Story: Storyarcs. There are a couple of them, all of them about pain and suffering. The first one really doesn't count all too much, but the second is where they show what they want Narutaru to be. However it comes off as immature, they try to create a disturbing aura, an effect that Higurashi no Naku Koro Ni achieves perfectly, and it falls flat on it's face. The problem is that the stories are shallow and don't really shown too much real pain, they explain things too simply, they skip over alot of the details that create that painful emotion and sense of sympathy with the characters.
Art: I did not like the art all too much. It was bland and did absolutely nothing to support the mood of the piece. The character's designs are also deceiving, but definitely not in a good way. They seem like nice and kind, not necessarily innocent-looking, and then they try to change and warp other characters into being in alot of pain, which doesn't work. The worst character design is the dragon creatures. They're just there.....the good thing is that they don't remind me of pokemon or digimon, but they're still....terrible. There are some that are meant to be "evil" but they just look stupid.
Sound: The sound is creepy, the only emotion I felt in this entire anime was due to being manipulated by the music. They definitely did a great job on the music and leading to some tense moments (music-wise).
Character: Boring, Flat, 2-D, Shallow. Those are the best adjectives for the characters of this series. I found myself not caring about them at all, it was always "Wow, this girl hates herself (that's not a spoiler...that's pretty much every character) see how little I care!" Every character was just so incredibly annoying and stereotypical that I wasn't entranced by them at all.
Enjoyment: In case you can't tell already, I didn't enjoy this anime at all. 13 episodes of pain. After watching it and thinking about it for awhile I came to the conclusion that the creators were just too lazy to put a serious amount of work into this anime. I guess that people who enjoy the whole cute girls killing sub-genre might enjoy this.
If you watch this and aren't satisfied, which I wasn't, and totally write off this deeply frightening genre, don't. Watch Higurashi no Naku Koro ni instead. It does a MUCH better job at being supremely frightening and disturbing than this does. Narutaru pulls punchs, softens things down, makes characters shallow, which greatly diminishes the effect of the entire piece.
