Reviews

Jun 6, 2009
Mixed Feelings
Preliminary (9/25 eps)
Story: 5

Church Daily Life really says it all. I’ve watched 9 episodes of this show and for all but about half of the first one Teito has been moping around in a church. There is a pretty obvious looking back-story lurking in the background but progress is extremely slow and the vast majority of time is spent on the aforementioned moping around part. The story also suffers a lot from the ineffective relationship between Teito and Mikage. Clearly 07-Ghost meant Mikage to be a great influence on Teito and shape him in to the force he will likely eventually be in the story, but ineffective scenes and lack of on screen development of their relationship make conversations between the two feel fake and forced. It doesn’t help that much of the dialog is just plain bad either.

The other major problem with the story a clear lack of a major enemy (more in characters section). Neither Ayanami nor the Kors are developed enough to really bring out any feelings of anger against them and they’re the most developed of any enemy in the series. One could argue the enemy is “The Military” but that angle just isn’t developed at all.

So we end up with Teito saying he has a purpose but not acting like he does (talk is cheap) and there being no pushing force to nudge him onward.

Art: 6

The art in general is pretty good, but sadly there are specific problems that bring it down quite a bit. For starters the fight scenes are extremely bad to such a degree that even few of the most ardent fans think they’re any good. It is hard to really explain without seeing it, but battles basically consist of people fighting with strings of letters. Rarely are the battle scenes at all impressive and generally they’re just dull.

Enemies look unremarkable. Kors are a good example of this as they are seemingly one of the main evil enemies in the series and yet they look bland. The characters also look extremely similar in structure, although I suppose this can be somewhat common in many animes. The fight scene issue combines with the enemies/characters issue to make things even worse. You end up having a bunch of bland characters jumping around shooting steams of letters at each other.

Sound: 7

Sound is pretty good, but not great. Voice actors all do their job well enough (although I wouldn’t say any are epic in how they bring their character to life). Music is pretty decent if you like that type, but not remarkable.

Character: 6

For light to exist there must be the dark. What is this strange phrase you ask? Well, it is the reason I think the characters in Ghost suffer so badly. There is no real enemy or anything to compel our main character to wage war against them so in turn, our main character has nothing to do. Well, technically, Ayanami is our arch enemy and Kors are our evil soul corrupters, but sadly they’re developed so poorly that they might as well not even exist and just throw random enemies at our good guys instead.

Ayanami is the most generic anime bad guy ever. He has white hair, he is young and his screen time is entirely consumed of scenes of him brooding and laughing evilly in the shadows. Never once (in the episodes I’ve watched) does he do something to make you hate him or cheer for Teito. He almost comes close once, but then the anime merely hints at hinting at what he did so there is no real effect.

Kors are simply not developed at all. Ok so they’re basically demons/evil spirits possessing people in all but name, but their appearance is not impressive at all (dear god, that normal looking person now has some flimsy looking bone wings now, the horror!) and generally they’re dealt with easily with no friendly losses (mostly). The other major problem with Kors is that of the characters I’ve seen possessed by Kors, none of them have been developed enough to make the viewer feel sorry for them or terrified of the Kors. This is in sharp contrast to a show like Pandora Hearts which has sort of a similar aspect with illegal contractors losing their souls in effective scenes and most importantly after they’ve been developed a little so that you care about them a bit.

Teito and Mikage mainly suffer from their relationship not being developed nearly well enough. A lot of the story seems to stem from these two and how much they care about each other and yet this anime has decided to demonstrate that they were close not by showing effective scenes of the reasons they became friends and of them getting through various trials as friends, but by telling us that they’re friends (I.E. Teito:”Mikage is by best friend” Mikage:”Teito is my best friend”). Individually neither one is really a strong character though. Teito keeps on moping around and getting emo over Mikage and his situation, and yet he does nothing and spends his time frolicking around the church eating edible sweet flowers. Even after said situation is taken care of more or less, Teito never leaves his moping/emo/frolicking mode. Mikage is just not developed at all. We don’t really know anything about him other than Teito is the center of his world and he values his family a bit. In fact his sole reason for existing seems to be to move Teito along in the story.

Enjoyment: 5

I can’t say I really enjoyed this series. While I like action, battles are generally low on my scale for grading an anime, but 07-Ghost is one of those shows where even I think it suffers from the horrible battles. Dialog annoys me GREATLY because it is so bad at times and it is never good for the most part. Overall story progression is about as fast as watching paint dry when it is raining outside which also annoys me greatly because the thing that almost always affects my enjoyment of nearly any form of entertainment the most is the overall story. Teito also annoyed me to no end since he would constantly be complaining about wanting to do something and yet never do it. I also hated how Teito was supposed to be so powerful and yet every time it comes time to show off his power, it ends up just looking flashy but doing nothing, and then someone needs to rescue him. Most people don’t want to see a useless main character and I am no exception.

Overall: 6

Serious problems cripple what could have been a really good show. It is a shame really because I liked the first episode, but after that it just gets worse and stays worse. The writers of the 07-Ghost seem to have ignored every other anime (or just form of entertainment) and have made mistakes that other authors have fixed years ago. It also isn’t like 07-Ghost has a lot of unique scenes either (I’m not slamming them for this as they aren’t unique because people generally enjoy these plot elements) as many plot elements are common ones that are done way better in a lot of other anime (not to mention books or movies).
Reviewer’s Rating: 6
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