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First of all, I have not read the visual novels and am not a Fate franchise fan. I've heard its name a lot and decided to give a shot for it. I watched Fate/Zero, then Unlimited Blade Works.

No spoiler review.

Story 6:

I honestly think the story has good ideas, however I think they are poorly executed. Since I came after watching Fate/zero, there were less twists involved, but still it had pretty decent ideas. However pacing, especially between the first and the second season, is quite bad. It is not that it is boring, it's just that they spend screen time on things that don't need ... that much screen time.
And some moments of the plot is downright not working. I had particular difficulty watching "yet again saved by the character X at the last moments", after a certain point they stopped making any sense.

Art 9:
I am not an artist but I enjoyed what I have seen.

Sound 8:
It contributed to the overall "epic" feeling of the show pretty well.

Character 4:

I think the main characters are ok, except shirou. However the show does a lot of injustice to side characters, and there were number of them which had enormous potential to be entertaining. You might think that this injustice doesn't enough to grade as 4. I believe it does because when you have 7 masters and thus 7 servants that you can introduce and develop, if you are introducing only three or four of them in the same fashion throughout the story, that's simply poor character developpement. It doesn't really matter how well you do with the already introduced four, well it does, but part of the reason I am grading this so low is that I don't believe that the protagonists are properly introduced.
Rin was ok in my opinion, she didn't change much, but she didn't need to change much as well.
Saber was humiliated in my opinion. One of the reasons why I graded high Fate/Zero was their capacity to portray a strong woman with no apparent weakness. This was not the case in this one.
Archer, was real and comprehensible, but a little repetitive.
Shirou, was mediocre. I would like him if it was not for the last episodes or two. Towards the ending his epiphany moments ceased to be enlightening. He simply repeated what he had said two episodes ago. His whole attitude can be summed up as "I know I am stupid, but..." which is kind a okay for 1 or 2 times, but it can not be the driving cause of the character developpement.

Enjoyment 6:
I got bored towards the ending, but it was not soooo bad.

Overall 6:
Besides the character developpement, it was kind of a good show, but could have been way better.

Well, frankly best psychological anime I have seen in years, though I am not a big watcher of the kind. I am out of words really, because anime tells so much I feel like telling any feeling, any detail would be a spoiler. I will attempt to summarize what I have seen in this anime that makes it different from the other stuff out there. Then I will try to touch more specific issuses like story, art etc.

What makes it different overall?

First things first, this anime is NOT for enjoying your leisure time; because they use visual imagery both as the narrator of the story ... and as the element that establishes the overall atmosphere, meaning you need to effectively concentrate on what the visuals tell you. For example, lighting of a room will tell about the character much more than his/her conversations. Most of the time you can see how the characters feel just by looking at their faces.
Secondly, this is NOT an anime you would want to watch in one go. Just like a good meal, you have to eat it slowly, bit by bit. Overall slow pace itself is obviously designed for this purpose.
Thirdly, what we have here belongs to the order of poetry, unlike most of the other anime which belong to the order of I would say novel, or compilation of stories. The title "Flowers of Evil" is already announcing such order, yet it is important to keep that in mind throughout the entire series.

Now let's pass on the more specific details:

Story 8/10

Well story is pretty simple actually. It takes place in a Japanese school in modern times. Broadly speaking, we see the change or the inability to change of Kasugi through his relation to Sawa and Saeki. But it is almost impossible to identify what the genre of the story is clearly; because they put so much emotion to it. It is as if looking at a simple object like a pen through a microscope. Thus seeing every coherent detail makes harder to identify clearly the genre of the story. Yet it does its job, which just like any other psychological work, is the depiction of characters. Let's say story in here is just an excuse for presenting the characters.

Art 10/10

Great. Some may like it, others may not. I loved it. Reality in drawing adds a lot to the reality of emotion. And as I said in the beginning the story and the characters are depicted with visuals not with dialogues. It is hard to describe it with words but I hope in your life, you have seen a scene, a frame in reality which is so poetic that it immediately evokes certain feelings. The art in this anime is designed for recreating that feeling. Visuals are filled with so much meaning that they are naturally poetic, which is also difficult to be in a completely fictitious environment. The art is, if I may call it justly, cathartic.

Sound 9/10

When the visuals are this much strong, the only thing left for the sound is not to kill the visuals and support it. This is exactly what sound does in this anime. It carries the visuals to the next level by creating the reality of the overall atmosphere. The credits music “Last Flower” by its form and content is a concentration of the story of the anime meaning if you compress the entire series into a song, you will probably get something like “Last Flower”. It is sadly weird.

Characters 10/10

I have never seen more real characters in anime, they are almost more real than the characters of some of the regular movies I have watched. We see three major axis on which the characters are built. One is ferocity towards the mediocrity of the town and its people. Two would be confounding lust with love, a typical trait for teens. Third is lack of courage, thus doing everything on impulse and trying not to face its consequences. Besides these foundations, we can also see the consequences of these foundations on the characters. A clear example would be the repetitions made by Sawa like “Boring boring boring”. These repetitions indicate a small autism which is a product of being shut out of the society which she lives in. Thus her ferocity towards the mediocrity of the town and its people, a trait which determines the nearly all of her actions, is based on her isolation from the society which manifest itself as a small autism indicated by such repetitions. There are other examples for other characters but I will not give them here, because I do not want ruin the fun of understanding such connections.

Enjoyment 9/10

I enjoyed the show because it has been a while since I've seen such genuine stuff. But this show is not designed for enjoyment.

Overall 10/10

As someone who did not read the manga, I feel like the show attained its purpose which was the portrayal of the characters for the 1 part. If the show ends here, I am OK with that because once you understand that the events are solely for the exposition of the characters, not much of an event is needed after you understood the characters. The possible next season will show us either how they change or how they stay the same, and the options to what they will change into are pretty limited, so in all cases what happens in the next season is not really important in terms of plot, because the general purpose of the plot is already designated, but the thing that will be important for the next season is the art for sure. Now that we can see where everything is going, what matters is how they are going to portray it. This firm establishement gained by an "ouverture" should be the purpose of every first season. That is why overall I give 10 to this anime. I recommend it not only to watchers but to the producers as well. As a first season, it has function, style, uniqueness, a key combination for establishing anything great.

Story 10
Music 10
Main Characters 10
Side Characters 8.5
Visuals 10

Well, it is one of the best if not the best anime, I have ever watched so far. Right after the first episode, I felt at ease and just relaxed and enjoyed the ride. Everything about this anime is great. Story is well developped, you can connect to characters, music is amazing, very much like Cowboy Bebop by the way.

Story:
...
Kemonozume's story revolve around a woman and a man who loves each other passionately despite the fact that they are not meant for each other , lots of physical contact in this anime, their love is Eros type. I will not reveal any spoilers, but as the story goes further, it gets darker and darker, almost every episode has a moment of action or let's say every episode has a touch with the main plot, so you might get diverted a little in the first minutes, though I never did, but right on time it will take you back to its pace.

Music:

Mostly jazz. In action sequence there is a certain uptempo jazz they are using- very much like the first jazz song in the cowboy bebop movie, the one enters when spike fights with a girl- which is great, sometimes to create suspense they use only drums, for emotional scenes they have a song like a jazz/blues, it adds a lot to the scene. It never bores you, or it never feels like its too much, I mean the movies make that mistake a lot, for simple scene like a simple walk in the street, they put a real complex classical stuff, and you get distracted by it, well this anime doesn't do that, and that's certainly a good thing right?

Main Characters

We have two main characters. Yuka and Toshihiko. Yuka is like a source of life to Toshihiko, Yuka was living a normal girl's life with some exceptions, Toshihiko is a master swordsman at the Kifuufen dojo. Until the time when Toshihiko met Yuka, he had been living a life devoted to the path of sword. But Yuka changes everything. The two starts on a journey, which is decided in very stresfull moment. And the anime is the journey, the later developped main plot is actually a device that makes the journey more acceptable, and more fast paced, and the good thing with fast paced plot is that when it slows down, you really see the significance of the scene. Same with the characters, if a moment lasts, it is significant, if a thing is repeated, it is significant.

Side Characters

So for my only concern with the anime is the sometimes under developped side characters. At the end of the story, yes the villain has a good reason to be villain, but where does he get that good reason, and why it is a good reason, you do not see that. Or the side character Rie, an entire episode is devoted to her, that's how significant she is, yet we actually know so little about her, and after a certain point she is used as a stimulating device for the plot, which is so sad for a character which has a real potential to be deep. Toshihiko's brother is a very significant character and yet his relation to Toshihiko is really under developped. Maybe anime should have been a little longer like an episode or two. But besides that, some of the side characters, like the old couple, which is shown only in one episode is very well developped, because, we know a little about their past, and their relation to each other, it is all done in four or five minutes, yet the anime fails to do same thing for more significant characters, or should have done a little bit more, but it is great anyway. Now that I think about it, I'd go who cares, it was great.

Visuals

Well, it is different alright. I loved it, you might not like it. It has a certain attitude, which is, if I am not mistaken, they tried to give or show the meaning/emotion not by just the contents in the drawing but with the drawing style too. I mean, something like this, if the scene is smooth, and loving scene, they draw smooth and gentle, soft colors, poetic visual imagery and all that. But if the thing is rough, they draw rough, lots of visible lines, you can see every corner in the scene, the drawing style changes according to mood, which for me was an amazing experience.

Conclusion

Definitely worth your time. Any one into, visual arts, philosophy, poetry, and mythology and psychology, should watch.