Ranked #1678

ChäoS;HEAd

ChäoS;HEAd is an anime that jumps on the psychological murder mystery bandwagon only to fall right off.

The straight and narrow: the recluse Takumi, who is an otaku hikikomori, receives a link online to a picture detailing the grotesque murder of an unidentified man. Takumi is appalled, and decides to ignore it. The following day, he comes across the exact crime scene he saw in the picture. Very soon, he starts suspecting everything and everyone around him. He gets paranoid. Who sent him the link online? Who are these strange girls who suddenly have interest in him? Why did he get a picture of a murder that hadn't even taken place as yet? Soon, Takumi can't trust anyone and eventually realises that he can't even trust himself. There is a pretty good set-up for the anime, but it quickly falls apart.

The first problem with this torture-filled gore-fest is the lack of sympathy for what is seen. The more successful anime in this genre know how to play with the viewers' emotions. They understand that the blood and gore and torture has a more resounding effect if it happens to a character the audience cares about. ChäoS;HEAd ignores this. For the most part, horrible deaths await characters who are rarely given a name and hardly given a face. This anime pretty much fails from the get-go to involve the viewer emotionally and mentally, and this is exactly what anime of this sort are supposed to do.

In terms of the subtlety of delivering the plot, ChäoS;HEAd is like a giant rat stomping through your kitchen at night gnawing away loudly at a hunk of smelly cheese. There is no subtlety. There are the typical 'I'm up to something' grins, the 'I'm watching you' glares, and the 'You have it coming to you' growls. What happened to leading the viewer astray? Am I supposed to think this is a thriller? Thrill me! Don't make me figure out the plot by the fourth episode.

Another problem is that the storyline doesn't seem to know exactly what story it wants to tell. The first half pans out as a supernatural murder mystery and then the second half shifts gears abruptly, turning the anime into a grand sci fi anime about corporate conspiracy and world domination. Lastly, the whole concept of using the 'unreliable narrator' completely fell flat. At first, it does seem that Takumi may be one of those protagonists whose point-of-view and limited knowledge add to the suspense factor of ChäoS;HEAd. The use of an unreliable narrator can actually make a story ten times more interesting, as seen in anime such as Perfect Blue or Paranoia Agent. However, as the show wears on, everything becomes rather easy to figure out and Takumi's actions become predictable and easy to interpret.

The production values for this anime are not that impressive. The art's consistency wavers at points, but generally, it is a decent-looking anime despite the tired character designs and the lazy-at-moments art. If you pay attention to Takumi's face, for example, in one scene, it's long, skinny and angular, and then in another, his face takes on a more oval appearance. Then there are proportional issues as well.

The score seems to have as much of an identity crisis as the rest of the anime. There are haunting, halting (for intense scenes) or sappy (for the..."romantic" scenes) piano piecies, 80s cheese synths, music that sounds like it came off a video game soundtrack, and then heavy metal guitar work. Some moments, the score shines, others it doesn't.

And now the characters. Takumi is the protagonist. He comes across as a totally annoying, socially-inept person with the maturity of a twelve-year-old boy. It's also astounding that he never seems to realise that every girl who interacts with him is an archetype from one of the galges I'm sure he likes playing. The geeky, soft-spoken meganekko? The needy, tsundere little sister (whose relationship with him is borderline incestuous)? The mysterious weird girl who is into the occult? Smells like stereotypes to me.

The only character with any sort of depth or personality is Takumi himself. And even if his personality is awful, it doesn't stop him from being a good character. He is pathetic. He's delusional. He's disturbed, he needs a life and his general attitude to everything stinks. His fantasies about sex and girls are limited to what he has been exposed to: countless eroge. His personality is handled quite well, as he exudes the characteristics of an escapist with subtler megalomaniacal traits (as seen in his childhood). I think it further deepens his character that despite these attributes, he is incapable of doing anything to help himself or get what he wants. There is also something that makes him easy to pity/relate to concerning his mania against real-life girls and his deep affection for animated or two-dimensional ones. Although, watching him is a near torture--he's easily one of the most irritating leads for anime ever seen.

ChäoS;HEAd has not been an enjoyable ride. It treats its audience as though they need to be spoon-fed half the time. There are more entertaining, smarter, subtler anime of this sort out there. I would suggest you look for those instead.

ChäoS;HEAd is like playing a game of Clue, only to figure out that it's Colonel Mustard in the conservatory with a candlestick about three turns in. read more

I went into viewing ChäoS;HEAd without a great deal of expectations. Having read through many of the reviews and hearing some firsthand accounts on it I got the impression that it was going to be an average at best experience. However this was a show that I had been very interested in seeing since it started airing. For me it’s a great example of not believing everything you hear.

The story starts out as a pretty interesting mystery involving a number of grisly murders and a high school boy who believes he has witnessed one of them and is being fed information about future killings before they happen. The boy is Takumi, a severely disturbed and socially awkward individual who is terrorized by delusions and paranoia. The plot feels genuinely creepy at times but doesn’t manage to sustain this over the course of the entire series. Because of Takumi's delusions the viewer is not always sure what is real or what isn’t. It does take some significant detours and while it’s not the smartest thing I have ever seen, in my opinion it managed to be interesting through the end. However one might feel about how the story changed focus over the course of the show, I did feel that it ended very nicely with most of the loose ends tied off.

Takumi's character for me was extremely interesting. Sure he is a stereotype of a socially awkward otaku, but what makes him a great character is his personality. He is an extremely disturbed person. His inability at times to know what is real or what isn’t made him fascinating. I enjoyed how he coped with his fear of others by imagining his favorite anime character as a companion. I felt the story did a great job in developing him and having him overcome his fears and questions about his own existence.

Sadly as good as I felt Takumi was as a character, the rest of the cast is quite uninspired. The girls all fall into the usual patterns that we see in every anime, from the moe sugar sweet best girlfriend to the brainy and to the cold hearted swordsman. Still despite this I still enjoyed most of them, particularly Yua and even though they weren’t that groundbreaking. The villains are equally stale from an originality standpoint. Their motivations are 2-dimensional and boring and really were a poor foil overall for the heroes to overcome.

The artwork is good for the most part but a little inconsistent at times. I felt the colors were kind of flat and the styles seemed awfully dated looking. In addition the character models felt.. familiar. It didn’t seem like there was any originality in designing them and some of them actually looked like they were ripped directly out of other anime. I did like the music, the opening was good and I felt set the tone, but the ending while a good song felt out of place considering the subject matter of many of the episodes.

Despite a number of faults I just can’t say that I didn’t like this show. It’s not great at anything it does. The thriller elements of the plot fall a bit flat and the action scenes really aren’t that interesting either. My interest in the main character and a decent storyline made this an enjoyable experience for me. I would recommend it, however if you looking for a superb suspense thriller or a great action you’re probably going to be disappointed.
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Chaos;Head is a prime example of an anime that collapsed under the weight of its own ambition. In trying so desperately to separate itself from a myriad of other suspenseful thrillers while catering to a pre-selected audience, Chaos;Head spreads itself all of the place, so much so that everything about it is thin, flimsy, and overall disappointing. The end result, however, is stuff of unintended comic gold.

Chaos;Head starts fantastic with a very adventurous first episode brimming with possibilities. The play on otaku falling victim to their own delusions, coupled with a series of bizarre homicides was intriguing enough to keep me watching it repeatedly, but then trouble began to surface. The series began to breach the mysteries it had established with theoretical existentialism, leading into discussions using made-up terminology that goes entirely unexplained and becomes even more convoluted as its short but utterly incomprehensible run comes closer to a finish.

Even more irritating, all of the mysteries and delusions established in the first episode are cast aside as convenient attention-getters. Nothing established in the first episode even matters to the big picture. Also, plot twists, while numerous, are established without any prior knowledge as to what they entail for the cast and revelations do not have any gravitas. The only reason I give the story any points is for the first few episodes alone, before it careened into self-destruction.

Characters are a little better, but only in certain instances. Main character Takumi is entrancing throughout the first half. His reactions to the mania around him are painfully crafted with a sense of realism so as to have Takumi's reaction become the mirror of the viewer, and it works very well. However, he betrays this reality of self when the series enters into its convoluted style of existentialism and he becomes a living deus ex machina.

The girls of the series are handled just as carelessly, often with vain attempts at giving them personality quirks but failing to capitalize on them. The only real exception to this is Kozue, but her traits are so forced and intruding, that by "cutesyfing" her the staff made her more off-putting than any other girl. Moreso, the series can only focus on one or two girls at a time, meaning that all the other girls suddenly disappear from the picture. This would be fine, except they often return with a wealth of new information we are forced to assume they learned off-scene.

Technical aspects are far better than anything the series offers otherwise, but not exceedingly so. The art is fairly average of the typical series these days. Madhouse obviously didn't break the bank, but the looks is acceptable. Takumi's character design, especially his face, is often hard to look at, but the girls all look acceptable. The animation flows well-enough but it's nothing to write home about. An all around average job.

The sound was good too, but only in some parts. Namely the theme songs; the first being a catchy Kanako Itou number with lyrics that make no sense but are befitting of the series' storyline, and the closer being an impossibly upbeat tune with lyrics that resemble bad stalker poetry. Sound effects and vocal performances also highlight various sequences. The prior are easily arguable, but the BGM is horribly composed. Not ear-bleedingly so, but still quite bad.

Yet for as sharp and horrible a nosedive as Chaos;Head took, I reveled in it. I wanted to see how bad the story got and how awful the characterization became. It may have been a poor series, but it reaches on "so bad its good" territory in the same way a handful of cult classics and B-movies do. It's not for everyone, but you can definitely have a lot of fun laughing at just how awful this series becomes.

Overall, I give Chaos;Head a 5 out of 10. read more

This review is biased, because I read the VN. I thought about writing a review that does not mention the VN at all, but I that I'd rather write one that does, one that mentions the VN throughout the whole review.
It's also a long-ass review. Did I mention that I'm rambling on the game?

ChäoS;HEAd is an adaptation of a popular Visual Novel of the same name, spanning 12 episodes.

Just from the idea of a 30-40+ hours Visual Novel adapted into a 12 episode anime (about 5-6 hours) you already know that many segments will be shortened or cut off completely, unless it is only the first season out of few, which is not.

When I first read the synopsis of the game: "Takumi is withdrawn and is not interested in 3D things" I already had a great interest in playing the game.
Mixed with a mysterious serial murder case and Takumi chatting with people in the internet, staying in his room most of the time... it sounded like an excellent idea.

I installed the game and started to play it (without knowing Japanese) and just from the beginning I was hooked. The menu music and design, the atmosphere in the beginning of the game.. it has blown me away.
And when I knew that a translation project has just started and is progressing fast, only a few months after the game came out.. I looked forward to this real bad.

A few months later, Right when the before the anime started, finally a decent beta patch came out (playable with pretty much the whole game, unlike the patches that came out before that).

I started playing the game and in the next day, I watched the first episode of the anime.

Already, I noticed a few differences between the anime and the game, but overall, the differences were not that great, and the anime had a good start.

I finished the game after some time, and while it had mixed reviews from other people, personally, I enjoyed playing the game very much - even if it suffered from some problems which I overlooked because it was thoroughly an enjoying experience for me.

While progressing in the anime I felt that the anime lacked the emotion that was present in the game, but overall it did a nice job following the main storyline without any problems up until episode 6.

I couldn't wait to watch episode 7, because the most interesting stuff are about to begin from here, if it had followed the game.

To my surprise and disappointment, episode 7 had some significant changes , emitting one of the best parts of the game, and made the anime lose all the horror and suspense parts it had up until now (even if they were few in number).

Episode 8 was an episode that was not present in the game at all.

Episode 9 followed the game, but rendered episode 8 unneeded completely.

Episode 10 emitted all the best parts from the game, completely, and was censored as hell, more than others, and was not enjoyable for me at all.

Episode 11 was bad, and censored as well.

Episode 12, the final episode,was good, considering that the previous episodes were a trainwreck.

Wow, that was a long introduction. So lets get to the technical details:

Story 6/10: Rushed, best segments from the game were not present in the anime, lacked feeling, lacked almost all of the horror and suspense elements.

Art and Animation 6/10: Character designs were simplistic, and while the animation was really good in some scenes, it was choppy as hell in others.
While some backgrounds were done beautifully, most of the background characters were done so badly, really badly.

So in one word... inconsistent. In Two words, very inconsistent.

Sound 9/10: I think I'm one of the few people that liked the anime OP more than the game OP. The ED was great too, I never skipped the OP or the ED not even once.
The background music was really nice.
All the voice actors did a great job, and overall in the sound department it gets a 9/10. Why not 10/10? because the anime was rushed and the script was rushed , the voice actors had to rush it too, and it's a shame. Because of that, many scenes lacked the feelings that were presented in a much more superior way in the game.

Character 7/10: While in the game, some of the characters were stereotypical and undeveloped, I liked pretty much all the characters, and especially Takumi.

Takumi is a stereotype of a withdrawn person that is not interested in 3D things.
He's pretty much the biggest stereotype of an anime Otaku almost Hikki that barely goes to school just to graduate), collecting figurines, shuts himself in his room all day, playing MMO's, living on a container on the roof, has an imaginary anime character WAIFU (He likes her more than all of his other WAIFUS) that he faps and fantasizes about all day up until the point that he talks to her when he's alone and her voice is served as his inner voice giving him the ideal advices for him when he's in a pinch... getting to the shoes of a guy like that can't get more interesting for me. It was so awesome for me to know what Takumi thinks about, the fact that he barely talks in the game, the fact that he doesn't trust anyone.... the way that his characters was developed and was faced with all the crap he has to go through it was amazing. I found myself agreeing with him, being amused by him... I just really like his character.

Now the anime... take his character, make him less pathetic, make him more talkative, and the fact that you barely hear him thinking... suddenly I didn't care what happens to him as I did in the game. He was much more flat, and it goes to almost all the characters in the anime compared to the game, mainly because of the changes in the anime and the fact that it was rushed. I didn't like the Imouto because she wasn't as moe in the game... the same goes to pretty much all the other characters (Rimi, Sena, Ayase, Yua , detective Ban, Shogun, Suwa, Hazuki, even Daisuke... and so on).

I liked Kozu-Pii just like I liked them in the game... maybe I liked Kozu-Pii a little more in the anime. I'm not sure about this. It's just that I didn't care what happens to the characters as I did in the game, because it was rushed, and the new mediocre story segments made things only worse in the development of the characters.

Enjoyment 7/10: The most important factor for me. Did I enjoy the anime? Most of the time? yes. Did I did not enjoy the anime at other parts? yes.
I had some mixed feelings, really. But I guess the reason I'm giving this a 7 in not a 6 as I planned because to my surprise... I enjoyed the last episode. No other hidden meanings here.

Overall:

The anime was a:

In one world: Trainwreck.

In four words ( I think..):Trainwreck that I enjoyed.

In eight words (Wait.. I'm not sure here): Trainwreck that I enjoyed most of the time.

Should you watch this anime? You should decide for yourself.


That is all for this long ass ramble first review. To my surprise, it didn't take me long to write this. I guess that I wrote what I thought, simple as that. Sorry for the spelling mistakes and all other shit.

Sayonara. read more

I had noticed for a while that this anime tends to get more hatred than praise despite the intriguing synopsis and title. Most who played the visual novel first were either indifferent to it, disliked it, or hated it due to disappointment. I, too, played the visual novel(I completed it only a couple of days ago actually....sadly, I didn't get any sleep that night. not because it scared me but because it was so interesting and addictive :P) prior to watching this adaptation of it but my feelings toward the anime didn't end up being as strong as most. And I can't help comparing so at least try to see it from my point of view if you haven't played the visual novel it's based upon.

17-year-old Takumi is a neurotic and reclusive otaku with almost no interest in what he refers to as the 3-D world(as in reality). He doesn't even mind that he's literally wasting away in his tiny container housing as long as he gets the chance to fantasize about his treasured Seira-tan anime action figure or play his favorite online game. Despite his isolation, Takumi's peace is often disrupted by recurring feelings of paranoia(specifically, feeling as though he's being watched) as well as difficulty in separating his delusions from reality. These problems really get to be even more troublesome after he stumbles upon the first of a string of murders that continue to occur in his city.

This anime most likely confused and irritated a lot of people and I don't blame them for feeling that way. The speedy plot development and very rushed and complicated explanations for what was supposedly going on in the show can be difficult to grasp.

What I did appreciate about the anime was its faithfulness to the visual novel's basic plot and atmosphere while not being an exact replica of it(far from it, really). I did like one thing about the anime more than the visual novel - the fact that Kozue doesn't talk very much here. Her voice was like nails scratching a chalkboard in the visual novel. Anyway, it's bizarre how Takumi is portrayed as being more sociable and much less high strung here. That was probably the only significant change that actually hurt the story. It really ruins the effect that the conclusion was meant to have. Although they did remember to include his repeated pleadings for someone to save him at random moments. It may be hard to believe if you have only seen the anime but I found the original depiction of the character of Takumi to be great; you really get into the guy's way of thinking and I strangely began to sympathize with him despite his overall negative and repellent attitude.

Anyway, the series doesn't focus enough on making the characters' interactions deep or meaningful and it really doesn't help that relationships develop way too quickly. Yes, the characters other than Takumi in the VN weren't so well developed but I did find a few of the girls to be surprisingly likable(such as Rimi) despite the limitations. The depiction of the romance subplot here is rather shallow. The anime also tones down and cuts out many of the darker aspects of the visual novel which is a shame. But then again, it's unfortunately rare that an anime series doesn't choose to play it safe. Another thing that is irritating is that the anime tries desperately to spoil its own story for some reason by making it painfully obvious who one of the villains is. There's no success in building suspense, surprising the viewer, or leaving any sort of impact at the conclusion of a supposedly dramatic scene.

Of course, you can't have a psychotic protagonist without some perversion thrown in. You occasionally get to see amusing perverted delusions involving the female characters. The lack of comparably distressing delusions was disappointing considering how wonderfully executed they were in the visual novel; I had hoped that the extremely tense box scene would be included in the anime(it wasn't..but I guess it's understandable due to constraints).

The voice acting is generally good although some performances are obviously significantly better than others. It's most noticeable in the last couple of episodes where the tension is at its highest. Although, I have to admit, Takumi does have a pretty impressive scream. The opening and ending songs are decent but nothing I'd even bother downloading. The best music came from the characters' ring tones in my opinion.

There's nothing remarkable about the art but it's good enough to not have any real complaints about it. All that needs to be said is that the characters look fine and there aren't any stupid chibi moments or pointlessly exaggerated expressions.

If you have only seen this anime but haven't played the visual novel, go find a way to obtain it and play it because it's worth much more trouble than watching this on YouTube is. I'd take back the 6 hours I spent watching this if I could, honestly. The rating I gave it is mostly due to it being one of the few somewhat decent adaptations of any sort of game to a series. I do realize that it must have been hard to condense 30+ hours of plot into a 6 hour anime series. I think they did a good job in that respect as well. Anyway, the Chaos;Head visual novel is a much more involving, touching, funny, and intense experience especially when compared to this half-baked anime adaptation. You'll only be wasting your time watching this when there's a much higher quality alternative available. read more

This series already has a lot of reviews but I'm such a fan of the original Visual Novel and I feel so strongly about this topic that I had to write a review myself just so my opinions are taken down here.

Let me get my opinion said right out in the open. This anime was horrible. It didn't start out that way, but it really turned out that way. What makes this so hard to handle is that the game was amazing. In fact, the game was one of the best things out there.

Story: At it's core, Chaos;Head is a very interesting story. If it was presented correctly, it would have made for a great anime series. But the problem is that the anime just fell apart. They started straying from the story of the game way too much and it was obvious that the stuff they came up with on their own was horrible.

The pacing was awful. About half of the emotion and tension of the game is completely lost. But the real killer came when they left out major story elements and events and replaced them with random crap that only ruined the mood and story. I really don't know why they did this, but they ruined the story and caused it to get this low of a score. It hurts me to do this, since the story of the game would have gotten a 10. But I'm not reviewing the game, so I should move on.

Art: It started out okay (not nearly as good as the game, but decent) but the production took a huge fall somewhere around the middle of the series. I don't even want to get into how bad the art in the second half of the show was. It was unbearable. Also worthy of note is how they randomly changed things like the color of Aoi's hair. I dunno why they did that.

Sound: I don't even need to say anything other than there is one good song in the entire OST. Aside from the OP and ED that is. I actually really enjoy both the OP and ED and the songs sung by Ayase. But the regular music in the show was awful. Note it gets a 5 though. if I was comparing it against how great the music in the game was, ti would get a 1. So not everything is being compared to the game in my review. I can be fair once in awhile.

Character: Well, Takumi is amazing. He's such an original main character. You just never see main characters like that anywhere else. Not only that, but I can relate to Takumi so much it's scary.

Sadly, like all the other things in this show, it never reached the potential it had coming from the game. All the other characters felt wastered down and pointless extra. Although Takumi in the first two episodes saved this from getting lower than a 5, everything else keeps it from getting higher. Especially when they are all so good in the game.

Enjoyment: After the first episode, I did not enjoy this show at all. Because I had played the game, it was actually painful to see something I loved turned into something that was so bad I couldn't even stand to look at it.

Overall: The show wasn't all bad. When it was sticking to the game it was decent. The art was bad and the pacing was rushed, but the story of the game was still good. It was just pretty much everything that happened after episode 5 or 6 that really got bad. So because there are enjoyable moments in the series, I'll give the overall rating a 4.

Please, everyone. Let's pretend this anime doesn't exist and let's go play the Visual Novel. Okay? read more

I haven't played the game, nor have I read the visual novel, so I cannot compare and point out about differences or things left out. Thus, this review is about the anime only.

Chaos;Head... I'm going to be honest, and say that Chaos;Head was a real disappointment. The concept is fairly original. I give points for that. If you were like me, I was expecting a fairly elaborate plot with twists and suspense, but Chaos;Head severely lacked that, and thus, it turned out having a really mediocre and a down right uninteresting result. To fit this kind of a story-line, into such a short space of time, obviously was not a very good idea, and the result of this is of huge disappointment.

An Otaku called Takumi lives by himself and excludes himself from the rest of the world. One day, he receives a message from a mysterious "Shougun" with a link to a highly disturbing image of a person staked onto a wall. The next day, after walking through Shibuya, he runs into an alleyway, and accidentally stumbles into a man having been staked to a wall, exactly that in which he saw in the image. As it turns out, these are a series of mysterious seemingly supernatural events referred to, as the "New Generation". Eventually, Takumi gets caught-up with the events of "New Generation" and becomes paranoid of things around him and starts having delusions. He becomes troubled as to who he can trust, what aren't delusions, and who is this mysterious "Shougun" who seems to be around him all the time?

The first half of the series was rather strong. It was very well set up, and had a lot of potential in becoming "one of the greats". Elements of being a very well thought out psychological thriller were present, with small bits of science mixed in with the mythology of the story. Slowly released questions and answers: Good! Although, once it hit around the half way mark, the storyline and plot just began to fall apart, and once it hit the final straight, it basically just blew up on itself. Things became way too obvious. Some scenes became almost pointless. Even when things were still mysterious in some sort of way, the answer was just thrown at you. There are too many times where you could say "Why didn't you do that in the first place!?" and "Isn't it obvious?". They seemed way too rushed, and definitely were not very well thought out. The small amount of romance in the story didn't help at all and it really all seemed a little tacky. As far as I could tell, they just made the story lamer than what it had already become. Where were the twists? Where was the unexpected? Where was the "I want more!" feeling?

One guy surrounded by a whole lot of girls? Fine, if you can pull it off well, then sure. I'd have no objections to that. However, each girl did not play a large enough role. A lot of the times, it was as if they were "just there" without much purpose. Takumi was just way too wimpy and cowardly in the beginning. Good ol' brother-sister personalities are fun, and Kozue added a little more fun into the storyline. Overly obnoxious villain? How original... I'll give points to Takumi's and Sena's past as they're history is certainly interesting, along with Shougun's true identity. Although these played a fairly direct role in the plot, really, the characters were all rather dull and not complex enough.

Animation and character design were rather standard. The character's weren't elaborate, but it worked. There were really no inconsistencies in animation, and the sword designs were certainly interesting and nicely detailed. There really isn't anything outstanding in the OP and ED. They didn't quite fit along with the storyline that well either. The musical score seemed to have trouble in deciding how it wants to fit. I mean, the score wasn't bad as such. It just seemed... well... unfitting with the mood and tone of the scene. In some aspects of the story, the soundtrack was fitting, while most of the time, it just didn't help the scene. All the voices seemed to match fairly well with the characters, although there aren't any real standouts, but nothing to complain about either.

To wrap it all up, Chaos;Head really was just a messy, rushed and not very well thought out anime. It just didn't have that suspense, and nor did it have that much complexity. It certainly had huge potential, however the series just couldn't pull it off. Perhaps if the ending weren't as rushed, and things not so obvious and pointless, I'd be able to give it a better score. I feel I'm being a little generous here, and I've given it an overall 6.5 out of 10. read more

It should be noted that this is my first review on this website.

My friend recommended this series to me because of the interesting premise. I looked it up (on here, actually), saw that it got some decent reviews, and started watching it almost right away.
This series had a lot of potential. It could have gone the distance. It could have gotten an 8 of 10 from me.
Needless to say, it didn't...
I'll start with Takumi Nishijou, the male lead. I used to think Shinji Ikari was the most annoying anime character, but Takumi jumped up and nabbed the crown. He's the main reason why I loathe this show.
Takumi spends the majority of the measly twelve episodes whining about the events around him instead of becoming involved in them. Other annoying anime characters tend to have some kind of involvement in the story.Takumi just sat back and cried as his harem took care of everything.
Great job, Takumi! In my opinion, you're the worst leading character in any of the anime I've seen!
The only character that held my interest when he wasn't on screen was the police inspector on the murder case. I'm not even going to bother to remember his name, because I have the aching feeling that he's just a bad rip-off of police inspectors in past series (the police inspector in Noein, for example).
The villains and Takumi's harem girls got little or no development. In fact, I'd venture so far as to say that some of them got less than Takumi.

I gave this show such a low rating because the characters destroy anything that could have been accomplished. I forced myself to watch the last episode just so I could tell people how horrible it was, and I only got that far because the suspense made me want to see some manner of resolution. I would have said a bit about the horrible explanations provided for the powers, except that the basic idea is understandable if you can get past the tech-jargon and some people like to listen to tech-jargon.

In closing, stay away from ChäoS;HEAd unless you think the story is worth putting up with the characters. You have been warned. read more

Chaos head is what you get when you try and splice together one half of a visual novel and the other half a pc game. Set to a supernatural murder scene, Chaos Head, which didn't have the decentcy to translate itself into japanese follows the plotline to a game of the same name.

Takumi Nishijō walks into a gruesome murder scene, snatching one of the many hundred weapons that we're used at the crime scene and retreating to his steel container ontop of a building he continues to play his games as an Otaku within an Otaku's world. I can only exhale a sigh of disbelief when two other 'anime' girls are expressing there disgust of Takumi because he obsesses over resin figurines and plays video games all day.

I'm sorry, this is not ironic, this is not some underlying wink at fans or computer nerds out there, this means nothing. Stop trying to to uncover 'some thing' out of 'nothing.'. My softer inclinations of finishing this series of twist, turns, flashing lights and silly girls turning up in this guys life without the decency of offering sexual favor became the rot of the inside of the very series. School Days for example was a show that was capable of a very 'good' translation into animated format seeing as the entire game was animated and straight forward to begin with.

Chaos head is loud and obnoxious, trying to suck the life out of those who thought Higurashi no Naku Koro ni and Welcome to NHK were either very funny, very clever or never watched them in there entirety. Chaos Heads 'characters', if you could call them that, are here as plot exposition. While it is indeed harder and harder to believe that popularity will see the face value of these many girls surrounding Takumi --- the actual story begins to fail in light of poor acting.

I can't believe I'm writing this.

So, for the most part. I'm not agreeing with most of the series as another 'successful' story from another game of the same name. In comparison to School Days, the move worked because of the level of suffering each of the characters endured, the types and the interaction amongst them on some level, albeit ethereal and vapid in chaos head provides some non-existent connection between me and the people on screen.

Violent? Sure, but that's if you haven't seen Apocolypse Zero or Ninja Scroll back during it's debut on VHS. Chaos head feels slow paced and a little off, with the hikikomori lifestyle turning into the new 'harem' plot line in anime, it's a wonder what will happen next until an original 'plot' comes along and actually shocks a few people. read more

If you ever want to see something crappier than a Port-o-Potty outside a football stadium, then by all means, go ahead and watch Chaos;Head.

This anime is a pathetic excuse of art and it will definitely only appeal to people who think they're smart or something.

Pompous Sheep #1: "Snoot snoot, I must say this is a rather wonderful addition to the murder suspense anime world, don't you think?"

Pompous Sheep #324: "I dare say it is, on the level of Higurashi no Kaka de no Crappy ni."

Stupid!

The storyline is moronic to to nth degree. A loser boy who can only...have fantasies about his...*yawns*...make-believe girlfriend is suddenly thrown into...a battle with people who are linked in a string of...zzz....oh wait, what?? Story is lame and the plot twists are so convoluted, unbelievable, and are just awful.

Every character looked like they were ripped off some other anime, and the fights scenes were short and pointless. I mean, couldn't you shell out a little more money on this? It seems they decided to do like other anime and impress the viewer with the excellent story and great characters, so they didn't pay up for the technical aspects. Unfabulous, isn't it? Sound was terrible. Those voices were graty and annoying, and the music was bad.

Characters were pathetic, as I am not surprised based off the crap story. The main character is a wuss who doesn't even know how to interact with humans. While this could be all right, people TALK to him, like they WANT to be around him when clearly he doesn't give a cow's ass about them. I mean, take Welcome to the NHK. That guy didn't want to be around anyone, but when someone reached out to him, he took their hand. And he's not a bad guy. The guy of Chaos;Head has no personality, nothing likeable about him, so why do all these girls wanna be around him?? All the girls were like talking Barbie dolls. Instead of getting a comb along with the package, you get a sword. Whoop-de-doo.

Don't watch this. Although I know most people will since they think it's an anime that will make them smarter. If you're dumb enough to think this anime is intelligent...that's sad. read more