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In all honesty, Shiki was a very good show for most of its run. In fact, for a while, I was going to give it a nine. So what happened? Well, a couple of things, really. I'll explain.

Story:
This started as the strong point of this anime. For the most part, Shiki is a mystery anime. It isn't that hard to figure out what's happening, but there are enough twists to keep it interesting. The pace is slow at first, but after a few episodes, the show became fairly good at holding my interest. It kept me uncertain of how things would be resolved until the ... last few episodes.

However, in the last episode, I pretty much guessed how one of the main issues would be resolved. This wasn't a bad thing really, but how it tied up side events was. The thing that really bothered me were a few key occurrences that had little to no explanation. A couple seemed like they were pulled out of a hat. I can't really talk about it without going into spoilers, but a few scenes might make you question how something happened, and then the anime never bothers to explain it to you.

Art:
For art, Shiki will either be a hit or a miss for you. The character design isn't at all conventional, and as someone pointed out in their review, some of the characters look as if they could use their chins as weapons. As you might have guessed, the designs have essentially no logic. The hair of almost every character merely laughs in the face of physics, and every character has these light rings around their pupils that seem to exist to make you wonder if they have some symbolic meaning or plot significance. They don't, but hey, they could've.

Oh, if you omit character design, the art's fairly nice. They did some fairly cool scenes throughout the show, and the show's design is artsy in a way that really adds to it's atmosphere.

Sound:
I don't have much to say about the sound but the acting in Shiki was good. Not the best I've ever heard, but it was convincing. As for the soundtrack, it never seemed out of place, and always added to the atmosphere.

Characters:
This was probably the worst part of the show. Many, many characters were interesting, but there was only one character in the entire show I felt the audience got to know really well. Many of the others would barely get a minute or two per episode if they were lucky. They would also usually be lumped in with a large group of other characters. It was actually depressing at times. Times when the less significant main characters were given a decent amount of time, I felt, were few and far between.

Overview:
All in all, I enjoyed Shiki. I found it a refreshing view on a worn topic, and one that can generate a discussion or two to boot. Anyways, While Shiki isn't the greatest anime ever made, it's worth a look.

I don't feel like sugar coating this, so I'll just come out and say it: I hated Shugo Chara. Despite the pages of praise, the only thing I found I actually liked about this were the characters. Not all of them, mind. Just five or six.

The premise was cute, I'll admit, having a special place in your heart for who you want to be, and sometimes being able to meet that person. But by episode 30, I really wanted to stop watching it. By episode 35, I did, until someone told me the final arc of Doki was really good. Man, am I gullible. ... The sad thing is, most of the fanfiction of this utilizes this idea in a better way than the canon story.

Most episodes being filler didn't help, either. They even had a formula: Amu meets n, a person who is skilled at/in love with n. At/before a really important event, n will somehow mess up/be rejected, and a member of Easter will replace n's heart's egg with an X egg. Amu wil find the egg, make the same gasping noise, character transform,l then spew some stunningly cliche trite and purify n's heart egg. n then usually proceeds to never show his or her face again. They eventually do some variations, such as the x eggs hatching (Gasp.), or the X egg is a person's chara. Expanding on that more, if someone is not a Guardian or an employee of Easter ends up with a chara, you can bet it's going to become an X Egg. Out of the 50 episodes, I recall about 30 being filler.

Characters in Shugo Chara vary greatly. Amongst the main cast, there was a pleasant diversity, although there were a few obnoxious characters. I'm not talking about the reoccurring characters like Saaya, I'm thinking of Kiseki. Was he supposed to be funny? He almost annoyed me as much as Tadase. Why did I find Tadase irritating? Because a main character should be memorable, but I can barely remember anything about him other Amu's endless fawning over him.

Onto aesthetics! The art in Shugo Chara is fine, but there isn't anything truly outstanding. I liked most day to day outfits for the characters, Amu's in particular, but I disliked ALL of the character transformations, though. If I had to pick the absolute worst of the transformations, I'd say Amulet Clover, Clown Drop, and Dear Baby. They missed cute by miles, and strayed far into the territories of awkwardness and stupidity. As for the music in the anime, the openings are all guaranteed starters of uncomfortable conversations. Generally, the sound track was unimpressive unless Ikuto was playing on his violin, or Utau was debuting a new song.

So to sum up, Shugo Chara is an anime I might have enjoyed, however the huge portion of filler, and the general dragged out impression it gave me ruined it. For me, the show (including Doki!) was dull and altogether not worth the 102 episodes I struggled through, and certainly not deserving of the praise many of the reviews give it. The fact that so many animes I adore have run for a single season, while this one goes on for 3, with two of the seasons having double, or even quadruple times the amount of episodes as them really annoys me, especially as a simple story like this could have been done in half the episodes at double quality. I wouldn't really recommend this for a person who likes seeing characters ending up together (due to how it has the most disappointing romance ending ever devised by man) , but if you're a magical girl fan, go nuts.