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'Reign' is a re-telling of the life of Alexander the Great, told as a fantasy of sorts, with very baroque and fantastic settings. Most of the history is actually reasonably accurate, just the details are embellished with magical elements. It's as if the story is being told a couple of centuries after the actual events to a bunch of country rubes who have never seen 'big' cities like ancient Athens and so on.
The creators of the show were obviously well versed in the classical historical literature of Greek and Rome, and it shows in the whole style of story telling. And the battle scenes are quite good. But if you don't like the Peter Chung character designs you probably won't sit through the rest of the political machinations.
All-in-all, I liked the series a lot, but then, I've sat through a read many of the relevant classical texts ( Arrian's 'The Campaigns of Alexander', for example ), so I knew what was going on. But I'm still not certain the series will be a popular success over here. There was also a lot of fetish nudity and near nudity in the original broadcast ( It was broadcast on a satellite channel in Japan ), which may offend some viewers if it remains uncut.
Try it with an open mind - you might enjoy it, if only for it's ambition to be something more than just another 'fight' anime.
Cheers -
Dave Baranyi
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