearted (especially if you've been following along and just watched Rin ::shudder::), watch this. Srsly.

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