Alternative TitlesEnglish: Loveless Synonyms: LL
Information
Type: TV
Episodes: 12
Status: Finished Airing
Aired: Apr 7, 2005 to Jun 30, 2005
Duration:
24 min. per episode Rating:
PG-13 - Teens 13 or older
L represents licensing company
StatisticsScore: 7.541 (scored by 25527 users)
Ranked: #11772
Popularity: #223
Members: 42,158
Favorites: 1,324 1 indicates a weighted score
My Info
Popular Tags
drama fantasy romance shounen-ai supernatural |
SynopsisTwelve-year old Aoyagi Ritsuka is left with his insane mother as his only family when his brother, Seimei, is killed suddenly. After moving to a new school, he meets Agatsuma Soubi, who claims to have known his brother. Ritsuka eventually discovers that Soubi and Seimei used to be a fighting pair, whereby Soubi was the "Fighter" and Seimei was the "Sacrifice". Now that Seimei is gone, Ritsuka has inherited Soubi, who will become his "Fighter". After learning that Seimei was killed by an organisation known as the "Seven Moons", Ritsuka decides to investigate into his brother's death, with the sometimes useless help of Soubi, along the way.
(Source: ANN) |
Related AnimeAdaptation: Loveless
Side story: Loveless Specials
Characters & Voice Actors
Staff
Reviews
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sasori_yume
114 of 156 people found this review helpful
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12 of 12 episodes seen
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| Overall |
9 |
| Story |
9 |
| Animation |
9 |
| Sound |
10 |
| Character |
10 |
| Enjoyment |
9 |
For me, the best word to describe this anime is simply "beautiful"... If you truly want to understand it you have to take a closer look and be able to see beyond the "shounen-ai" or "shotacon" tags. I can't even say it's about a homosexual love, because it goes way beyond that, at a more spiritual level. In this anime, love becomes a great source of power. The fighter/sacrifice couples simply HAVE to create a great bond between them in order to become powerful.
But love is not the main theme, it deals with a lot of other issues too. For example, the way we project ourselves on others - Seimei appears in one way for Ritsuka, his mother or Soubi, but we find out about his true nature only later on. Another example is forgetness, memories, the link between past-present-future and essential questions that everyone asks himself or herself at a certain point in his/her life, and how 12-year-old Ritsuka is searching for a meaning of his life. Yet another example is the way people are treated in society due to certain tags they wear. In this case, I'm talking about the ct years that explicitly show the status of their sexual life and how others react to that.
Also, in this anime, true love has nothing to do with sexuality, and is expressed by strong emotions and subtile gestures.
The story has an interesting plot, and it develops little by little, and unfortunately does not end... You'll just have to read the manga too see what happens next. If you only watch the 12 episodes anime series the story doesn't really make sense at the end and it leaves you with even more questions. But it gets interesting when you start to go beneath the surface and find the truth behind all the appearences.
The art helps creating a slight dark atmosphere. Not dark as in "evil"... but more like enigmatic, mysterious. The colors are not so bright, sometimes dark, it has beautiful landscapes, and a lot of scenes occur at night, sunset or in the dark fighting setting. One of the most interesting artistic elements is the buttefly - it always accompanies Soubi's arrival, or in Soubi's paintigs, as a weapon, or in Ritsu's collection.
The soundtrack also helps a lot creating this slight dark atmosphere, and it backs up every emotion that the characters are feeling. Some emotions don't even need to be expressed by words, the music completes them and amplifies the impact they have on the viewer.
As for the characters, they are very strong and complex ones. Ritsuka is the one in search for his existence's meaning, and for life's meaning in general, feeling lost in a world he doesn't understand and that doesn't understand him. Soubi is the one that has the answers but he cannot give them to Ritsuka. When it comes to love, Soubi is the one to show Ritsuka the meaning of it, the meaning behind the appearances, the powerful and spiritual level of love. But Soubi often acts contradictory, his true feelings remain hidden, he says things very easily but sometimes his actions do not sustain his big words.
To me, it's a very unique, enjoyable combination of drama, love, philosophical questions, mistery and supernatural. The words are well chosen and always make you wonder about the truth and how much you far you have to go in order to find it. One thing is for certain - you have to ignore appearances. I really think this anime is deep and worth watching.
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kiriska
102 of 142 people found this review helpful
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12 of 12 episodes seen
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| Overall |
6 |
| Story |
6 |
| Animation |
7 |
| Sound |
7 |
| Character |
7 |
| Enjoyment |
4 |
It's rare that a series leaves me at a complete loss for words, and I really don't mean that in a good way. I've managed to gathered the words now though, and here they are:
STORY - ...What story? Seriously, at what point is anything in this series explained? (Hint: never!) There are problems presented, sure -- Seimei, Ritsuka's older brother, was killed and he wants to find out who did it and why. Not really that intriguing or original, but it works, right? Additionally, Ritsuka has amnesia and is a "completely different person" than he was two years prior, but he doesn't know what happened. Also not that original, but still acceptable. Unfortunately, the series doesn't seem to focus very well on either problems and instead teases you by presenting a lot of leads that seem like they're going somewhere, but never do. Soubi, who should serve as Ritsuka's connection to Seimei refuses to say anything on the matter. In fact, as far as Rituska's troubles go, Soubi's pretty worthless for plot progression even if he does defend him from mysterious attackers (who are never explained). And his creepy shotacon ways seem like far, far too shameless an attempt to wind up the fangirls. I like shounen-ai well enough, and while I don't really care for shota, I can swallow it if it's done well. Well, this wasn't done well at all.
The story's only redemption may be that Ritsuka's social anxieties are addressed gradually throughout the series, and the subplot concerning his personality change and memories does see some progress. In fact, it might even be considered a good storyline if we ever got to find out what happened to him, but we don't! Does that even count as a spoiler? The fact that ultimately, nothing happens? The plot with Seimei seemed like it had potential at times -- all of the vague, unexplained hints did seem like they were going somewhere, and if you cocked your head sideways, you might have even been able to pick up clues to the mystery. The last episode seemed like it was trying to explain what was going on, but it was so garbled and nonsensical that it's almost impossible to draw any kind of conclusions from it, and in the end, there's nothing but a big, gaping void where all your answers should be.
The battle system in this series is something else that seemed to have potential. The concept of a Fighter and a Sacrifice is actually pretty interesting, though I think they would have survived without all the gratuitous bondage. Unfortunately, the actual fighting is never explained, and it's difficult to deduce where exactly anyone derives their power or how the mechanics of the fighting works. I really don't know why all of these things were sidestepped; it really doesn't seem like it should have taken that much time or effort to explain something that was so central to the whole Seven Moons and Seimei's murderers madness.
I haven't read the manga, but I get this distinct feeling that it's probably ten times better than this anime, because certainly it can't be worse. Like I said, the wisps of story here and there seemed to have potential, and it was just frustrating to see that almost none of them have a definite conclusion. It seems like this should have been a twenty-six episode series instead of twelve, or they should have spent more time on actual plot progression instead of random shota fluff and molestation. In the end, I think I just wasted four hours of my life watching this series, and that's about it. And even though I'm sure the manga is better, I'm left so frustrated with the series that I'm not sure I even care enough to go read it.
Addendum: The anime was apparently produced when only volumes 1-4 of the manga was out (the series is 8 volumes long), so they had limited source material. Still, I think they could have done a much better job -- certainly things like the fight system could have been addressed better anyway. And while they supposedly left the "ending" open for a possible sequel, there still could have still been an actual conclusion of some sort. But really, unless it's one of those long running shounen series, I don't think there's any reason to ever produce an anime for an unfinished series. It just leads to unpleasant bullshit like this and X/1999. :|
CHARACTER - Ritsuka is probably the best character in the series, though that isn't really saying much. In any case, he seems to be the only character that goes through any significant change throughout the series. His turmoil at the beginning of Loveless is very understandable, what with a crazy mother, no memories, and a dead brother. The sessions with his psychologist summed up his development pretty well, though it did kind of seem like a cheap way to present everything to the audience. His relationship with his friends moved up in a classic line graph as he was somewhat sporadic and inconsistent in the beginning and steadily progressed up towards "real friendship." His relationship with Soubi... I guess it really wasn't that bad; his reaction to Soubi's advances were realistic: his indignation, disgust, and eventual worry. You could see his feelings change slowly as the series went on, and the relationship did contribute to Ritsuka's overall personality progression, so to that end, I guess it was all right.
Soubi is probably a much more multi-faceted character than the Loveless anime allowed him to be; I could tell by watching, but that didn't change the fact that he didn't end up being explored all that much. Because so little is revealed about his past, with Seimei or otherwise, you never know what his motivation for anything is, which was immensely irritating and frustrating. He tells Rituska some things, but then establishes a steady history of lies, so anything he says is questionable, even if they sound like they might, or even should, be true. Whether or not he really cares for Ritsuka always seems to be questionable, and his masochistic complex complicates the matter further -- not to mention it makes things ridiculously awkward. I think, in the end, you're supposed to gather that he's changed a little (for the better) since his days with Seimei, but it's really not that convincing at all.
All of the other characters were pretty generic, and a lot of them seemed pretty damn pointless too. Rituska's school friends seemed like they could have been plucked out of any other anime Japanese school ever. Sure, they contributed to the plot and Ritsuka's development, but they really weren't that interesting to watch. Kio, Soubi's roommate? Classmate? Random friend? (Ex-)boyfriend? I have no idea what their relationship is because, surprise, they never explained, but he was only fun because he addressed some of my thoughts on Soubi, namely his apparent raging perversion and pedophilia (though Soubi consistently denied these accusations). But other than that, another generic support character? Yeah. The same goes for Ritsuka's teacher and his psychologist, and the fact that both of them were randomly in love with one of the protagonists seemed like more pointless fanservice. All of the fighter pairs sent from Seven Moons were flat and boring -- they were sent to fight, yippee. Did they have their own goals or aspirations? Who knows? Subplot with the lesbians? Seemed like a lame ploy to allow for a convenient winner of that fight. Complete lack of intrigue.
Finally... this was the original reason I had no interest in watching this series. What the hell is the point of the cat ears? What does this contribute to anything at all? It just seems like a silly gimmick to invite giggles from the audience (fangirls think about this stuff anyway, do we really need to encourage them?), and to allow for lots of suggestive dialogue in the show. The only reason I could think of for this is to have "proof" that Soubi isn't randomly raping Ritsuka ('cause it sure seems like it sometimes). Here's an idea -- if your character is so inappropriate that you have to have a lame gimmick to prove his innocence, how about not writing him to be so outrageous in the first place? Certainly Soubi didn't need to make out with Ritsuka in the middle of every battle.
ARTWORK & ANIMATION - Resoundingly average. Ritsuka was cute and Soubi was your run-of-the-mill bishounen. All the other characters were similarly plain, and the backgrounds don't really invite rounds of praise either. None of it was bad, but none of it was great either. The animation was about the same, though I really thought the effects for the fights were unimpressive and cheap.
MUSIC - I'd actually heard the opening theme, "Tsuki no Curse," long before I saw this series because it was composed by Yuki Kaijura. Unfortunately, I wasn't too impressed with it then, and I remained unimpressed with it in the series. I'm not really sure what it is about it, but it just doesn't stand up against most of Kaijura's other work. The end theme by Kaori Hikita was similarly plain. The music throughout the series actually surprised me by how random it seemed. Most series, even if they don't have particularly great music, still manage to get tracks that are appropriate for their scenes: sad tracks for sad scenes, energetic tracks for fights, etc. Loveless is probably the first series where I've been confused at their music choices for various scenes... They had weird, mecha-style battle tracks that were far, far too exciting for the scenes they were in, and then strange, melodious tracks that conflicted with conversation-heavy scenes. Occasionally, they had some nice, soft vocal tracks that seemed to fit okay, but they weren't prominent enough to balance out the other randomness.
VOICE ACTING - Average.
OVERALL - I think the best way to watch Loveless is to treat it as a drinking game. Take a shot of vodka every time Soubi says "suki dayo" ("I like you" or "I love you" depending on context and translator). You'll be mad drunk by the second episode (seriously, he's a broken record) and will thus be too wasted to realize that the entire series has little substance, never answers any of your questions, has no ending, and is ultimately unsatisfying. Now if you'll excuse me, I need to go bash in the brains of the person who recommended this series to me.
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Recommendations
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The first episode of both series are similar to each other; they both have hand-grabbing and kissing between the two guys that must be bonded. This is probably due to the fact that the same people who worked on Loveless are working on Monochrome factor too.
The first episodes are really similar as they both involve two guys who need to be "bonded" together, and involve a kiss too.
While they are both light Shounen-ai, Loveless has a far more serious storyline than Monochrome Factor, but if you like one of them then you're sure to like the other :3
They both have the same producers, theres an older man with long hair that adapts feelings for a younger male character...its funny...it has action...and its yaoi{for those fans!if you really like lovless youll love monochrome factor even more! both are very good.
some yaoi...which i try to overlook to enjoy the anime
similar stories, shounen-ai, pretty men! x3
These two are really similar, except that Loveless is a lot more deep and Monochrome factor is a lot more funny. They both have a young guy who meets a mysterious older man and gets sucked into a world of magic and battles, all the while with shounen-ai elements between the main characters (a lot more with Loveless).
There both about a suspicious guy approaching an innocent guy and telling them their fate. in MF there's this guy who's from the dark and telling the other guy that he needs him because he's his light. In Loveless there's this guy who becomes the servant of a kid because the kid's brother died recently. There both about fighting and special powers. Please watch them both. They're really good ^^
Comment if you liked them ^^
In both animes, the main characters are bonded in some way. And, I don't know just watch both of them.
Monochrome Factor and Loveless both have shounen-ai hints, to start out with. Both involve a young boy who is approached by a man, who asks for their help in fighting. Both protagonists end up fighting against their enemies with the men who approached them, using non-human-like abilities. Although Loveless is a bit darker than Monochrome Factor, which is fairly light-hearted, both anime have a similar feel to them, and are fun to watch, keeping the viewers on the edge of their seats throughout the entire series.
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Though the plots and story line are completely different, the main characters seem to have similarities.
First off, Ciel and Ritsuka are both 12. Though they have different voice actors, their voices sound extremely similar. They're both stubborn and have snarky attitudes throughout the series. They have also both lost something precious to them. Ciel his family, and Ritsuka his older brother. Both lost their relatives due to fires. (in Loveless, this is directed via anime, as to where the manga tells otherwise about his brother's 'status'.)
Soubi and Sebastian are similar as well. Both have extrodinary powers and call the main characters their 'masters'. They are both in a contract of sorts with the kids, and their lives are made to serve said boys and protect them at all costs, also being ordered to do whatever their masters want. Both men are calm and composed and are rarely seen angry. The only difference is that Sebastian is a butler, as to where Soubi is a 'servent'. (Yes, that's similar, but with different meanings of the words) Also, Sebastian seems a lot darker than Soubi personality wise.
The master-servant relationship is applied in both series. The uke, Ritsuka from Loveless and Ciel from Kuroshitsuji are both egoism. Tough and determined. Whilst the seme, Soubi from Loveless and Sebastian from Kuroshitsuji are both loyal and obedient to their masters. In fact, both of them also hide secrets from the masters and tend to do things or sovle problems by themselves without the master's acknowledgement.
The 2 main characters in both shows have the whole Master-Servant relationship
The plot it's not similiar at all, but the Sebastian/Ciel relationship reminds me of the Soubi/Ritsuka one. Kuroshitsuji it's not Shounen Ai, though.
They both have cute tsundere boys as main characters and older servants who fight for them... among other things. If you like shounen-ai subtones and humor, you are in for a treat!
Both stories center on a particularly strong male bond which ties the two main characters together in almost a master servant relationship. Both plot lines revolve around a terrible incident happening to the main character at a young age. And while Loveless tries to lighten the melancholy feel with its rather ambiguous take on what it is to be loved or not loved at all; it tends to sully the true nature of humanity which is very evidently portrayed in the Black Butler or Kuroshitsuji.
Kuroshitsuji may not be shonen-ai, but the relationship of Ciel and Sebastian kinda reminded me of Ritsuka and Soubi.
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Opening Theme"Tsuki no Curse" by Okina Reika
Ending Theme"Michiyuki" by Kaori Hikita
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