Kyousou Giga

Kyousougiga is the absolute epitome of when anime attempts to be far too ambitious and subsequently obfuscates every piece of its content. While I can't say I wasn't entertained while watching the short ONA, I also can't say that I have the slightest inkling as to why the anime was condensed down to nearly an unintelligible level.

If there is one thing (besides viewer confusion) that definitely stands out in Kyousougiga, it's definitely the art. Fast-paced and colorful, the animation really complements the chaotic nature of the ONA but only to the point of adding a visual level to the acid trip that is ... the story. If the rest of the aspects that make a good show were executed properly, Kyousougiga would have been an extremely good watch.

Despite the outrageous visuals, the story was too dense for its allotted time. Because of this, the viewer is left with vague ideas and general plot directions that are not terribly easy to follow. Honestly, Kyousougiga's story feels like the climatic moment in a longer series with no rising action or conclusion.

Like the story, character development, due to the length of the ONA, was very much lacking. We're pretty much forced to take all characters at face value because that's all we really see of them.

To add on to the fire-pit, the soundtrack was pretty awful. There were several moments where a musical score continued way after it should have and didn't even try to correlate to the moment in the show at all, although, considering the rapid sequence of events, it would probably have been just as chaotic to change scores between moments, too.

While I'm necessarily hard on the show for its obvious faults, it's hard to say that it wasn't enjoyable. Clearly, the problem with Kyousougiga was not that it didn't have the ambition to create something great, it was that it tried to do so in far too little time. Even if given three or 4 times the amount of time it allowed itself (roughly the length of a movie), the show would have been spectacular.

That being said, Kyousougiga is probably still worth giving a watch if you have 20 minutes and are in-between series, and especially if you liked FLCL or Dead Leaves as the nature of the three is very much similar.