Ranked #489

Loveless

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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Loveless could some times be a confusing anime but it's irresistible
The story revolves around Aoyagi Ritsuka,a 12-year old who transfers with a mom having countless mental breakdowns which leads to child abuse dealing physical pain. Two years ago Ritsuka had lost memories and became a different person, from there his brother Seimei becomes important in his life. The anime begins with the death of Seimei which keeps Ritsuka wondering who killed his brother. The story truely begins when Ritsuka meets Agatsuma Soubi, Seimei's former fighter, and all the unexplained mystery comes, well you must watch it to see. It's true that to some the battles seem like it's not needed but let's just say if there were no battles, most likely Ritsuka and Soubi will have no bond.

The art/animation is okay, it's like a regular anime it's not too special, but the cat ears are quite creative and the battles combines fantasy and reality, the art makes the unnatural events possibly believable.

This anime's sound is nice overall, in my opinion this anime has very nice music and sound which creates more intrest to an anime watcher's .

The characters are creative and has a way of it's own, all the characters seems like complete opposite in a way but fits perfectly together. There's always a bond that ties the characters together.

This anime is very enjoyable, but there are scenes at school where Yuiko gets too annoying, that's just the beginning, the episodes in some way becomes better one after another.

Overall this anime is worth watching, I would highly recommend this anime to probably anyone. This anime may suprise you at times and may not be what you would expect so be on caution.

I shall leave it at that.

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