THIS POST CONTAINS GUIN SAGA SPOILERS

Depending on who you were the Lord of the Rings movies could be a very different experiences.  You could have went in only having a vague pop culture osmosis as your awareness of the original books. Those people went in and had little to no expectations. There were also the casual fans of J. R. R. Tolkien’s work. They knew the general plot from when they last read the books and may have remembered when major parts were adapted. They might remember that  they removed Tom Bombadil but minor changes are easily overlooked. Then there were the hard-core Lord of the Rings nerds who noticed ever single change made to the battle of Helm’s Deep. Whenever you adapt a book into a visual media there are changes they have to be made. The longer the prose the more changes have to be made. The Guin saga novels are no exception when they were adapted into an anime.

I was lucky enough to discover Guin Saga (though only the first arc) before the anime, but not too long before so it was fresh in my mind. Watching it come to life in animated form was thrilling but also challenging. I can only imagine how the legions of Japanese fans who have stood by Guin’s side for years and years felt about it. Novel to screen is harder than manga to screen for obvious reasons but there are many other issues that come up beyond pure aesthetics. Still, the Guin Saga anime did a good job, but of course there were moments missing that we couldn’t ignore.

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