Alexander Senki

Alexander Senki enjoys a kind of artistic freedom that no longer exists in the anime industry - where lolis and cliché tropes of tsun-yan-whatever-dere and pastiche art style and comedy attempts are actively shoved into every production. It brings forth the magnificent art of Peter Chung, using slender and sculptural bodies, that mix the German expressionist style of Egon Schiele with the sensual style of fashion designers of the 60’s, like Antonio Lopez and Gregory Weir-Quiton. The costumes, always giving emphasis to the erogenous areas, combined with thick eyelashes, voluptuous lips, and exposed, always hard, nipples, are a mark of his character design that you ... may know from his previous animation work Æon Flux. The use of extravagant make up and androgynous figurines also looks very inspired by 60’s and 70’s avant-garde dance and theater troupes, like The Living Theater, John Vaccaro’s Play House of the Ridiculous and The Cockettes, that were direct inspiration for the Glam Rock visuals of David Bowie and others. As for colors, background and vehicle design, those you could easily see on the pages of Metal Hurlant, as Chung himself proclaims his influence by Moebius, Enki Bilal and French comics artists. Had Chung also directed the anime, I’m sure Alexander’s relation with characters like his mother Olympias, Hephastion, Cassandra and Darius III, would have been way more interesting. He’d probably have used the character of Bagoas as well, and made Cassandra’s gender-bending (the real historical character is Cassander, a man) part of the story.

For the historical part, it adds a lot of fantastical and mystical elements, not just god’s prophecies but secret cults and sects plotting in the background. Still, it’s very delightful seeing all those important real names of History like Aristotle, Diogenes, Ptolemy, Plato and Pythagoras and their relations. Alexander Senki doesn’t pretend to be a documentary; it’s a fantastical dramatization, but on its way, it tells the real epic of Alexander and his conquest.

This is not an anime for the average anime fan, though, but for fans of art and history.

My first review on this site and it's purely out of protest to the extremely negative reviews of this series. It's a one-of-a-kind series that will shake the foundation of your understanding of anime.

21 years ago, on the 15th September if 1999, a supergroup of Japanese anime creators gave birth to Alexander Senki. Instinctively you would say that this is not a 90's show, but something that was created in the 80's. The colours, (character) designs and score are a terrific blend of old school awesomeness and originality. I watched a lot of anime and there are only a few that really stuck out. ... This show has the same ingredients. The storyline writes itself like an ancient Greek odyssey and it never got to that point that it felt dull, repetitive or in danger of losing its originality.

Yes, it's not a 'historical' anime (it's a sci-fi/fantasy with strong space opera elements) and the men are either half-naked or mostly naked (so are the women in this show). Is this something that can be perceived as extremely negative that deserves an overall score of 3 or less? I don't think so. As a matter of fact, it s the overall originality in this show and it doesn't shy away from taboo subjects.

For those who have reviewed this show extremely negatively; please give it a second run. You might be surprised. For those who are thinking about watching this show, but whose expectations are extremely low because of the reviews; don't stop at the first episode.

Just came across _Reign: The Conqueror_ in a list of bad anime - didn't recognize it until suddenly the awful memories flooded in. The fundamental problem with _Reign_ was that it was bad enough to be bad, but the makers didn't push it up the 2 or 3 notches that would have made it interesting enough to compensate (think something like _Gurren Lagann_: if it wimped out partway through, it'd be awful, but because it pushed through to the extremes, it winds up being great). That leaves _Reign_ as just mind-breakingly awful.