Back to JikoSama's Profile JikoSama's Profile

Alright I have seen very many horrible reviews but TRUST ME ON THIS, the anime is NOT as bad as those are saying. I would also agree that it is not that great, but it does have its good points.

CONTAINS SPOILERS, READ AT YOUR OWN RISK!
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
...

STORY

6/10
I have not read the manga, and I do not want to judge this based on the manga, so I will give an honest review with this one. The story writers seemed like they were struggling, and the anime story severely dragged around the middle episodes. I admit that the story was going well until around episode 22, then it started going all over the place. But in the end, that all-over-the-place story was used as a "the power of comrades" excuse in the end. However it wasn't as bad as it seemed and it actually made sense because it was backed up with "plot evidence." So I let that slide, and I also like how the director played with the audience minds in the very end and showed us some side character development rather than a sudden "Bleachified" timeskip ending. All in all I didn't really enjoy sitting through weeks of episodes right after the drawn out Sae arc either, but the end brought back what was lacking just a little bit.


ART

7/10
Considering the studio was Pierrot, I was actually expecting some screw-ups, but it looks like they cared more about this anime than they did for Naruto. There is some evidence here and there of obvious budget cuts but it isn't all that bad; but it's not amazing either. I rather enjoyed watching the "resonance" scenes, though; those kept me wanting to see more pretty pink sparkles lol
other than that, the animation was relatively consistent throughout the entire anime as opposed to Naruto where you could tell where all the budget cuts were in the episodes where the character shading got shitty. Nothing like that happened in this anime, but sometimes the special effects were botched.


SOUND

6/10
First: music. I enjoyed the soundtrack more than how the sound was edited in the anime. Mikio Endo, the composer, definitely has some potential to go very far in his musical career. ALSO: openings and endings. I really have mixed feelings for these. I disliked all the endings except the first one, really. But I liked 2 out of the 4 openings, opening 1 and 3. Opening 2 was just meh, probably because of the choice of band they used. I also didn't particularly feel interested with the "Naruto-style" opening 4, it just reminded me too much of easily skip-able Naruto openings with mediocre bands doing their best to get on par with the "hip" bands of today. (sorry, Naruto lovers, I do like Naruto too but I dislike the boring openings and endings).
Opening 1 was DEFINITELY the best opening of the series, and actually quite possibly one of the best openings I have seen out of the hundreds of anime I have watched, which is fairly surprising. I also really liked opening 3 because of the relaxed but pumping feeling that the song gave off, especially at the part where the characters turned into puppets. (props to Tomohisa Taguchi)

Second: sfx and overall audio quality. It seems like the videos' bitrates were severely low even though the videos were in "1080p" HD and you could hear the audio quality waning a bit, distracting for perfectionists, lol. Also, sometimes the soundtrack just drained out the voice actors. It reminded me of "Yona of the Dawn" and honestly that was the number one reason why I dropped that anime; because the soundtrack drowned out the actors. It was terrible experience for me lol


CHARACTER

4/10
Meh... that's really all I have to say. So what I didn't like the most was that both Rokuro and Benio's characters were too close to the stereotypical "hero's journey" heroes. (refer to Natsu and Lucy for stereotypical hero's journey characters) Although it seems like the "main character" turned into Rokuro Enmado, which made me a little mad that they neglected Benio Adashino since the writers gave her all that potential then threw in a trait that turned her into a lame duck character in 2 minutes. (refer to episode 46) Honestly the story focused mainly on those 2 and whenever side characters' received attention, there was attention on the WRONG side characters. Don't get me wrong, the obnoxious screamy girl (whose name escapes me) in the Heavenly Commanders was actually a decent character but why did we need background on her instead of a more significant character like Simon or the strongest exorcist with the red hair? It made absolutely no sense to me at all right there. However I do like how the Basara were given character backgrounds. Though it just reminded me too much of "Bleach." Obvious inspiration.

BUT

I am not reluctant to say that I enjoy how both Rokuro and Benio's characters turned out in the end. I could not clearly see the moment when all seemed lost as well as the "triumph".. those were a little unclear. Rokuro went from flirtatious dousche bag in episode 1 to fairly badass and cute in the last few episodes, but that was not enough to patch up the vague missing important character traits like his attitudes towards his friends. All we got was some "Fairy Tail" comrade thing, so even the characters with a little bit of development were not the characters that needed it. Also I like how Benio's character developed much more-so than Rokuro. She went from complete tsundere in episode 1 to adorably bashful in episode 50. It was remarkable how her character was developed.
Now as for the villains... all I really hated was Yuto Ijika and Kuranashi. After what thousand years of planning, Kuranashi is what, defeated by some kid with no real reason for wanting to destroy the world? Total BS asspull "plot patch." It was good that they gave him a reason to be jealous of Benio since he wasn't her, but it was ridiculous to make him so.. empty. He clearly did not have enough background to make his character appealing. Neither did filler-villain Kuranashi, which really was unnecessary.


ENJOYMENT

7/10
Alright now.. for the reason why I stuck around with this anime. I got caught up around the airing of episode 36. So what was one of the best parts of this anime was the directing! A lot of people noticed that in the comments of various anime websites but were unsure what exactly it was that kept them watching this anime still. I enjoyed the pacing of romantic scenes as well as battles, but the surrounding "filler" during the long battles such as other character fights made me bored. Also the story points of Rokuro and Benio constantly failing until the very end to defeat their enemies without being OP was distracting, and made me bored as well. (gg story writers) HOWEVER I fully enjoyed the romance scenes and camera shots. Must just be the shoujo love in me, but every time they got close or blushed or came close to kissing or kissed, I got some butterflies and warm feelings and almost felt what the characters were feeling. Props to Tomohisa Taguchi! But it sucks that he is always paired with bad writers.



OVERALL
6/10

My ratings actually are pretty spread out, but I'll give it overall a 6 out of 10. I would not say this anime was mediocre because there was clearly something that kept me watching, and I would say that was thanks to the well done directing by Tomohisa Taguchi, but what ALMOST made me drop it was thanks to Naruhisa Arakawa's poor story-telling at the most important parts of the story and dragging of key arcs; and also characters that were unnecessarily given background without it actually being utilized (i.e. that loud heavenly commander girl with the old loli woman). Also poor villain background such as Yuto Ijika and Kuranashi almost made me drop, but luckily Abe no Seimei was an OK villain (probably because he reminded me of Kagura. definitely was inspired by Naruto). All in all, NOT on the top of my "recommendations" list if you like anime with a fluid storyline. But I would definitely recommend it still (probably becasue of the fangirl in me) for the music (Mikio Endo), art, and enjoyment.