Wow - I cannot recommend this highly enough. I am a total fan of anime (owning 100s of series) and I have to say this is about the closest I have seen an NA animated series come to real anime - that's high praise indeed. Story arc and character development are fantastic. You want to see what happens to the characters because you either root for or against them and you want to see how it ends. This is a totally addictive series which I went through 4 or 5 episodes at a sitting.

My only minor quibble would be that the video quality on the DVDs is not the best, being blurry/ jaggy - especially Disc 1 of Book 1 - whether due to compression techniques or whatnot. This especially stands out on a large 1080p TV, upscaling aside.

Overall - great series. You can see where it borrows from anime, especially Miyazaki, but this strengthens rather than detracts from the show. Excellent.