Akuma no Riddle

I liked the sort of main idea of the story but they could have executed it way better to be honest. The characters were likeable and all had different traits and cool designs which I enjoyed a lot. But what bothered me most was just that everything was soooo predictable. Like it was so obvious when and how something significant was going to happen and who would be there etc. I liked it when it started, but as it went on, everything just became incredibly predictable and obvious. Minutes before a scene would happen, in my head I would be like "yep i bet this ... much that this character is gonna do that in this place". Idk I wish they could have made it less predictable and more entertaining. But other than that I think it was alright, not the best but it wasn't a waste of my time.

Don't get me wrong, the anime is enjoyable. It's not the best, but i never quit something i start, at least when talking about anime. I like the idea of using each episode for building character. This way, everyone gets their time.
The main character is odd, in the way that she's a female that's not your typical female protagonist. In comparison to the other girls in the class she's average to say the least. It does the job well, but in not a very good manner. ...
The sound is mediocre, it didn't touch me at all, and the scenes that were meant to hit my hearth with the hammer didn't succeed in doing so. Suzu was the one i liked the most.
I'm not a nit picker, so those things didn't make me stop watching it. So i'll kindly recommend you watching it if you like the genre.

A story about a lesbian assassin sounds like it could either be very good, or very bad. Akuma no Riddle is a mix of both.

The anime starts off very strong. There's enough mystery to keep you on your feet and the first few assassination attempts are suspenseful and intriguing. The main character is bad-ass, yet not over-powered. If the anime stayed at the level of quality that there was in the beginning, it could have easily landed on my favorite's list.

There's not much character development, but hey, there's 13 characters squeezed into 12 episodes. To be honest, I didn't even mind that ... much. Although I will say the story might have been better with fewer characters. Maybe 10 instead of 13 would have sufficed.

As the show progresses, the assassination attempts become ridiculously convoluted. I cant say much without giving away spoilers, but at times it seems like the assassins are trying to fail. That, and the episodes became somewhat predictable as they started to follow a set formula.

The romance between the two MC's has development near the beginning, but then tapers off. At times there was little chemistry between the two.

There's not much else to be said. This anime is mostly empty entertainment, so don't expect anything life-changing or outstanding. Also, one of the main characters yells out the other main character's name out a lot. If I hear "Tokaku-san!" one more time I'm gonna lose it.

CONTAINS SPOILERS!
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As you may have already seen in the synopsis of Akuma no Riddle it is a kind of battle royale between the classmates of the so called "Black Class". You may suppose lots of violence will be seen and that the main two, Ichinose Haru and Azuma Tokaku, will have some character development.
Haha, not really.

The first two episodes are slow. All the class members are getting to the school used for the Black Class. In these two episodes they show mostly what kind of people the assasins are and how Ichinose wants to live her last high school year, plus a little bit of ... intimidating each other. As everyone is present they have a meeting where they reveal the predictable target they have to assasinate. They get some rules and Azuma reveals how she will protect Ichinose instead. So it begins!

Episodically the assasins start going after Ichinose. These aren't too bad, but it depends on the invidual whether they'll find it enough of a characterisation. What was bad about this is that not all of them get to show their personality and/or their background story (Hashiri Nio and Kenmochi Shiena per example). Also, the way they go about the assasination differs greatly. Some were pretty stupid and the amount of violence in the action scenes are pretty minimal.
They did do something interesting with that which are the different endings that fit the character that failed the assasination of that episode. Again, some endings looked a lot better than others with most of the ending being pictures of them and a sequence where they show some of the action in their silhouette.

Furthermore about the story: Ichinose doesn't really grow and stays the same determined to live, cutesy gal. Azuma on the other hand changes her perspective on life and sort of accepts her history to be able to well now. She kind of likes Ichinose for that, but because of this perspective and the weird explanation as to why the Black Class exists in the first place she does something so stupid after the fight with Hashiri. And ta-da! Seems like everyone is alive for some reason and some stay friends with each other for some reason!

The music of the opening, endings and background are pretty good but not that special or gripping. They fit the show and never felt awkward, but are forgettable. As for the art: it's pretty cool, the characters look fine and mostly fit their personality. The animation is smooth and colorful. Nothing really stood out to me which is good and bad. Bad because nothing looked outstandingly beautiful and good because it didn't drop in quality and stayed consistent.

In general, pretty average, but because it was never boring to me and I enjoyed the show I find it fair to give it a 6. The animation helped the score quite a bit, that story though.

BONUS: This anime does contain little to no yuri scenes. Read the manga if you actually wanted some form of yuri (the manga isn't really yuri either though). The manga has a little bit more details than the anime between characters, but lacks those details in the fight scene.

i watched this whole anime (almost) within a day, i hated every minute of it. i do have to admit it was like nice but not. it was like pulling up to the bathroom expecting it to be clean but someone had sprayed their sh*t all over the walls. to be honest, i overreacted, its a nice decent anime, watch it if you want to. overall an ight. I loved certain characters and their end developments, others were quite .... weird. there was two characters that were so strange, they made the story more surreal? i have a love hate relationship with this anime and ... my final message is watch this anime if you want to, you dont have to.

Overview:
"Akuma no Riddle" definitely isn't your typical schoolgirls anime. After all, it's not every day you find one where nearly every major character is secretly an assassin, all of whom are targeting one of their classmates in order to have some kind of desire granted. Sadly, while it does provide a decent and entertaining action anime to sit through, "Akuma no Riddle" never even comes close to living up to the potential of its premise, making it an unfortunate yet all-too-common case of "what could have been."

Story (5.5/10):
"Akuma no Riddle" is set at the fictional all-girls boarding school Myojo Academy, where 12 girls have recently ... transferred and enrolled in a special class known as "Class Black". What very few people know, however, is that this class is actually a gathering for killers, some of whom kill as a profession and some as an act of pleasure, and are tasked with eliminating the only non-assassin Class Black student, Haru Ichinose. Each of them is given an advanced kill notice, which they must give to Haru once they decide to make a move, after which they must kill her within the next 48 hours. If they succeed, they will be granted any one desire that they can think of. One such assassin is our protagonist, Tokaku Azuma, who becomes Haru's roommate through sheer coincidence. Soon after, Tokaku learns that Haru is actually just as far from being an ordinary girl as anyone else in the class- specifically, she's been a target for assassination her entire life, with her entire immediate family having died to save her when she was just a child. What's more is that she knows what the other Class Black students are there for, describing Class Black as a test of hers where she must survive. Upon hearing this, Tokaku decides that she will work with Haru, not against her, becoming her protector against the rest of the class. From there, the series follows Tokaku and Haru as they defend themselves from the assassins one-by-one, with the goal of having Haru survive and ultimately graduate from Class Black.

While I did enjoy most of the individual stories of each episode, particularly as you get to know each of the assassins and learn their various motivations, the actual plot leaves a ton to be desired. Now, I am generally very tolerant when it comes to characters making stupid decisions. I've made more than a few myself over the years, after all. However, the sheer number of bone-headed choices made by the characters, Haru in particular, really made me want to slam my head against the wall. Considering Haru knows full well that everyone in the class except Tokaku is there to kill her, you'd think that would give her the hint to stay away from them as much as humanly possible. Unfortunately, that is not the case, as she constantly attempts to befriend her classmates because she believes that if she can get all of them to be her friend, she can convince them to give up on killing her, and that way nobody has to die. Of course, this being an action anime about assassins, things are NEVER that simple, and so she constantly paves the way for others to trick and manipulate her, leaving her in all kinds of dire situations that could easily have been avoided if she simply thought things through. And while Tokaku is significantly smarter than Haru, and indeed doesn't hesitate to call her out for being foolish, she's not above making some bad choices herself. For example, while tearing apart her kill notice in front of all the other assassins and vowing that she'll protect Haru from them seems awesome on the surface, it becomes less so when you realise that it would have been smarter, not to mention more interesting, for her to turn on them in secret and pick them off from the shadows. Sure, she likely would still have been found out eventually, but it would give her a head start on them if nothing else.

A smaller, but still notable, problem is that despite the fact that the series is called "Akuma no Riddle", the riddles Tokaku receives on a semi-regular basis ultimately have no real bearing on the actual story, and the reasoning behind them proves to be pretty anticlimactic, to say the least. I honestly didn't get why they were even in the series at all, since they ultimately serve no purpose other than to give the series its namesake. The story also never evolves beyond its typical "villain of the week" format, which it very much is despite a decent effort to appear otherwise. That means that, from beginning to end, you'll see Tokaku and Haru be targeted by a different assassin every episode, and watch as the class gradually shrinks with some characters leaving while others stay and get more focus. All in all, the writing has a LOT of issues and wasted potential, and ultimately the story is the last thing you should watch the series for.

Art & Animation (8.5/10):
“Akuma no Riddle” is a very good-looking series, which is a pleasant surprise given that Diomedea is not a particularly well-known animation studio. All the character models are very well-drawn and distinct, the environments look just as good and the fight scenes are consistently well-animated, with even the rare use of CGI being done extremely well. That said, there is an effect where background characters are greyed out with no colour, similar to that found in “Durarara!”. Nevertheless, it’s neither as noticeable or frequently used as it is there, and they at least do a decent job at making the greyed-out models look like actual people.

Sound & Dialogue (8.5/10):
“Akuma no Riddle” has a lot of things to be disappointed by, but one thing I doubt anyone will complain about is the music, which is best described as a mixture of electronic/synthetic music, orchestral music and piano music. It’s a strange combination to be sure, but that’s precisely what makes it fantastic, as it means it always has a track for any scene you can think of. The opening theme is very good, but the real standouts are the ending themes, for which there is a new one for every episode, though they vary a fair amount in quality. My personal favourites are “Paradox”, “Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow”, “Concentration”, “Poison Me”, “Escape at Midnight” and “Queen”. The voice acting is great as well, with Morgan Berry’s Tokaku being the highlight as she manages to capture the character perfectly with her low yet unmistakably feminine voice. Considering the cast also contains Colleen Clinkenbeard, Monica Rial and Alexis Tipton (the voice of Haru), Morgan Berry delivering the best performance of the bunch is definitely an accomplishment.

Characters (7/10):
When first introduced, Tokaku comes off as a very cynical and borderline heartless young girl, being willing to kill Haru while asking for nothing in return and answering the riddle “The world is full of ___” with “torment”, among other morbid things. By the end of the second episode, however, it becomes clear that she is anything but heartless, as she decides to go against the nature of Class Black and protect Haru from the other assassins, albeit for reasons she doesn’t quite understand. Additionally, we learn early on that despite being a supposedly master assassin who comes from an infamous and feared family of assassins, Tokaku has yet to actually kill anyone, resulting in her being derisively called a “virgin” by one of her classmates who finds out. This is due to her aunt and mother always being against her becoming an assassin like the rest of the clan, and as a result she is unable to kill even to protect herself. However, Tokaku hates this limitation, as she feels that she’s being dragged down by the demands of those who are no longer here, which is preventing her from living her own life. Unfortunately, while this does make for a rather interesting conflict, the ultimate resolution to it is less than satisfactory, and ultimately she doesn’t undergo any major growth other than gaining a true reason to live. Nevertheless, she’s still the best character in the series, being consistently likeable even with her cold exterior and more than living up to her status as a badass assassin despite her inability to kill.

The other main character of the series, and my second favourite, is of course Haru Ichinose, though I definitely found myself very frustrated with her at times. While it’s a common anime trope for characters to do poorly at school but be very smart outside of it, Haru is the exact opposite- her grades are among the best in the class, yet when it comes to common sense and survival skills, she’s astoundingly lacking. Despite knowing full well what her classmates’ intentions are and Tokaku’s repeated warnings, Haru constantly lets her guard down around them and always believes the lies they tell her, no matter how obvious they are or who she’s talking to at the time. While her intentions are noble, the fact remains that the very first person who tries to kill her is an unrepentant serial killer who desires to be above the law so she can continue her killing spree forever, which should have made clear to Haru that there are people who don’t want to be your friend, aren’t worth the effort, or both. I wouldn’t have minded this so much if it was the set-up for a character arc where Haru gradually becomes less naïve and learns who to trust and who not to. Sadly, she never seems to grow or learn from any of her mistakes, with the story repeatedly bending over backwards to fit her viewpoint, which would make her tiring to deal with if her actual personality wasn’t so likeable.

Besides Tokaku and Haru, there are 11 other Class Black students who serve as their opponents, making for 13 students in total. Unfortunately, most of these don’t get any real focus outside of the episode in which they’re the antagonist, with Tokaku and Haru facing a different one in each episode. While these individual episodes do a decent job at fleshing out the characters and their desires, which often say a lot about who they are as people, ultimately it takes more than just one episode for me to get truly invested in a character, resulting in a supporting cast that’s both underwhelming and underdeveloped. There’s even one who gets no focus at all, to the point that we learn pretty much nothing about her. On the other hand, there are a couple of characters that I felt got too much focus compared to others, including one who tries to kill Haru before the assassinations even officially start, yet sticks around for most of the series afterwards, even though trying to get the jump on everyone else should logically have gotten her disqualified. Besides the students, the number of notable characters can literally be counted on one hand- there’s the chairwoman of Myojo and supervisor of Class Black, Meichi Yuri, Tokaku’s trolling confidant Kaiba (no, not THAT Kaiba) and the Class Black homeroom teacher, who’s often so dense and oblivious that he makes Haru look like a genius. Overall, the cast is decent, but there’s definite room for improvement.

Enjoyment (7/10):
“Akuma no Riddle” is an entertaining series for sure, with a fair amount of variety in the fight scenes, but it does take a while to get to the good parts. In fact, the assassinations don’t truly start until episode 3, which doesn’t sound like a bad thing until you realise that the series is only 12 episodes long, meaning we only have 10 episodes in the actual story. The tone is also rather inconsistent, as while the backstories of the characters tend to go to some very dark places, the series itself isn’t really dark at all, making hard to know exactly what kind of story the writers were going for.

Overall:
“Akuma no Riddle” is definitely far from essential viewing, and those with very high standards would do well to stay away from it. Nevertheless, those who like assassin stories or just shows with strong female characters should find some enjoyment in it. If the actual story and characters were developed anywhere near as well as the visuals and music, “Akuma no Riddle” could have been a truly great anime, instead of a merely good one.

Score:
5.5+8.5+8.5+7+7=36.5/50=7.3/10

Good day all

Story:

In the beginning the story is awesome and amazing 12 killers and one protector what else you want then it all went wrong.

# the story was told good but it could been better.
# the story is complex ( the end is terrible you cant even know what happened and why it did )
# the story is unique and the pacing is slow, as I said the ending was terrible there is many questions.

... Art:
# the style wasn’t realistic but the character design was beautiful.
# some building were the same all over the story I don’t think they worked on the environment of the anime.


Sound :
# the sound of the character acting was fine and the background music was good .

Character :
# all the characters without any specific powers or ability , all it was street fighting even without any new moves when you watch the first two fights all after will be the same.
# you don’t who is the villain …
# the character that I didn’t like was haru and the one I liked the girl who looked like the cat ( Nio)

Enjoyment :
# I think others will dislike this show and no way iam going to re-watched again.
# wasn’t memorable at all .

In the end its your choice to see the show or not .

Akuma no Riddle - The perfect example to why a happy ending isn´t always the best one.

I enjoyed this anime´s first 11 episodes
Then came the last one and erased basically the whole point of the previous episodes.

I feel betrayed.

The main reason is that the characters did not have much time to develop and tell their stories, it always felt rushed and thus robbed the audience´s ability to form some kind of attachment/bond in order to be happy about them.

Yes, you can pity them for their hardships.
... But pity won´t make you like characters, especially at Akuma no Riddle´s fast pace and context.

Azuma Tokaku and Ichinose Haru are the only ones who, in my opinion, deserve the ending, because those characters stories have been scattered over almost the whole anime, making us chew the bits before we swallow and thus experiencing all the flavors, which makes the ending for them quite satisfying.

Akuma no Riddle had a lot of potential and great moments, but it lacked time.
Maybe this review would be more positive if there was 24 episodes instead.

Going in, I thought this series would be utter chaos, due to the nature that the plot was explaining. One person needs to protect someone from multiple other assassins? Count me in.

Story: Riddle Story of Devil sets us up at a school where one class of thirteen students are dubbed "Class Black". Unbeknownst to their teacher, twelve trained assassins are given one objective: kill Haru Ichinose. The person who successfully does this is given one reward of their choosing, with basically no limitation to it. The rules? You must give Haru your notice card, which basically means she needs ... to be aware that you're going after her life. After seeing this card, you have forty-eight hours to kill her. Fail this, and you are expelled from the school. There's one catch: Tokaku Azuma has decided she doesn't want to assassinate Haru, and thus, announces that she will be Haru's protector during this game.

I was actually pretty interested in the plot because I thought there was going to be some pretty intense action, but the way they carry out the entire story is predictable, boring and lacking in excitement. Each episode basically spotlights one of the girls and we get to see how they attempt to take Haru's life, as well as their motivation to get their wish granted. However, after seeing one episode, you've basically seen the entire series. They don't attempt to mix up the formula, but instead, use each episode as a "monster of the week" format, and it really doesn't work. You can clearly see that Tokaku and Haru have limitations to what they can do, and throughout the entire series, you never really feel like our characters go all out.

The final few episodes where they reveal more details about Tokaku and Haru were fine, and probably highlight the best part of the series, but that's a low bar to climb. Normally, when action series with romantic elements fail on the action side of things, I do tend to see if the relationship between interested parties at least seemed meaningful, but even here, Tokaku and Haru aren't anything special. What I feel like the series wanted us to shock us about Haru's family's background, just felt flat and unsatisfying. It wasn't what I would call exciting and even though we see and understand what's going on and why, I just couldn't find myself caring. The ending, also predictable, doesn't feel too complete either, as there was never an attempt to solve much of anything. (3/10)

Characters: Some characters as a whole fare a little better and offer an okay mix. Tokaku has a bit of plain background as it amounts to something along the lines of "we've been doing this thing for years, here's how Tokaku will follow up". It's not uncommon for some anime tropes to exist, and I'm never against it in principle, but when you don't make it at least interesting, you've lost me. It really doesn't help that her "abilities" pale in comparison to the other assassins in terms of interest. Haru has a target on her back for reasons that we found out pretty late, but her past's story is actually decent. She has multiple markings on her body and it serves as a reminder of what she's had to go through. Contrast that with her present day characteristics and... there isn't enough there. She's cheerful, but doesn't seem to go through much character development, outside of a thing or two, here and there. She's kind of useless on her own, if we're being honest.

The other assassins are fairly unique in their fighting style, which I always respect in shows that have a decently sized cast. Sumireko Hanabusa's by far the most interesting, and it's no coincidence that her episode was the best one. With our side cast being decently unique, it did prevent this show from likely tanking altogether. Their motivations for the wishes at least make sense, despite the weird setup for a few of them. Nio, who we don't know much about until decently late, almost serves as the moderator for the contest, but I'm not sure if her background's suppose to be creepy, or just straight up silly. (5/10)

Art: The generic art style is fine. I actually didn't notice too much in a the way of decreasing quality of character models as the camera pans away from them, which does tend to show itself in some series. What was less fine were that action scenes outside of Sumireko's were just... boring. There's more intense scenery in the OP than most of the episodes. This really dullens what we see on screen, considering the nature of this show. (6/10)

Sound: The OST and OP were fine with nothing terribly spectacular about either. The EDs have a really nice mix to them... and when I say nice mix, I mean all twelve of them. There's a different ED song for each episode, each sung by one of the assassins' Japanese VAs, with the final one sung by all thirteen characters. This obviously never happens in anime and the fact that they decided to do this is really neat. The VO cast were really fun, with Alexis Tipton (Haru) matching her character the best while Morgan Berry (Tokaku) has a pretty unique voice and loved her here. This was a strong showing for our cast here. (8/10)

Overall Enjoyment: Despite the decent sound quality, Riddle Story of Devil fails to meet any expectations, low or high, that I had for it. The plot rarely keeps you guessing, it moves horribly slow and the entire show format gets stale really quick. There's just other series that are out there that follow a similar format and have much better results. (5/10)