Dantalian no Shoka - Wallpaper and Scan Gallery

Novel illustrations: G Yuusuke
Artist for the manga adaptation: Chako Abeno
Artist for the manga spin-off "Dantalian no Shoka: Dalian Days": Sena Monako

Meet Huey, an ex-pilot who has inherited an entire mansion from his recently deceased, bibliomaniac grandfather. This grandfather was considered quite an eccentric within the family so it wasn’t much of a surprise that the inheritance had a strange condition: he had to inherit the mythical "Bibliotheca Mystica de Dantalian".
Huey sets on his journey and finds a musty old library in the cellar filled to the brim with books together with a solitary little girl who he finds fondly reading a book. The little girl is named Dalian, dressed in black with a huge lock hanging from her neck. Their journey starts as Huey finds out that Dalian is the gateway herself to the "Bibliotheca Mystica de Dantalian", which houses 900,666 prohibited "Phantom Books".

Credit: Abaddon13

Despite cramming twelve episodes onto a trip through post war Great Britain with some book huntings, the series shows a lot of potential to counter its weak points. Perhaps Dantalian didn't finish as strong as Gosick, the series does have its humorous moments, too, and its ending, which is somewhat open to interpretation, is anything but tame, leaving a long time for it to blossom into something deeper and more interesting. Dantalian still spins good enough, and elaborate enough, stories to hold a viewer's interest, offers a highly likeable female lead, looks sharp and delivers as every bit of entertainment value as it can. That can compensate for a lot of flaws.

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An anime about books and a very special girl named Dalian, who is actually a living gateway to the Mystic Archives of Dantalian, a library that preserves all of the world's forbidden knowledge. The girl is accompanied by lord Huey Disward, the key holder of the library, whose task is to help Dalian sealing the phantom books they found while solving strange mysteries. I found the idea attractive and I liked the relationship there is between Huey and Dalian. She is a great character, inspite of the plot flaws. I didn't found the thread of a story, every episode is independent and doesn't let anything out about a deeper story to be revealed. Maybe something will be clearer in the next series, 'cause it's not over. The last episode was a bolt from the blue, the situation took a strange turn suddenly, without warning. Anyway, a nice anime, except for the opening and the ending: I found them horrible.

HUGH ANTHONY DISWARD: "The creeping darkness answered: “No one has seen the future”"

Started watching this because it seems like it will be a good mystery anime, and I do enjoy a good mystery.^^ The charcter design seems good so far, even though some of the the colors are a bit dark. I like the opening, it's quiet and nice. I think Flamberg is pretty as well as Dalian. Episodic anime is a tricky proposition. In the absence of an overriding plot, character development can sometimes be difficult, and making the audience feel truly involved is more difficult. Some series like Natsume Yuujinchou overcome this by making their episodic tales heart-warming and relatable. Emotionally cooler shows, like Mushishi, do so by the sheer brilliance of the writing and the magnetism of the lead. Dantlian no Shoka, lacking either of those qualities, has settled into a kind of detached purgatory – usually enjoyable but rarely memorable. I like the characters here, especially Huey, who clearly has hidden depths we haven’t seen. He carries a lot of pain with him and he’s seen some terrible things. The problem is, we haven’t seen those depths – bar some brief flashbacks with the lilac-haired Yomihime. I like this series, but I’d really love to love it. It has style, it’s extremely smart and literate, the OP is beyond beautiful and it offers an engaging premise. But Dantalian no Shoka – at least the anime version – is a tease. It only lets you see so much of what it is, occasionally (such as last week’s bookworm classic) shows you brilliance, but always pulls away before you can get too close. With two episodes to go there are some tiny hints that we may finally get inside Huey’s pain – the flashback occurred in the postscript this week, and we appear to be getting an appearance from a regular character in the novels – Raisel, the Red Yomihime that was responsible for the shenanigans in the bombed-out village in episode six. Perhaps, just perhaps, Dantalian is going to start bringing it all together and start showing us what’s really happening in Huey’s head. It was nice to finally see Huey's past. Looking back, I can’t help but feel I’ve just watched a pretty, well-produced 12-episode teaser trailer for the light novels, even so I’d call the series successful in that it gave us an interesting story, some extremely literate writing, and a memorable visual style. It still goes down as a lost opportunity for me, though, because it never grew beyond the impression that it was only letting you see the tip of the iceberg, and jealously guarding most of its secrets. As is, I’ll remember it as a solid show, and for what it might have been as much as for what it was.

I absolutely love this series. I can't wait to see how things go between the two main Characters Hugh (Huey) and Dalian. This anime has mystery and magic in it and so far a good story thought it still in it's infancy stage for plot and storyline developement. The fourth episode was amazingly gruesome... should have had more blood. It was like and anime version of the movie Misery.

had high expectation but somewhat didn't match that after few episodes in. seiyuu average performance. main lead voice resembled too much similiarity to his character in suzumiya haruhi. was expecting more from him. plot-wise, interesting and get people to ponder. much like a philosophy plot than your average make-you-laugh anime.

Deeply related to books and there magic, this anime covers the area of phantom books and a library which holds them The library is a young girl (who is the warden of 900000 and 666 phantom books) and her key holder ( library's key holder) is a guy who is commonly known as Lord Disward, who has inherited a large mansion, with this library just mentioned above. Although each episode is quite dull and quite simple plotted even so the serious environment grants you the detective feeling.
I haven't rated it high indeed, but i assure you that one will love this anime if he is into such things.

The introductions were shaky, but it really caught me. The two leads were very charismatic and Dalian is a very pleasant protagonist. I also like the relationship between the two, and the other interesting characters.

Although each story it seems, is a lead to a psychotic beautiful woman. And everything has something to do with a book. But what was I even to expect anyway? All those aside, I love the animation and how specific they get to the books. I appreciate the variations of settings per episode and the voice acting is great! I instantly fell inlove with this series and I hope it does not disappoint!