Ayashi no Ceres

Ceres was a tennyo (Celestial maiden) who came down from the heavens to bathe in a stream. She hung her hagoromo (robe) on a tree nearby, which was her key to returning to the heavens. But the robe was stolen and the man who had stolen it forced her to become his wife, thus producing a family full of human and tennyo blood mixed.

Now, in modern day time, Aya Mikage is a descendent of Ceres, and has quite an amount of tennyo blood. On her 16th birthday, she and her twin brother, Aki, are thrown a party. At the "party," Aya's grandpa plans to kill her, for she has tennyo powers unlike the rest of the family, and can actually become Ceres herself and destroy the Mikage family. Aya, however, can switch back, so this transformation happens quite frequently.

With protector Yuuhi by her side, it is up to Aya to control Ceres and keep her from coming back, but her relationship with an ex-worker for her evil grandpa may be a distraction.

Tooya Main

Konishi, Katsuyuki Japanese

Ceres Main

Iwao, Junko Japanese

Mikage, Aya Main

Kakazu, Yumi Japanese

Aogiri, Yuuhi Main

Itou, Kentarou Japanese

Mikage, Aki Main

Chiba, Susumu Japanese

Kuruma, Chidori Supporting

Kawasumi, Ayako Japanese

Tsukasa, Shuro Supporting

Kusaka, Chihiro Japanese

Howell, Alexander O. Supporting

Seki, Tomokazu Japanese

Oda, Kyuu Supporting

Kujira Japanese

Aogiri, Suzumi Supporting

Asano, Mayumi Japanese

Kamegaki, Hajime Director

Takahashi, Hideo Sound Director

Kosaka, Harume Episode Director, Storyboard

Nishizawa, Susumu Episode Director, Storyboard, Layout, Key Animation

Reviews

Sep 8, 2008

TheLlama

Recommended

Ayashi no Ceres presents a beautiful love story, which intertwined with great action and characters makes for a sad, yet heartwarming story that can grip your heart.

It starts off very peacefully, with Aya Mikage and her twin brother Aki spending time with their friends, celebrating the twins' 16th birthday. However, this peaceful day is interrupted by Aya falling off a bridge, down on the highway underneath. Miraculously, she lands without getting a scratch, and she's saved from cars on a collision course by a mysterious, red-headed man. And that day marks the end of the happy days for the two.

They are summoned to the ... family mansion to celebrate their 16th birthday, but instead, they end up being the victims of the Mikage family's gruesome rite of killing off female descendants with strong tennyo powers in them. Said powers suddenly awaken, preventing her from getting killed.

From here on, the story goes darker, deeper and angstier as we're thrown into the mess that Aya suddenly finds herself in, being hunted by her own family all of a sudden. She has to deal with the fact that her twin brother has turned into a reincarnation of an evil man from the past, and she has to make sure Ceres doesn't take over her body completely. This leads to some great action scenes, as Ceres emerges to fight the Mikage family from time to time, with her astounding powers.

And then there's the love, the beautiful, yet sad love that is Aya's and Toya's love - Toya is the guy who saved her, but also a Mikage henchman, which means he's out to get her. However, he slowly falls in love with her, and her with him, despite the two of them being enemies. Now they must find a way to live out their love without the Mikage family or Ceres, who has a vendetta against the Mikages, getting in the way. Of course, there's Yuhi, and there's actually some mutual love between Yuhi and Aya as well, creating a love triangle that can rip Aya apart.

The characters in the anime are all very realistically portrayed. From Toya's quest to find his place in this world to Aya's struggles to remain herself through all that happens around her. The love that slowly develops between Toya and Aya is never forced, and their relationship progresses nicely over the course of the series.

The side characters are all good too, and despite not having so major roles, they fulfill them excellently, and they are portrayed very well too. Most of the characters you will see have some depth to them, which causes your heart to be with them as well, and not only Aya and Toya.

I'm also fond of the character development that takes place during the course of the series - at the end I could see how much they had matured, obviously having learned a few things about life and love during the events that took place during the course of the series.

Studio Pierrot did a nice job on the animation, and despite it being a bit old, it's very good. The lighting effects are very well done, though the same can't always be said about the special effects - they had their moments they too, though. The overall detail is very good, but there's one thing that bugged me, and that was the fact that their hair seemed transparent when in front of their eyes. You can't see your eyes through a layer of hair >_

Reviewer’s Rating: 8

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Nov 24, 2006

June

Mixed Feelings

If you'd like to see my full review then leave a comment on my profile.

Characters: The relationships of the family members were the most fascinating in the series. Aya and Aki had the typical brother/sister relationship of bickering and understanding, but after their 16th birthday it became more intense. Aki now desired the maiden inside of Aya. Aya also had a lot of growth, as she fought to control Ceres and save her brother from their power-hungry family. All of the characters have inner demons that they are constantly fighting in order to protect the ones they love.

Reviewer’s Rating: 6

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Jul 4, 2020

orpheusbreeze

Not Recommended

"16 year old girl gets pregnant with a guy who's made up of the ocean and derived from herself; or in short, she fucked herself."

"Her entire family wants to rape her the whole season."

"The entire family line is literally built upon incest."

^^Just a few one-liners to introduce you to the show. ^^


----[ Initial Review at ep. 17; read below for final review ]----
...
Damn, I can't believe this. I was actually enjoying the anime in the beginning, but I'm at episode 17 and it's going SO downhill.

The first couple episodes were pretty good. We got trauma, drama, directed almost like a thriller that actually had me on my toes, and some kind of character development from our main characters (oh except Toya, that guy literally never gets any until AFTER episode 16/17 LOL).

This anime gets pretty dark at certain times, and the way it's depicted gives a thriller/suspense kind of feel. That's what I found really cool about this, was that it was able to build up suspense and drama in a good way.

However, I notice after episode 13-14, the directing starts going to shit. The transitions and story-telling in the anime become ABSOLUTE CRAP halfway through the season and so much stuff is happening without proper explanations that it gets really confusing.
||| Often times when I start a new episode, it seems like it does a time-skip and doesn't pick up where the previous episode left, so I have to check to make sure I'm watching the right episode. |||
This happens a lot. I notice that it glosses over really important and drastic things / turn of events that I'm wondering "when did they do this??? why is she attending a new school all of sudden??"

Furthermore, there's SO MANY PLOT-HOLES. A lot of the stuff doesn't make sense, no proper explanations and it becomes so irksome that it's ridiculous.

The only character development we've seen is Yuhi and the celestial being herself, Ceres. Suzumi, although seemingly introduced as a major character, actually ends up being on the sidelines and out of the story a lot, so not much from her.

The romance in the show started off good in the first couple episodes, but by episode 13-14, it starts falling apart.

Why does it fall apart? Well, in the first couple episodes we have one guy who has gotten close to Aya and always protects her. They even have their 'moments', Aya doesn't really mind it either and even says she doesn't mind being kissed by him and may actually fall in love with him. We have ALL that chemistry built up for a good TWELVE EPISODES and lots of scenes where they get to know each other. So they have this guy here as the possible love interest, and you're led to believe they'll be together because he's been there for her in all of her roughest times and saved her every single time, /and/ they're progressing in their relationship.

Then we have another guy who seems like the main love interest based on the OP, except what? He doesn't have ANYTHING with Aya. This guy literally responds to Aya with 1-2 lines in the first 12 episodes and she rarely ever saw him. Yet somehow she's in love with him??? This is a weird love story. She fell in love with a guy she barely knows, a total complete stranger that remains a stranger until around episode 13-ish. And the guy barely knows her either, yet he says he's in love. Not only that, but around episode 16-17, they start throwing ALL KINDS of new stories to make up for his lack of character development.

The story at this point doesn't make sense anymore. I notice that a lot of times the story drifts away from the plot. The story keeps drifting away from finding the celestial robe. I'm really close to dropping it at this point lol

Also, I don't know what it is with the mangaka's obsession with rape, but yes this show does have several scenes that mention it or hint at it. There's also a lot of sexism and misogyny in this /sigh/



----[ Final Review ]----

I finally willed myself to finish watching the last couple episodes in hopes that the show will redeem itself. No, it does not.

|| I really had to ask myself if I was just watching a really bad Hentai. || The plot became something you'd find in a hentai, but even more disappointing and cringey. No more suspense or thrill felt from the first episodes, which sucks.

It didn't improve. It just kept building and building onto the clusterfuck called its 'plot'. I felt like I was watching several different animes jumbled into one, or like the mangaka thought "what if i kept adding random stories that didn't make sense and was never hinted EVER in the story?" And the amount of plot-holes was astonishing, like nothing ever made sense.

Remember, this is a story on a 16 year old girl. Everyone is trying to rape her, she gets pregnant and is like "I will carry your baby" to a guy she's barely known, becomes reduced to a character that really doesn't do shit after episode 13-ish except for screaming.

I mentioned before about plot-holes. The amount of plot-holes is astonishing, there's way too many. When you watch an episode, it mostly doesn't pick up from the last episode so often times you're wondering what's going on /now/ and if you skipped an episode.

The || animation || in this show was so cheaped out. It's very noticable how they cut corners with animating things and being really lazy. Often times the audio doesn't match up with the mouth, and often times the official licensed translation is very off and awkward.

!!!!!! Lastly, there's a lot of rape and incest themes in this. The entire storyline is based on incest, so you have been warned. !!!!!!

I don't know what can compel someone to want to continue watching this.

Reviewer’s Rating: 3

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