The life of Alexander the Great is the subject of Reign. © 1999 Alexander Committee. TOKYOPOP Inc. and TOKYOPOP U.K. are registered trademarks of TOKYOPOP K.K. All rights reserved.

Reign: The Conqueror. V.1, Ascension. V.2, Obsession. V.3, Domination. V.4, Destruction.
TV series (13 episodes), 1999. Director: Yoshinori Kanemori. V.1, 4 episodes/100 minutes; v.2-4, 3 episodes/100 minutes. Price & format: DVD bilingual $29.99. Distributor: TOKYOPOP.

This strange but visually exciting sci-fi adaptation of the life of Alexander the Great began in 1996 as a Japanese-Korean co-production with American input for the international market, according to the creator interviews among the DVD extras. Production was coordinated through the Madhouse studio in Tokyo although the "integral parts of the animation" were done in Seoul. They invited Korean-American animator Peter Chung as their character designer because of the look of his Aeon Flux for MTV. Their goal was "originality," "the last thing you would expect Alexander the Great to look like," with costuming and architecture that look like they could exist but like nothing that ever did exist. The production was 13 TV episodes carrying Alexander's career to his farthest expansion east into India; the first four episodes, to the assassination of his father Philip II, were also condensed into a theatrical feature.

Shown at international film festivals starting in 1998 as Alexander or Alexander Senki (Record of Alexander's Military Exploits), the TV series was finally aired on Japan's WOWOW satellite TV channel from September 14 through December 1999; the theatrical feature was released in October 2000. In the U.S. the Cartoon Network premiered it as Reign: The Conquerer on its late-night Adult Swim block from February 10 to March 3, 2003.

Reign takes too many liberties to be used as a Cliff's Notes condensation of Alexander's actual reign. For example, Alexander did not kill Darius III of Persia in personal combat at the Battle of Arbela during a full lunar eclipse. The eclipse was on Sept. 30, 331 B.C. as Alexander's army crossed the Tigris to confront the Persian army. The battle was the next day; Darius escaped and was not killed until almost a year later (by his own courtiers to "spare him the humiliation of being captured by Alexander").

Some of the dramatization is clearly as fantastic as the sci-fi trappings of aerial death robots and fire-breathing elephants, such as the conversations between Aristotle and Diogenes as their "Platonic ideas" (spirits) hover in the sky above Alexander's advance into Persia, and the attacks by the Disciples of Pythagoras as a ninjalike assassin cult seeking to kill Alexander to prevent him from destroying the world. But history does record that both Alexander and Darius rejected their generals' advice of sneak attacks and insisted on "honorable" head-on battles; that Alexander's mother was a princess of Epirus who was also high priestess of a mystic religion there, and was scorned by the Macedonian nobility as a barbarian pagan witch; that Philip II was murdered during a great celebration to promote his leadership over the Greek states; and other dramatically colorful details.

The producers tried to avoid an "anime" look, although to most Americans any animation that is mature (Reign is rated 16+ for nudity and violence) and does not look "Disney" is considered "anime." This DVD release is the "Original Director's Cut — Unedited and presented as it was envisioned;" some of the half-hour TV episodes are closer to 40 minutes.

Fred Patten has written on anime for fan and professional magazines since the late 1970s. He wrote the liner notes for Rhino Entertainment's The Best of Anime music CD (1998), and was a contributor to The World Encyclopedia of Cartoons, 2nd Edition, ed. by Maurice Horn (1999) and Animation in Asia and the Pacific, ed. by John A. Lent (2001).