Ranked #2827

1001 Nights

Story : The story for this anime will be hard for a lot of people to pick up on because it relies entirely on visuals. If you like to analyze things, go for it. I just took two classes for analyzing art and literature, so I enjoyed it easily. If you find yourself going "WTF?" over the simplest of symbolism, I don't recommend you watching this one. You will be vastly confused. The fact that it requires more thinking than the average anime and the story itself is nothing amazingly original has prompted me to give it a 6.

Art : Now, this is where 1001 Nights seems to lose a lot of people. The art is very abstract and nothing like your typical anime. This anime mixes 3-D and 2-D art rather well, but most of the art is 2-D. It has a very sketchy look to it; like a colored pencil drawing. It gets a 9 because, to be very honest, I love this kind of art. If they had botched the mixture of 3-D and 2-D, I'd probably have been extremely strict on this section and given it a 5, but it works together.

Sound : Amazing. If you like orchestral music, this is going to be the shit for you, honestly. There is only one instance of voice acting at the very beginning, and I have to say that this is very well done, too. The moment I heard this woman's voice and the dialogue I was drawn straight into this one. I was like, "This is gonna be awesome." So, even though it's only used once, the dialogue and voice acting are a great hook in this anime. Therefore, 10.

Character : These characters serve their purpose very well. If you like to get into the mind of a character, understand everything about them, their actions, and their motivations, don't touch this. This anime is all about the emotions of these two lovers. You're not invited into the inner corridors of their mind. If, on the other hand, you are enraptured with emotions, these characters are teeming with it. Desire, longing, sorrow; it's all there despite the somewhat flat way in which they're expressed. This is why 1001 Nights gets a 7 on characters. The artistic representation of the character's emotions are somewhat hindered by the stylized form of art used on them.

Enjoyment : I, personally, enjoyed this anime greatly. It pulled me in and kept me enraptured for 23 whole minutes with absolutely no dialogue or direct plot/action. That's pretty good for someone of my attention span. So, it gets a 9.

Overall : It reminds me of Fantasia. If you like fantasia, take a look at this. It's like a Japanese, sex-centered Fantasia. X3 But really, it's not an anime for everyone. It has it's audience, and you'll just have to watch it to find out if you're a part of that audience. If you like artsy things, analyzing, symbolism, abstract artwork, or those old serious cartoons, you'll like this. I did, and that's why Overall it gets a 9 on my list. read more

The mistake I made when going into 1001 Nights is that I am not a fan of abstract art. So things pretty much went downhill from there.

First off, you should know that this is 100% musical. Nope, not Sound of Music, Singin' in the Rain musical--there's no dialogue whatsoever, so a lot of the characterisation and plot is revealed through visuals.

So the story. From what I gathered from my initial viewing, and having no prior knowledge to the original story (except knowing that Aladdin, Sinbad and Ali Baba had come from the same collection of 1001 Arabian Nights) is that a king or a prince has a concubine or wife, and they spend a lot of time in bed, and there is an evil demon lord who makes things a living hell for them. So then I went and researched the actual story. It's a lot more interesting and makes so much more sense than what the anime revealed to me. So I can't really say the story was very good--the stock it came from was very good, however, its execution in the anime was not well-done at all.

The art. Here's where I had a little problem. I am not a fan of abstract. I don't understand what it really means when a kaleidoscope of colours is swirling around the screen, when the characters have transcended the laws of physics and biology and are melding into one another and floating about all over the place, nor do I have a clue what the random close-ups or anything like that means. If you're like me, then please avoid this anime. It'll only be a pain to watch it. If however, you do like art like this, then it will be a treat for you, since I picked up a lot of visual symbolism and there is a great amount of emotional expressionism in this anime.

Ah, now the sound. This was very impressive. The Philharmonic Orchestra did a great job. The sound was whimsical, epic and exotic--totally evoking the setting and mood and atmosphere of the anime. It's definitely the high point of this anime. If you love classical music, or big, sweeping scores that you only really hear in old black and white movies, then really, this one is for you. I love the sound for this anime, I really did. However, there is another aspect of sound--voice acting. There was none. I don't think that there necessarily has to be dialogue in musicals, but in developing the plot, it would have helped in this case since the visuals aren't exactly revealing.

I can't say anything about the characters because unfortunately to me, they seemed to be colourful blobs floating about. Okay, that's an unfair assessment. They seemed to have a lot going on between them. You feel like an intruder in their private affairs, and for some reason, I felt that the characters were inaccessible. That is, they appeared only to exist for themselves within the anime, and not for us to empathise or be able to connect with them.

I didn't really enjoy this anime. I suspect most of that comes from me not understanding what was happening on-screen or simply not being interested in it at all.

If you do like experimental anime, by all means, try it out. If you don't, then you'll be wasting your time. read more