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Disclaimer: As a guy I recognize that I may not be the target audience for this work.

If you have spent any time reading manga than you have undoubtedly encountered few that made you question whether or not the author had ever interacted with an actual human being before. I don't mean stilted, boring, or cliched characters. Those are issues that can be overcome with good storytelling. What I do mean are characters that act in manners that are so alien to the human condition that they make it very difficult to remain invested in the story.

In my experience what I am describing manifests ... itself differently in manga written by women than manga written by men (but it sucks about equally in both). Gisele Alain is a textbook representative of the former. And this is a shame because there are chapters and arcs where what this manga should have been shines through. Unfortunately these moments only serve to highlight the flaws in the rest of the manga, when characters act in ways that are so utterable un-relatable as to be actively off-putting.

The people in this manga are neither people nor caricatures of people. Instead they seem have fallen into the uncanny valley that lies between the two. Its as if this was written by someone who had studied humanity in depth but was not, themselves, human. Even (and sometimes especially) the main character, Gisele, suffers from this. She is a strange combination of 2-dimensional and unpredictable. The mangaka attempts to portray Gisele as an embodiment of innocence and you can tell that this was their intention, but somehow the execution isn't quite right .

Anyway as I mentioned this is not an uncommon problem, and normally it is not something that I would bother to write a review about, but this was a manga that strung me along with glimpses of greatness and I would hate for that fate to befall some other potential reader. So if you understand what I am getting at in this review I would advise finding something else. Now, if you have no idea what I am talking about then go ahead and read it. This may not be an issue that bothers you, and if so all the better because there are parts of this manga that are pretty darn good.

This is a very highly reviewed anime and a great deal of people seem to really like it. That means that I am about to accrue a host of.....displeased responses. So, with loins girded, I will say this. I didn't find this anime compelling in the slightest. To begin with the characters are not good. They are all cliched, and most of their time is spent brooding in one manner or the other. Then the brooding is interrupted by fights between more cliched and uninteresting characters. And why is King Arthur a girl? I know that they wanted at least one girl "hero" but was ... finding one so taxing that they just picked one at random? And then they went and made their female character cliched and boring. To compound matters they switched between characters rapidly often giving each of them their own segment in one episode. Which meant that if there is a character that isn't boring, you aren't going to see all that much of them. I admit that the animation is fantastic but other than that I didn't see much worthy of praise.

My point is that here we have an anime that wanted to be dark and serious. But couldn't pull it off because the characters weren't human. They where ridiculous caricatures. Now I am sorry if you don't agree and you loved this show. You are of course entitled to your opinion but the only thing that could have made this more cliched was if a giant robot decided to show up.

I watched this series because I happened upon it and the picture looked cool. I finished it and then went of myanimelist to see if there was a sequel. While looking I noticed that the reviews were really low. The show got a 6.71 overall and normally I won't even watch a show if the score is under 7.5 or so. That was when I realized that a disproportionate number of viewers probably watched the first few episodes and gave up. That sucks because, as I have discovered, there aren't that many truly engaging anime out there and unless one is a big fan of ... ridiculous looking giant robots, the list gets narrowed down pretty quickly.

Yes the first few episodes are pretty bad. The story doesn't exist and the contrast between normal time and monster fighting time is ridiculous. That said there is actually a reason for this but the reason doesn't really matter so if you are having trouble dealing with the first few episodes then skip to episode 6 or if you're a real extremist just start at 10 because that is where the plot really picks up.

I know that I'm supposed to review all the aspects in order but most of them don't matter. Sound is fine. I never watch the intro or closing sequences so I could honestly care less about what they sound like. The characters neither add nor detract from the story because they don't really exist. Until the massive plot twist at the end. Even then they still don't really matter all that much.

The art deserves a mention because it is a little weird. Imagine that you are torturing someone made of rubber on a rack. Got it. Now imagine you stretch them way out. Well thats kind of what the characters look like. This doesn't bother me at all, and actually, after watching xxxholic, I have come to enjoy that style. The fight sequences are good and the animation was reasonably smooth. Good enough for me.

The most important rating here is the one for enjoyment. It doesn't matter what I or anyone thinks about individual parts as long as when they come together the parts form an entertaining whole, and they did. This show was good enough to have me search for a sequel and that means something because Im pretty picky about my anime. So before you ditch this show. GIve it a try at the very least I can promise lots of gratuitous blood.