Ayashi no Ceres

Ceres was a tennyo (Celestial maiden) who came down from the heavens to bathe in a stream. She hung her hagoromo (robe) on a tree nearby, which was her key to returning to the heavens. But the robe was stolen and the man who had stolen it forced her to become his wife, thus producing a family full of human and tennyo blood mixed.

Now, in modern day time, Aya Mikage is a descendent of Ceres, and has quite an amount of tennyo blood. On her 16th birthday, she and her twin brother, Aki, are thrown a party. At the "party," Aya's grandpa plans to kill her, for she has tennyo powers unlike the rest of the family, and can actually become Ceres herself and destroy the Mikage family. Aya, however, can switch back, so this transformation happens quite frequently.

With protector Yuuhi by her side, it is up to Aya to control Ceres and keep her from coming back, but her relationship with an ex-worker for her evil grandpa may be a distraction.

Tooya Main

Konishi, Katsuyuki Japanese

Ceres Main

Iwao, Junko Japanese

Mikage, Aya Main

Kakazu, Yumi Japanese

Aogiri, Yuuhi Main

Itou, Kentarou Japanese

Mikage, Aki Main

Chiba, Susumu Japanese

Kuruma, Chidori Supporting

Kawasumi, Ayako Japanese

Tsukasa, Shuro Supporting

Kusaka, Chihiro Japanese

O. Howell, Alexander Supporting

Seki, Tomokazu Japanese

Oda, Kyuu Supporting

Kujira Japanese

Aogiri, Suzumi Supporting

Asano, Mayumi Japanese

Kamegaki, Hajime Director

Takahashi, Hideo Sound Director

Kosaka, Harume Episode Director, Storyboard

Nishizawa, Susumu Episode Director, Storyboard, Key Animation, Layout

Reviews

Sep 8, 2008

TheLlama

Recommended

Ayashi no Ceres presents a beautiful love story, which intertwined with great action and characters makes for a sad, yet heartwarming story that can grip your heart.

It starts off very peacefully, with Aya Mikage and her twin brother Aki spending time with their friends, celebrating the twins' 16th birthday. However, this peaceful day is interrupted by Aya falling off a bridge, down on the highway underneath. Miraculously, she lands without getting a scratch, and she's saved from cars on a collision course by a mysterious, red-headed man. And that day marks the end of the happy days for the two.

They are summoned to the ... family mansion to celebrate their 16th birthday, but instead, they end up being the victims of the Mikage family's gruesome rite of killing off female descendants with strong tennyo powers in them. Said powers suddenly awaken, preventing her from getting killed.

From here on, the story goes darker, deeper and angstier as we're thrown into the mess that Aya suddenly finds herself in, being hunted by her own family all of a sudden. She has to deal with the fact that her twin brother has turned into a reincarnation of an evil man from the past, and she has to make sure Ceres doesn't take over her body completely. This leads to some great action scenes, as Ceres emerges to fight the Mikage family from time to time, with her astounding powers.

And then there's the love, the beautiful, yet sad love that is Aya's and Toya's love - Toya is the guy who saved her, but also a Mikage henchman, which means he's out to get her. However, he slowly falls in love with her, and her with him, despite the two of them being enemies. Now they must find a way to live out their love without the Mikage family or Ceres, who has a vendetta against the Mikages, getting in the way. Of course, there's Yuhi, and there's actually some mutual love between Yuhi and Aya as well, creating a love triangle that can rip Aya apart.

The characters in the anime are all very realistically portrayed. From Toya's quest to find his place in this world to Aya's struggles to remain herself through all that happens around her. The love that slowly develops between Toya and Aya is never forced, and their relationship progresses nicely over the course of the series.

The side characters are all good too, and despite not having so major roles, they fulfill them excellently, and they are portrayed very well too. Most of the characters you will see have some depth to them, which causes your heart to be with them as well, and not only Aya and Toya.

I'm also fond of the character development that takes place during the course of the series - at the end I could see how much they had matured, obviously having learned a few things about life and love during the events that took place during the course of the series.

Studio Pierrot did a nice job on the animation, and despite it being a bit old, it's very good. The lighting effects are very well done, though the same can't always be said about the special effects - they had their moments they too, though. The overall detail is very good, but there's one thing that bugged me, and that was the fact that their hair seemed transparent when in front of their eyes. You can't see your eyes through a layer of hair >_

Reviewer’s Rating: 8

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Nov 24, 2006

June

Mixed Feelings

If you'd like to see my full review then leave a comment on my profile.

Characters: The relationships of the family members were the most fascinating in the series. Aya and Aki had the typical brother/sister relationship of bickering and understanding, but after their 16th birthday it became more intense. Aki now desired the maiden inside of Aya. Aya also had a lot of growth, as she fought to control Ceres and save her brother from their power-hungry family. All of the characters have inner demons that they are constantly fighting in order to protect the ones they love.

Reviewer’s Rating: 6

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Oct 27, 2021

ktulu007

Not Recommended

Ayashi no Ceres is a 2000 anime from Studio Pierrot. You know, the studio behind Hikaru no Go, Yu Yu Hakusho & Bleach. Fortunately, only one of those is a mediocre rip off of Yu-Gi-Oh. So, there's some hope for this. For the end of horror anime month, let's take a look at Ayashi no Ceres.

Story:

Everything seems to be going right for Mikage Aya. She has a good relationship with her twin, Aki. They're about to celebrate their sixteenth birthday. And she just floated to safety after falling from a high place and was caught by a handsome passer-by to boot. Then they ... find out that they have to celebrate with their entire family and Aya quickly finds herself marked as a danger to the family and with the personality of her own celestial ancestor, Ceres, inside her body.

Let me start by saying, there are some interesting ideas in this. Sure, the whole body swapping thing was also in 3x3 Eyes and it isn't the first anime to be about a powerful family turning on one of their own but that doesn't mean it can't use those ideas very well. And there was a point where I thought it might turn out to be a decent anime, possibly even really good.

Unfortunately, the series goes out of its way to drop, weaken or outright destroy every potentially interesting idea it uses with horrendous execution. Tooya's back story is absolute rubbish once it gets explained. The whole element of examining the dark side of old fables is destroyed towards the end when the ultimate facts are revealed. Aki's struggle against the Progenitor gets dropped until the very end where it suffers a very anti-climactic conclusion. Even a potentially interesting loss gets reversed because the writer doesn't have the ovarian fortitude to let tragedy befall the main cast.

Everything with the potential to be interesting falling apart isn't even the only narrative problem with the series. The romance is absolutely horrendous. It pretty much starts with "I barely know you but I love you so huggy muggy much." Moves into "I love you, but we can't be together because plot contrivances are happening." And just keeps going with more melodramatic nonsense and a complete rubbish dynamic betwixt the leads. The series also suffers from that old syndrome of bad writing, All these characters are morons whenever it suits the plot. The powerful, "secretive" Mikage family literally sends attack helicopters after people on crowded roads on more than one occasion. Because nothing helps keep your evil plans secret like a massive public display that anyone within a twenty kilometre radius will notice. There's also Aya who quite literally lets herself get captured and nearly has horrible things happen to her multiple times because she can't be bothered to let Ceres take over for no adequately explored reason.

Characters:

At best, the characters in this series are mediocre. And that's mostly the Aogiri family characters. Aya is a rubbish heroine. She never moves past the whiny little damsel in distress stage. She makes Fushigi Yuugi's Miaka look like a strong independent woman who doesn't need any man. Tooya is a boring character with less personality than a bit of lint stuck in your navel. The antagonists are basically just scumbags who do bad things that make very little sense so that they can twirl their imaginary moustaches. Ceres starts out as the most interesting character but a lot of what makes her interesting is the whole element of exploring the dark side of folk tales and she just becomes dull as soon as that element gets dropped.

Art:

The artwork is mostly fine. The character designs are a bit bland. The action sequences aren't very good but they're passable. The backgrounds are pretty decent. The animation uses some definite short cuts but it's fine.

Sound:

The acting is sub-par, at best. Remember how in 3x3 Eyes Hayashibara Megumi did the voices for both Pai and Parvati but managed to make them sound distinct and very different? Well, the director for this series clearly didn't have that much faith in Aya's actress, Kakazu Yumi, since they got a second actress, Iwao Junko, to voice Ceres. I know Kakazu isn't a bad actress since she voiced both Yuffie and Aizawa Mint. That being said, I understand that decision when I listen to her acting in this. It's a pretty pitiful performance. Very whiny, over the top overly melodramatic during the rubbish purple prose scenes. Whereas Iwao has the strongest performance in the series and even hers is just okay. Definitely not on par with her performances in anime like Perfect Blue or Cardcaptor Sakura. Sakai Ryou's music is definitely the best element of the series. It's quite good. Well composed, nice to listen to, it would be suitable for the series even if the series had decent execution.

Ho-yay:

There's none to be seen. Which is probably for the best given how bad this series is at romance.

Areas of Improvement:

1. Know when to commit. One of the huge issues with this series comes down to the simple fact that they back pedal on certain aspects that could have been interesting and just undo them or heavily weaken them to make the story more generic. Which only serves to make it utter tripe.

2. Actually develop your romance. This purple prose, melodramatic shite they've got is not a good romance. It's not even good enough to be sub-par romance.

3. Have your characters do things that make sense. Does it make sense for a powerful, secretive family to try to eliminate certain people it sees as threatening to its power? Sure. Does it make sense for them to use the most bombastic, attention grabbing methods possible to eliminate people? Fuck no. That's exceptionally stupid, in fact.

Final Thoughts:

Ayashi no Ceres is a pretty bad series. It didn't have to be. It had good ideas. It had potential. It started out pretty decently. But then you factor in the terrible romance, the crappy characterisation that never improves and to top it all off they toss out everything that could have been compelling and make it all rubbish. My final rating for Ayashi no Ceres is going to be a 2/10.

Reviewer’s Rating: 2

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