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Guin Saga is a huge (130 volumes) series of High FantasyLight Novels in a sword-and-sorcery world, arguably The Lord of the Rings of the Japanese fantasy genre, when it comes down to defining the genre.
It begins with the Twins of Parros, Rinda and Remus, being transported by a magical device from their homeland as it is being invaded by the army of Mongaul. They awake in the Roodwood, and find Guin, a Conan the Barbarian-like warrior with a leopard head, who can remember nothing but his own name. He ends up their 'knight' and agrees to help them home, with plans to also remember his forgotten past. In due time, they fight with spirits, are captured by The Black Baron, meet a cameo of future characters before jumping into the river Kes to escape a raging inferno. This ends the first book.
As the story progresses, more characters are introduced, and at times it's even difficult to remember who the designated protagonist is at any given time. Any of the story's arcs include fighting, political intrigue and lots of Character Development.
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For the first 19 volumes, the art was done by Naoyuko Kato before the job was taken up by Final Fantasy artist Yoshitaka Amano until volume 57 when he was replaced by Jun Suemi. Shinobu Tanno replaced him at volume 88.
In 2003, the first three books of the series were published in English as hardcover versions, sans any of the original art, by American publisher Vertical. Vertical later republished these books (as well as the following two) in paperback form with the original cover art and insert art in 2007. However, they had said there are no plans to release any more volumes, despite each book ending on massive cliff hangers, as the sales weren't that high, despite several positive literature reviews. The novels have also been published in German, French, Russian, Italian, Korean and Chinese.
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There have been two manga adaptations, the first being The Guins Saga Manga: The Seven Magi. Self-contained, the manga requires some understanding from the books before being read and ended with 3 total volumes. The second takes the name of the book and begins with book 1, and is still running with 4 published volumes as of 2010.
An anime adaptation was broadcast by NHK between April and September 2009 with 26 total episodes that cover the first 16 volumes. Sentai Filmworks licensed the series for English distribution and released the series in two parts.
Guin Saga provides examples of:
- Action Girl: Lady Amnelis certainly fits.
- Effectively more of a deconstructed Faux Action Girl: she's devoted itself to being a Lady of War, but doesn't fight herself, and various signs (and comments by characters) show she doesn't have the attitude for it. Explained that she's driven more by personal reasons such as her refusal to Stay in the Kitchen than because she actually belongs on the battlefield.
- Anachronism Stew: The series seems to take place in some kind of medieval fantasy-world at first... then comes the apparent fact that the Mongauls that attack the protagonists' city in the beginning have lasers with them, and that there's a highly advanced-looking teleportation device in the tower at the center of said city.
- Anti-Hero: Aldo Naris could be viewed as this.
- Anti-Villain: The series takes time to look at all the different sides.
- Aristocrats Are Evil: The Black Baron.
- Anti-Climax: Guin has a habit of ending fights that have been played up as big climactic encounters with one sucker-punch to the gut; in the anime, the dramatic music is suddenly cut off to emphasize this.
- Author Existence Failure: Kaoru Kurimoto passed away on 26 May 2009 after fighting pancreatic cancer for years, while the anime was still airing. With her death, there can't be a definitive ending for Guin Saga. Though technically, the series 'ended' at volume 100, with everything after that being gravy for the fans.
- Beast Man: Guin, though he's possibly more of a Half-Human Hybrid.
- BFS: Lord Marus of the Mongauls uses one of these, though it sometimes seems more like a Blade on a Stick.
- Bishōnen: Several of the main characters, most notably Aldo Naris.
- Black and White Morality: Rinda tends to believe in this, though the series itself tends to side with a more Grey and Gray Morality.
- Broken Bird: Lady Amnelis
- Chaste Hero: Guin, at least through volume 16. In the light novels it is later revealed that he was married before, and he gets married again even later. It doesn't go very well though.
- Dogged Nice Guy: Deconstructed with Astreas, who comes off as utterly creepy when he starts to view Amnelis this way.
- Dude Looks Like a Lady: Remus and Rinda are described at times as 'two pretty girls' in the novels, while Aldo Naris is successful in crossdessing.
- Easy Amnesia: Guin remembers nothing but his name, his fighting skills, and the name Aurra.
- Five-Man Band
- Guin (The Hero/The Big Guy)
- Istavan (The Lancer)
- Rinda (The Smart Guy/The Chick)
- Remus (The Smart Guy/The Chick)
- Four-Temperament Ensemble
- Guin (Melancholic)
- Istavan (Sanguine)
- Rinda (Choleric)
- Remus (Phlegmatic)
- Genius Bruiser: Guin of course. He's built like a sacrificial god of battle, yet is an eloquent speaker, knows countless languages, and is a master tactician and strategist.
- A God Am I: Aldo Naris, though being a God isn't his final goal.
- Good Old Fisticuffs: Guin, though he's more than proficient with swords.
- Half-Identical Twins: Rinda and Remus
- Incurable Cough of Death: Lady Amnelis' father.
- Informed Ability: Lady Amnelis, in the anime at least. She's supposed to be a great general and battle-hungry warrior, but once her older, more experienced adviser is gone, her head for strategy seems to disappear and the only weapon she wields is a conducting baton; mostly her talents seem to lie less in being a military officer and more in being very, very shiny. She also seems suspiciously helpless when being threatened.
- Karma Houdini: With the author's death, a number of people who should get their comeuppance in the novels seem to have gotten off scot-free (most notably Istovan. In the novels, Flori gets a free pass on sleeping with the mistress's husband and almost running off with him. In fact, she gets to have all sorts of fun adventures with Guin and his team and it's heavily implied that her son will be a great man someday.
- Lady of War: Lady Amnelis, General of the Mongaul White Knights.
- The Lancer: Istavan
- Lightning Bruiser: Guin's massive body builder musculature and strength is often uncannily contrasted with his inhuman agility and speed. The Lagon giants are also given this treatment, especially their chieftain, whose size and Strength puts the massive Guin to shame, while still being fast enough to put Guin's exceptional agility to the test.
- Loincloth: Guin wears just one throughout the first several episodes, though he eventually gets a full set of armor.
- Long-Runners: The novel series ran from 1979 to 2009, ending at 126 volumes.
- Mask Power: Istavan
- The Millstone: Remus and Rinda, though they get better.
- No Export for You: It's unlikely any more of the books will be translated in English.
- Non-Human Sidekick: Suni.
- Out of Focus: Several episodes ignore Guin and company in favor of other characters
- Prequel: The Sword Of Paros. Erminia resembles Amnelis a great deal.
- Real Women Don't Wear Dresses: Lady Amnelis take this to the extreme, reacting with disgust when shown the array of dresses her father wants her to wear. Her attitude is somewhat justified by the Stay in the Kitchen attitude everyone around her seems to have in regards to her desire for battle. Pretty much everybody she talks to wants her to take off her armor, put on a dress, and get married, and in some cases, they go to great length to humiliate her into submission. Apart from her occasional empty threats in resistance, it works.
- Shadowland: Nospherus.
- Sliding Scale of Idealism vs. Cynicism: The series, on a whole, tends to end up in the middle.
- Small, Annoying Creature: Suni.
- Tall, Dark, and Handsome: Istavan.
- Team Pet: Suni
- Trope Maker: Many of the tropes universal in Japanese RPG have their origin in the novel.
- Waif Prophet: Rinda.
- What Measure Is a Non-Human?: In regards to the Sem.
- Wutai: The Country of Khume.
Index
Well I was about to use his latest version of Tda IA Append for 'something', fortunately, real life issues and other projects kept me away from his model as he just had another totally unexpected 'light bulb' moment and sent me a chart with height comparisons for several versions of Tda style IAs that he's been working on. One of these was an accurate height version, accurate in the sense that she is exactly as tall as she's supposed to be as opposed to being the same height as the original Tda Miku Append. Most Tda derivative Append style models are at Miku's height for obvious reasons, with the noted exception of Neru Append by VK who is also made to an accurate height. Which all means that Miku's happy because she's quite tall when compared to Neru and IA. And of course, in her Append styling, she's also 'properly endowed'. But then I'm digressing.
A friend of mine kindly gave me a set of DVDs with the entire 26 episodes of the Guin Saga anime which I have never seen and he was raving about it being one of the best made epic fantasy anime series ever made. So I watched it. Actually watched it twice. Once in English as the dubbing was excellent; and once in the original Japanese. But when you're watching the whole series in one sitting, you tend to 'fast forward' over stuff like titles, endings and credits. So I missed out on the theme music except I left it running when I headed to the kitchen to make some coffee. And then the closing theme caught my attention as it was half sung in English and half in Japanese. And it was a very emotive piece with a classical music touch reminiscent of the title music from Elfen Lied. That piece was in the operatic style, beautiful but would have been a real pain to use for an MMD production. The Guin Saga theme, however, is catching, demanding your full attention due to its emotive qualities and actually very simple in structure (in MMD terms). So I borrowed it ...
It packs quite a lot of meaning into only 1:30 minutes, plus being bilingual, it has an interesting texture and it was a fun challenge to create the lip sync data for it. Especially since I don't speak Japanese and I wanted to render the Japanese portions as accurately as possible which was made easy to do as the DVD subtitles included the Romanji as well as English lyrics. So whilst listening to the words as they were sung and matching them with the written words I knew exactly what mouth shapes to use. I think I did a better job of rendering the spoken Japanese than many Japanese made lip syncs which I have always had some issues with as many aren't really all that accurate it you watch the Vocaloid pronounce the words that are supposedly sung. I built the lip sync data using IA XS and she looked fine in the Face And Lip program, but in MMD it just didn't look right. Mqdl is a superb modeler but his mouth shapes are tricky to use, so in this instance I messed up. IA XS was opening her mouth too much at points and too little at others. Plus in MMD, her mouth didn't seem to sync with the music the way it did in the Face and Lip program. So, I loaded Miku Append and tried the same lip sync data. I use Miku Append as a systems check tool for lip syncs as her mouth shapes are near perfect and as it turned out she rendered the same animation data perfectly. But of course I couldn't use Miku for the actual production for a whole variety of reasons.
I wanted IA to do this performance because her color, style and length is reminiscent of the main female lead in the Guin Saga story - Rinda. But with the IA XS model out of the running I was in a bit of a bind. IA Beta has a different set of mouth shapes so she was also out of the line up plus I knew that it had to be a Tda style model if I didn't want to remake the lip sync data. So I reached into my Temporary Working Models folder, the place where I keep all my DA sourced models. 99% of what goes in here gets deleted and Maddoktor2's Tda IA Append was in there pending receipt of the final reiteration when it would be in the 1% that gets permanent storage on a separate MMD models archive hard drive. So, the accurate height version got selected as I knew she would be perfect for use with the sword model that I had intended to use. Alice recently used a katana, and I didn't want to make another video using a katana. So it had to be modeler Bilbo's superb model of Glamdring. I wanted IA to use a sword for this as it's an excellent prop for a fantasy theme plus IA with a sword just looks 'cool'.
The actual motion creation went smoothly and there were two reasons for this. The first is that IA only needed to move for about 1/3 of the duration of the song. She also could have just stood there in one spot for the entire performance, but I wanted some movement. So she started in a kneeling position as partly I wanted to create a smooth standing sequence having seen some Japanese MMD animators do the same thing with varying degrees of success. My version came out pretty good, very natural and exactly the way one would do it in real life (as I actually did the same motion several times myself to check for accuracy). The rest of the movements had to match with the meaning of the words. One of the reasons why I've stopped using Japanese music for my animations is that I can never be really sure that my animations properly sync'd with the meanings of the words being sung. This time it wasn't an issue as I had a full English translation of the lyrics.
The second reason why the animation could be created in a short period of time is because Maddoktor2's edits are solidly constructed and he always includes a proper Groups List. When I develop motions, probably 50-60% of the work is done there which is one of the reasons why I keep harping on this part of a model's property. I am sure my animation work style is probably similar to most Japanese MMD animators. Making accurate motions for computer performances isn't just about posing models. To make them move right, you have to manipulate the data controlling the motions itself and this can only be done using the Groups List Frames Display. The Frames Display is actually just a big graph and it is indispensable for motion data development. The MMD Frames Display tools are actually quite crude, but still, you can do quite a lot with them.
With the motion done I played the raw performance back several times. It needed scenery and that was easy as conceptually I was going to use Montecore's superb model of Barad Dur from the get go. So I added that but it looked rather empty. I used that stage for an animation using Neru, but IA has a quieter personality and presence so she looked diminutive. I wanted to use broad vistas to capture the mood of the scene and that didn't work with IA as if you pull the camera back she tends to recede into the scenery and just using close ups doesn't make good use of the scenery. In other words, it was missing a catalyst. So that's how I ended up using a dragon. Honestly, the dragon was hell to develop motion for, not that there was anything wrong with the model which is a rip by Valforwing. The model has a very basic bone structure but is well rigged and weighted. My problem was I had no idea how to move a dragon. But after some trial and error and conceptually creating a motion strategy for the beast - it's actually a cheap trick but I won't tell you what it is - IA got herself a backup dancer in the form of a dragon. And it looked epic. So creating the MME, lighting suites was a breeze plus the camera possibilites gave me good close up and panoramic wide view options which I took maximum advantage of for the video.
So please check it out: IA in her own epic fantasy performance with an animated attendant dragon; I am willing to bet that you have never seen a performance like this in an MMD video.
Cheers!
Video Link: youtu.be/iLzfXTehhgw
CREDITS
Tda IA Append : Maddoktor2
IA © The 1st Place Co., Ltd.
Dragon : Valforwing
Sword : Bilbo
Barad Dur stage : Montecore
MME : Serious Shader, G2 Shader, Full Simple Soft Shadows, o_BleachByPass, o_ToneMap, Diffusion 7, Auto-Luminous 4 / KOZU
Software : MMD 9.26 / Audacity / PMD 0.1.3.9 / Photoshop 7 / Face and Lips
Motion, lighting and camera : original work
Music : Theme from the Guin Saga anime as performed by Kanon
© Kaoru Kurimoto / Tenro Productions / Project Guin
Guin Saga anime DVD produced by Sentai Filmworks
Music used here under US Fair Use guidelines.