I started watching 12 Kingdoms today, and it is great! I don’t have the energy to go into great detail, but it is a very intelligently written magical girl anime. I think because it is adapted from a series of novels, that lends itself to richer character development and a more involved storyline than you might find in a typical anime series. The rest of this tv show is now at the top of my Netflix Queue

Steph is posting about it on her Anime-Manga obsession blog, there’s a review of first dvd on AnimeOnDVD and another review of the second dvd in the series on Animefringe.

I also read the second volume of Descendants of Darkness, and the series seems to have settled down into its “detectives of the dead” theme as Tsuzuki and Hisoka investigate a doomed dancer and a boy with a demonic violin. I always knew that violins were the devil’s instrument. They are so high-pitched and squeaky, like the tortured cries of the damned! There’s a little less wisecracking from Tsuzuki, and more emotional involvement in the cases that he investigates.