Originally Posted by Switchblade (Post 290283)

Ignoring Gaim since it's way too early to tell how well it will stick the landing, I'm going to go with Wizard.

Now I will not argue for a minute that Wizard's story wasn't very poorly paced and drawn out, but the basic core story was really solid and tied together beautifully.

Fueki's daughter dies and he can't cope with it so he turns to magic to try and revive her, succeeding only in creating a bunch of soulless Phantoms. One of the victims is strong enough to overcome the Phantom, though, and is able to use its mana to wield magic. So Fueki decides to use the Phantoms to awaken other wizards that he can use as batteries for reviving his daughter. He then spends the entire series playing the Phantoms and Haruto off each other until he can get the four Wizards he needs to revive Koyomi. When all of this comes out in the open, Haruto has to decide how much he's personally willing to sacrifice to save Koyomi. At least until he finds out just how big the price is going to be to power the spell.

It's good stuff and I think that it would be a modern classic if it had been executed even half as well as conceived. But the show was locked into the Den-O episode structure, there was way too much forced comedy, and the actress who played the central character was too busy with her idol work to film more than a minute or two of footage per episode. The story itself was still really, really sound, though.