Amon Saga

Amon Saga is a sword and sorcery tale and one of the first of the Manga Collection releases; Manga Entertainment’s budget branding for some of its older titles, though Amon Saga had not previously been available in the UK.
 
We first meet Amon as he gets involved in a bar brawl, though this soon breaks up when the sound of an approaching behemoth shakes the tavern. It is a giant tortoise and the base of the Valhis army which has come to search for new recruits. As you may be able to tell from the name, the Valhis army is bad and uses this mobile fortress to go on the pillage at unfortunate towns in its path. Emperor Valhis is worse than his men and has taken a princess hostage to get a valuable map from her father, but being a bad chap he breaks his promise to King Darai-Sem by keeping both the map and the princess.
But what of Amon? He has joined the Valhis army but to spy rather than pillage as he seeks revenge for the death of his mother. Cue explanatory flashback and lots of violence as Amon rescues the princess, battles were-beasts, fish/worm things, evil sorcerers and dragon-apes; generally trying to defeat the Emperor.
 
There are interesting touches in Amon Saga – his battle with a sorcerer leaves Amon in a dream-state which is well realised, and fans of Vampire Hunter D will recognise that the characters share the same designer, Yoshitaka Amano, meaning the beasts have a similar bizarre feel and in the flashback we learn that Amon was trained by the wandering poet and swordsman Ekuna, a mysterious stranger very much like D.
Also, it has to be said that Yoshitaka Amano has a thing for tongues- but some interesting character design aside, the whole feel of Amon Saga is very dated. It was produced in 1986 and when you compare it to similarly aged classics such as Miyazaki’s Castle of Cagliostro, you can’t accept that the advanced years are an excuse for lack of quality.
A cliché story with corny dubbing and a subtitled Japanese track that fares little better, this is a prime example of the time when many titles in the Manga catalogue relied on sex and violence to attract the punters.
 
In Summary
 
Whilst not terrible and certainly not unwatchable, Amon Saga nevertheless teeters on the knife edge of mediocrity. I could only recommend this to fans of 80s schlock anime or die hard followers of Yoshitaka Amano. Disappointing.