E's Otherwise

I know many people would not consider E's Otherwise as a great anime, yet it kinda got me into the thing and I certainly can recomand it to any beginner. The story ist pretty decend and there are many unexpected things in it. Of course I watched it when I was still pretty young so I can't be objective about it. I really like it, tho.

It ist about a calm boy, discovering his true powers and finding his own identity. Some choices he makes are not very reasenable to the person watching and the powers he and his mates have are pretty much the "average" ... superhero powers. There is very good changes in charakter, not everything is as it seems.

Yeah. I miss that "before the moe boom anime era" when people cared more about plot and character as much as they cared about art and fanservice.

Whlst E's Otherwise riffs off of the themes presented in X-men, it also follows the theme of "spending your time up in here (in a self-established effort to change your mind)." A theme used in anime like No. 6 and 07-Ghost.

The plot is all over the place; the characters are all over the place. (Not to diss ADV's English voice-acting people, but even their localization sounds like it's all over the place.) But the goals, and who to root ... for, never stray too far.

I gave it a "9" on my list but I gave it a "7" overall. (I'm also outside of the "gullible crowd;" the under-age-35 people). Oh well.

Main
E's Otherwise is most definitely one of the many thousands of animes that's just out there to be.....out there. I've started calling these types of shows “fast food” animes. Animes churned out by these big production companies out more for capital gain with no regard for product integrity. E's Otherwise is a series that really makes no sense and you'll almost, right from the get-go, need to modify your outlook [....and lower your expectations] on this show or you'll switch it off. If you are going to watch this show, you can't take it too seriously....even when the show itself is asking ... you to take it seriously, you can't and shouldn't cuz you'd be better off not doing so.

Art-Style
The art style was the standard type of art seen in most animes. A lot of bright colors were used, which is always nice. I like animes with bright, cheery colors! So you'll see a lot of fantastic colors as well as all the special lighting/glowing effects that they use to illustrate each of the characters' special powers. Their movements were also pretty good, tho nothing really too outstanding except for maybe during the fight scenes especially when it came to the hand-to-hand combat scenes.

Sound
Both OP and ED songs are pretty good for being little more than prefab POP confections, as they say, tho I'd have to say I do like the OP theme song a bit more. It has a very nice techno-dance beat that you might not realize unless you have a good surround sound system or you're listening to the song thru some decent headphones, like I did. I watched the show in English which might not have been a good idea since a lot of animes loose a lot of their original meanings and integrity with the translations, maybe that's what happened to this show. But for what it's worth I think the English actors did a decent job and I've always been a fan of Hilary Haag, she can do no wrong in my eyes.

Story
The story.....hmmmmm! Honestly, the story is a bit of a mess, I mean some parts of it WAS OK but huge parts of it was not OK....and I don't mean 'kinda' bad but 'LOTSA' bad!!! It was just so corny with all this unfounded and seemingly unnecessary angst. It really detracted from the show...so much so that I thought filler eps. were way much more fun and entertaining than the main plot of the show. Because if you paid too much attention to the main storyline, you'd get a headache and definitely hate the show...there were just too many problems with it. Mainly in the fact that it seemed so totally disingenuous, for example, this one [semi-main] character dies pretty early on in the series and no one seemed to care too much about it, they just all forgot about her pretty darn quick if you ask me....and then, we've got Kai who just ups and decides to live with Yuki and Asuka all but forgetting about his sickly, invalid sister who's laid up in the hospital for a good chunk of the series.
So like I said, there'll come these instances that the show demands all these intense emotions from you [the viewer] and it totally fails, miserably I might add, because it was too bloody flip and was emotionally glib from the outset. Not to mention, without spoilers, the ending is pretty much a train wreck so I whole-heartedly recommend enjoying the show more for it's filler content and not take this anime too seriously and there are plenty of funny moments/episodes that were just laugh-out-loud funny. If you do want to watch a more meaningful show with the similar [albeit thinly veiled] message of “freaks are people too” then you are better off watching the X-Men movies.

Cast/Characters
The way the characters looked was what caught my attention about this show in the first place....I thought Kai looked very much like Kira Yamato from Gundam Seed so following that train of thought, I assumed this show might have been created by the same people. Tho upon closer inspection, it's pretty evident they weren't... but even if they aren't created by the same people they both have a lot of things in common, namely, they both have that certain passive/aggressive tendency or that um, whatchamacallit, Berserker Complex.

Anywho besides Kai, I think a lot of the characters have a certain physical appeal about them even if that's all they have going for them [meaning, a lot of the characters lack depth, they just look cute!] My favorite character for sure is Sheri, she's just too sarcastically funny the way she just whips out these one-liners is comic genius, now whether or not the creators intended for her to be that witty is another story.

On the other hand, the character I found most annoying was that kid, Raphael, because to me he tried too hard to be cute and he played the sympathy card way too soon after we are introduced to him....[tho I suspect this in large part due to the poor adaptation from the manga] but by and large, just looking at this character hearing his sob story, and you see what I mean by the show being emotionally 'demanding' or trying to emotionally manipulate the viewer for no apparent reason but to just elicit sympathy. I also think that, the one gigantic eye of Raphael's is just too huge, singular and creepy, it takes up about 50% the length of his face! They did a horrible job with the character design on that kid that's for sure!

Worth it or NOT?
OK so, it's my opinion that this show isn't all that great and succeeds much more as a comedy than it does as a drama mainly because all the dramatic elements in this show are extremely bad and a whole lot cheesier than a bag of Cheetos due to the apparently sub-par adaptation from the original manga version. So it's either hit or miss. That's not to say it's a bad show all in all, there were a lot of funny moments and likable characters. Worth watching once....twice if your anime resources are scarce and you need that fix, but it's hardly a collectible item tho.