Night Head Genesis

Nighthead Genesis attempts to mix around sci-fi, horror and drama in its focus on brothers Naoto and Naoya, both having supernatural powers that lead them to be confined to a laboratory up until their recent escape years later as adults. At first focusing on a series of cases where the brothers meet others with paranormal powers like themselves, they eventually cross paths with an enemy corporation seeking to abuse paranormal powers for their personal gain.

On the one hand, Nighthead Genesis has its moments of effective storytelling and character depth as Naoya and Naoto encounter other espers like themselves who are outcasts due to their powers ... and the brothers find themselves forced to deal with having to use their power to take lives when confronted with the enemy corporation espers later in the series. For the most part, the series applies the esper powers of the characters for more realistic applications as there are limitations to the scale and control that characters have with their powers and can find themselves becoming exhausted or being on the brink of death after applying large-scale effects with said power. Plus, the show's efforts with horror are genuinely suspenseful at points as enemy espers exploit the mental vulnerabilities of their victims to drive people against one another and to exploit the morality of the brothers to bring them under their control.

On the other hand, the show's storytelling approach has quite a number of flaws. Night Head Genesis' pacing is slow enough to the point where it causes development in the plot to drag and the majority of antagonist characters are so shallowly evil that you could care less when they are eventually killed off, even with the show's half-assed attempt at trying to paint sympathy for a few of the villains in one of the final episodes of the series. An annoying feature of the series is Naoya's angsting during many of the show's intense moments, which will have you wishing you could punch the guy out. Also, some of the show's sci-fi elements go a bit too far within its boundaries when it explores elements such as what happens to an esper when their power evolves too much and a later case tackled by the brothers involving an earthquake hitting a town.

The visuals to Night Head Genesis are also a major issue as the series is quite low-budget for a 2006 TV anime milking esper powers for a sci-fi anime. While sporting attractive-looking character designs, the series suffers from inconsistencies at many points with properly drawing their details, makes liberal use of animation shortcuts during action scenes and features laughably bad implementation of CG animation for vehicles and special effects that clash rather badly with the regular animation of the series.

While Nighthead Genesis has its moments of effective storytelling and sci-fi lore, it still suffers greatly from plenty of missteps in its pacing, storytelling elements, characterization and visuals. It's no wonder this baby is not too fondly remembered by many who seen it back in 2006.