is a three-episode

OVA , abbreviated as OVA and sometimes as OAV (original animation video), are Japanese animated films and series made specially for release in home video formats without prior showings on television or in theaters, though the first part of an OVA s ...

anime is Traditional animation, hand-drawn and computer animation, computer-generated animation originating from Japan. Outside of Japan and in English, ''anime'' refers specifically to animation produced in Japan. However, in Japan and in Japane ...

series released by J.C.Staff between March 1990 through January 1992. The episodes are licensed for release in North America by

Central Park Media Central Park Media, often abbreviated as CPM, was an American multimedia entertainment company based in New York City, New York and was headquartered in the 250 West 57th Street building in Midtown Manhattan (on the corner of Central Park, henc ...

and in the United Kingdom by

ADV Films A.D. Vision Holdings, Inc. (known simply as ADV and also referred to as ADV Films) was an American multimedia entertainment distributor headquartered in Houston, Texas, and founded in 1992 by video game fan John Ledford and anime fans Matt G ...

UK division.

Plot

Terumi () is a lonely high school girl, teased for being mousy and homely by her classmates. Her childhood friend Kouichi () is oblivious to her being in love with him. An ancient dragon lord offers to make her beautiful and popular in exchange for allowing him to possess her. Desperate, she agrees, and later rips apart the souls of the girls who once bullied her. Meanwhile, Kouichi is approached by another god, Susano (), who wants to possess his body, so he can defeat the dragon. Reluctantly, Kouichi agrees and later meets a priestess named Sayoko () who explains more to him about the current war between the gods. However, in order to kill the dragon, his host must die too leaving Kouichi struggling to figure out how to defeat the dragon spirits while also trying to save Terumi's life.

Media

Developed by J.C.Staff, the three episodes of ''Guardian of Darkness'' were directed and written by Osamu Yamazaki, and produced by Nobuhisa Abe and Shigeaki Komatsu. The three episodes were initially released to VHS format in Japan across three individual volumes. The first was released in March 1990; the last was released in January 1992. The series is licensed for distribution in North America by

—then US Manga Corps. They released the English dubbed across three VHS volumes under the name ''Takegami: Guardian of Darkness'', with the first two released in October 1997, and the final episode released in February 1998. A box set containing all three volumes were also released in the same month. The episodes were released in a single DVD volume on January 19, 1999, with the original Japanese audio and English subtitled options added. The series was re-released to DVD on July 29, 2003, with the name ''Guardian of Darkness'' and new extras added. The episodes are also licensed for release in the United Kingdom by

, and the English dubbed episodes were released for digital download at IGN's "Direct2Drive" service.

Episode listing

Reception

''EX'' magazine's Charles McCarter felt the series had good character designs and particularly praised the dragon designs used in the series. He also praised the series musical soundtrack and the animation quality. However, he also felt the series claim that Terumi was inconsistent with her visually attractive character design, noting that "she is the most attractive character of the bunch (even before the hairstyle change)", and that the portrayal of the Shinto god

Susanoo __FORCETOC__ Susanoo (; historical orthography: , ) is a in Japanese mythology. The younger brother of Amaterasu, goddess of the sun and mythical ancestress of the Japanese imperial line, he is a multifaceted deity with contradictory charact ...

as the good guy as strange when the figure is normally a bad guy who "is typically shown in the myths...to be a bullying tantrum-thrower and all-around not-very nice guy". He also criticized the English voice actors in the Central Park Media dub for the mispronunciation of the Japanese names. As a whole, however, McCarter felt it was a fun series, particularly for fans of the occult and horror genres. Carlos Ross of ''THEM Anime Reviews'' agreed with McCarter about Terumi's character design being the cutest of the series rather than ugly, and the oddity of Susanoo being the good god in the series. However, Ross felt the series was unmemorable, plagued with writing inconsistencies, and bad animation. He also disliked the English dub, finding Lisa Ortiz's performance as Terumi to be "grating", the other voices forgettable and annoying for their mispronunciation of names. In his final summary, Ross felt that "poor animation and lackluster writing sabotage an interesting premise and potentially cool characters." ''Anime Encyclopedia'' authors

Jonathan Clements Jonathan Michael Clements (born 9 July 1971) is a British author and scriptwriter. His non-fiction works include biographies of Confucius, Koxinga and Qin Shi Huang, as well as monthly opinion columns for ''Neo'' magazine. He is also the co-auth ...

and

Helen McCarthy Helen McCarthy (born 27 February 1951) is the British author of such anime reference books as ''500 Manga Heroes and Villains'', ''Anime!'', ''The Anime Movie Guide'' and '' Hayao Miyazaki: Master of Japanese Animation''. She is the co-author o ...

offered the series mild praise for its English dub, particularly the demonic voice effects, but otherwise trashed the series as a "derivative tale of violent transformations...with a dose of misogyny and lackluster fight scenes."

References

External links

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AnimeOnDVD.com/Mania.com Review
{{J.C.Staff OVAs 1990 anime OVAs Central Park Media Horror anime and manga J.C.Staff Science fiction anime and manga