Kiba

I can't believe such a hyped anime doesn't have a review. Well on with the show:

Story:
I absolutely loved this anime storywise. It begins with a young boy named Zed, who lives in a strange, polluted town known as Calm. One day, a spirit, Amil Gaoul, appears to him, and he is dragged into another world. This of course, might seem cliche within the genre of time/world-traveling hereos, but where Kiba sets itself apart is in the concept of shard casting, the main magical ability of the people of the alternate world. Shard-casters can produce from their body small shards which unleash an elemental attack. Other ... anime have similar concepts, but to use items like this is something that to me is rather new, and I liked it. Also, shardcasters may summon spirits using special shards, and there are six Key Spirits, which are far more powerful than other spirits. Without going into too many spoilers, once the six Key Spirits are brought together, a great power is unleashed, and much of the anime is spent in this quest by multiple factions to obtain the power of the Key Spirits. This makes for a truly epic anime, with a rather interesting ending.

Art:
During the first episode, you get the feeling that the art is dark, due to the nature of Calm, but once Amil Gaoul appears, you see the real art style of this anime. Most of the characters are drawn in rather conventional anime form, but the real artistic value of this anime can be seen in the ethereal forms of the various spirits. Amil Gaoul resembles an angel, but there are also spirits which resemble devils, warriors, mythical creatures such as phoenixes and centaurs. Most of the spirits are bipeds, which really adds to their appeal, in seeing ghostly, two-legged forms of many different beings. The places where the shard casters draw their shards from, can resemble anything from an intricate tattoo to jewelry, to some sort of disease-ridden boil, depending where it is, or the very character of the person.

Sound:
The voice actors are great, although personally I found Roia's voice grating on the nerves sometimes. The battle sequences with Amil Gaoul all have a beautiful chorus to them, so you know when the tide of the battle is going to turn. This is really the only highlight in terms of sound in this anime, the rest could easily be attributed to background sounds.

Character:
I didn't like some of the characters, mostly because they often contradicted their own actions in extreme ways. Zed remains for the better part of the anime, a hero, he takes to his role readily, then experiences doubts about himself, and his mentor, who although appears to have a grandfatherly aspect about him, has a dark past that doesn't come out until the last 5 or so episodes. Zed's best friend is another source of frustration, in that he so easily and completely changes himself into the opposite of Zed.

Enjoyment:
As you are watching the anime, you are completely absorbed in it, and maybe once it ends is when you really start questioning things such as characterization and such, but meanwhile, this is one wild ride. The rather novel concept of shard casting sets this anime apart, and I highly recommend it to everyone

This is a series that is comprised of 51 ep. This series is a Shonen show with some fantasy elements and drama.

Story:

Ok the story i would have to say was Mediocre at best. There was really not any huge plot twists or eye popping scenes. The first Episode was pretty good. You get really involved into it, but then after the first episode, the series just drops in plot and everything becomes your typical average shonen, spirits fighting spirits, good VS evil, etc. The first season really had no shocking moments and it seems like you have learned everything this series has to offer right ... from the start. I almost even thought bout dropping this series due to the pain painstakingly boring fights. How ever towards the second season the plot started picking up again and it became surprisingly bearable to watch. I think in all honesty that this series was to slow, they should of revealed the plot at a faster pace. This series could of been 26 episodes and be a great series, because of all the useless spirit fights that had absolutely nothing to do with the whole plot behind Kiba, i found it rather boring to sit down and watch this anime from start to finish. I will have to say that the ending was really good and it did a great job of wrapping up everything and all the un answered questions bout zed's fateful past were answered. I found it enjoyable to watch the last 10 episodes because they were actually good. The battles were alot more detailed as well towards the end. They also shown alot more of the personalities behind all the Key characters in the series.

ART:

The art was pretty good. Most of the battles had great animation, and you felt like you were not watching a old classic series like (astro boy) lol. You felt like you were watching todays Generation in anime. I have seen anime with better art then this show but it was not all that bad. Its ashame the battles were not that great to go along with the awesome art.

Sound :

This was another thing i really did not like bout kiba was the sound. The BG sound in most fights were just terrible, they could of done MUCH better in this department. The only sounds i found were good and went with the flow of the battle was the music showing the fights with AMil Goal "Zeds key spirit". Other then that, the music was just terrible. Even on the most important scenes were the music was really needed the most was not there. This is really what put the anime in Jeperady was because of the painful music. The OST's were good though, opening and ending theme songs were pretty nice and you find your self humming the tunes in your head but the anime music theme's shouldn't of went with this series at all.

Character:

Not much to say bout this, the characters were great. I really like the personality of zed and Roia. The characters, cried, had emotions and everything, its really ashame that there roles in the plot were not all that important until the very end of the series. Everything from ep 1-35 is just spirit VS spirits, good VS evil. They did not reveal really much of anything behind the characters pasts or personalities until the last 10 episodes or so. If only this series had a better story then this show would of got a rate of 8 or 9 at least.

Bottom line is this series is boring to watch, especially the first season were nothing really happens, just battles between spirits. Like i said before if it wasn't for the filler based episodes in the first 26 episodes of the series and the plot moved along at a faster pace then this series would of be acceptable because of this if you can bear watching all the boring episodes, then it really does get good towards the end. I hope my review does not keep people from watching the series. I found it enjoyable to finally finish the plot and under stand everything.
But there is alot of anime out there that has a much better plot, better music themes then kiba does, i guess its just all about personal opinion!

To summarize the anime, it would be like this:

A 11-13 year old trying to create his first anime story and took heavy inspiration from Star Wars, Pokemon and Bleach.

I will explain in detail in segments.

-->> Why is it like Bleach? Because Bleach had one of the most random, non-sensical and incoherent stories in anime I've ever had the misfortune of seeing, especially a 200+ episode Shounen at that. In Bleach Rukia and Orihime would get randomly kidnapped 10-20 different times and the band would go and rescue them only for the same to repeat all over with nobody learning anything from it. The second was ... Ichigo fighting some bad guy and to defeat him, he loses his powers, then becomes an emo and after a while gets his powers back. There was also a lot of pointless going back and forth between the Human world, Soul Society and Hueco Mundo... Everything in Bleach was a mess. Kiba is literally the same - the characters travel between the lands - Tempura(Templar), Jimoto(Zymot) or Neotopia back and forth for no reason. Characters come and go at complete random, no character leaves an impression or a mark, all the characters are one-dimensional and serve almost zero purpose. This whole going back and forth and events happening at crazy speeds and having no impact feels like the kid who is creating the story is excitedly explaining it to some adult he looks up to going "And then they went there... and then they fought those guys... and then... and then... and then..." thus all the events in the overarching story feeling completely rushed, absolutely random, non-sensical, incoherent and most importantly - lacking and impact on the viewer and not being exciting at all.

-->> Why is it like Star Wars? Mostly because everyone's weapons are like lightsabers and to top it off in different colors, although they don't seem to follow any specific pattern where Jedi use Green/Blue whereas Sith use Red. It's just very hard to overlook weapons like this, where even the blade part disappears when it's turned off and only the hilt remains, it's lazily inspired by Star Wars. Also around the end, one character dies and turns into a Force Ghost to give some guidance to the protagonist.

-->> Why is it like Pokemon? Because the spirits kind of function like Pokemon - their owners summoning them and the spirits appearing like balls. I really don't know what else to add - just so unimaginative and lazy.

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Overall, the anime started somewhat OK, in the first 7-8 episodes, I was willing to give it a 7/10, as the story went on around episodes 15+, my score dropped to 6/10, around episodes 25-35, my score dropped to 5/10, during the last 10 episodes, my score dropped to 4/10. During the last 3-4 episodes, I watched them on x1.25 speed, because I wanted to get it over with ASAP, and on the last two episodes, it could not catch my attention at all, I was pausing every 2-3 minutes and doing something else, I literally had to put the speed to x1.5 and almost glue myself on the desk to force myself to finish them, it was so boring and uneventful at the end and the last few moments after the credits, it didn't really bring any closure to anything, it just felt as random as the rest.

Characters don't leave any impact, even the main protagonists feel so one-dimensional... Actually, if I'm to be honest, calling them "one-dimensional" is like a compliment, in reality, they don't even have one-dimensional qualities, because they don't even have goals or any personality at all, as if the creator of the anime was having a very difficult time even creating basic personality and goals for those 3-4 characters. The rest, who juts come and go, they are even worse - just plot devices that appear and disappear when needed, some die when needed and you never feel the slightest bit bad about it.

At the end, the characters start changing so drastically, it starts to feel like a parody of the whole anime genre, except the anime doesn't even realize and is actually keeps taking itself seriously.

I researched on Wikipedia about this anime and I think it was made to promote a TCG game, which is OK and I can understand, but even the original Yu-Gi-Oh! and Pokemon, which existed for the same purpose had almost masterpiece characters and story arcs compared to Kiba. I remember being super invested, especially in YGO! and the Pegasus arc, it was so awesome.

I don't know how I was able to finish it, it's not completely horrible, it just feels so devoid of any emotion or feeling, it's so fake and plastic, I haven't seen one so strange like this before.