Nabari no Ou

This anime made me cry, i love this anime... it was certainly beautiful, and i want to find another like this, the anime was truly a masterpiece and it brought me to tears at the end and middle, no anime EVER has brought me to tears this far.. truly looking forward to rewatching this years later :) will always remember you yoite..... Forever in my heart will be miharu, Yoite... everyone :) i giv it a 10/10! it was amazing and it gave me a feeling of happiness because Yoite finally got his wish granted :) If you loved this anime, i recommend Loveless, its ... kinda like it.

Recommendation: Fans of shounen action series will enjoy it. It doesn't fully come together as a "great" series in the end, but it's enjoyable and well-made even if it isn't anything revolutionary.

Story: The story follows a quiet middle school student named Miharu, who is discovered to have a power (the Shinrabanshou) inside him that effectively makes him a god, able to shape reality and even time as he wants to, only he doesn't know how to use it yet. It also follows the various groups and people that get involved with Miharu or try to take advantage of him to use the power ... for themselves. I did appreciate that for most of the series, the plot was engaging and it was fun to follow the shifting alliances and goals. It's a bit like Golden Kamuy in the sense that there are very few people that are entirely good or evil, and several groups are competing over the prize (Miharu in this case) to further their own agendas and will cooperate or betray their allies accordingly when it makes sense for them to do so, without that really being presented as "right" or "wrong" except in a few clear cut cases. It's simply treated as a natural course of action towards achieving their goals. Unfortunately, it does break down towards the ending. Things stop really making sense, the reveal of the big secret that Thobari has been hiding for the entire series is only surprising in the sense that it's so underwhelming, and a lot of questions about the Shinrabanshou ultimately get vaguely hand-waved away without satisfying answers. I don't know if I would necessarily characterize the ending as "bad" since it mostly hits the right character beats and does what it's supposed to, but it was far messier than it needed to be and felt a little flat at the same time.

Audio/Visual: Really good voice acting, featuring the ultimate delight of a Jouji Nakata-voiced main villain. The voices are often expressive enough to cover up for the stone-faced facial animations in certain characters (Raimei most notably). Character design is occasionally an issue, but otherwise the animation is pretty strong, especially for a series that's almost 15 years old. The action scenes are dynamic and well-animated, not usually enough to blow you away, but they do certainly look good. The visuals are a microcosm of the show itself. Nothing really unique or exciting, but it's executed competently with a handful of small flaws here and there.

Characters: The characters are probably the strongest part of the show. There are a few that are sort of useless (Kouichi is somehow the least impactful member of the group defending Miharu even though he's literally immortal, for example), but the vast majority are good, or entertaining at the very least. Yukimi was my personal favorite, but you can take your pick for the most part. Hattori was great hamming it up as a villain, Thobari is a complete disaster of a person in a compelling way, even Miharu evolves from an explicitly uninteresting person that actively avoids being noticed by others into a more open person through his unexpected friendship with Yoite.

Overall, I'd call it a sort of generic shounen action series, but well made enough to elevate it beyond being purely generic. It's worth checking out if you like this sort of series, but it's really nothing that you haven't seen before if you've seen most of the major tentpole anime franchises.

✪ Genre: action (martial arts, swordplay), contemporary fantasy, drama, shounen, ninja, superpower with bishounen character designs


✔ Positive Aspects ✔

◧ The quality of the animation is typical of a late 00s production, mid saturated colors, clearly lacking in vibrancy, but with very distinct character designs, not allowing the viewer to confuse a character for another. In general, the animation was nothing overly enticing, but it was not shabby either.

◧ One of the better aspects of the series was its soundtrack. It recycled quite a few tracks which were, generally, positively noticeable, and, I dare to say, entertaining for the most part but nothing overly exciting.


✘ Negative ... Aspects ✘

◧ The concept itself, although interesting and somewhat Narutonian in some sense, it was severely underdeveloped. First and foremost, we were unable to acquire a clear, or barely adequate, understanding of 'Shinrabansho', neither of its nature and origins nor of the extent of its power. Secondly, we were unable to form a clear picture of the level and degree of separation between the regular world and the ninja world, that most of the events that were portrayed, were predicated upon. Thirdly, we were unable to discern whether or not the series had any kind of direction, in the sense of a clear purpose for existing.

◧ A major flaw of the series was clearly the development of its characters. Firstly, most of the protagonists' and antagonists' personal histories, motivations and ideological beliefs were either explained fairly late into the series and quite inadequately at that, or genuinely indistinguishable. Secondly, we were unable to conceptually separate the protagonists from the antagonists given the fact that they were jumping ship, or, at least, being unsure about their respective memberships, very frequently. Thirdly, the main character's motivation for moving forward (trying to form a friendship with an enemy) would probably feel woefully dissatisfying for the average viewer, as it felt for me.

◧ The action scenes were uncharacteristically (compared to the series' pace at least) speedy, were executed within very few frames, were escalating, and ending, quickly and unsatisfactorily.


Overall: This was a pretty underwhelming series which may have had some potential, but did not make good use of its air time at all.