Jul 4, 2014
I remember reading the manga a few years ago but never finished it, so I thought I'd give the anime a try. Having good expectations for the series, I was highly disappointed and frustrated after finishing it last night. Spoiler alert.
The first episode was pretty good in setting up the story, like the origin of the Diclonius and the secret behind the research facility. There is a lot of gore and nudity which I didn't really care about but found it mostly unnecessary. However as the episodes went on I started to lose interest because of the way characters and story developed. This anime
...
tries to touch on issues like racism, discrimination, rape, abandonment, and human nature (all in 13 eps!), in the most superficial ways. The story was very much inconsistent and fails to give a satisfying resolution to any of the important issues.
On top of that, the anime keeps introducing new characters with cliche sad past that adds literally nothing to the story. The only decent character was director Kurama; his character was quite consistent with his past experience with Diclonius. I also like Lucy as a strong female character, but she is just pathetic and annoying when she turns into her 'innocent' self. Lucy is supposed to have deep hatred for humans because of her traumatic childhood experiences, but her background story was extremely inconvincing and generic. And seriously, what is with the scene where the kid mercilessly beats a puppy to death with a flower vase??? I said I didn't mind the gore, but to come up with a scene like this was disturbing on a whole another level. It's unbelievable that they couldn't create a better tragic background for the main heroine. The other two girls, Mayu and Nana, were tolerable but still didn't have any depth to their characters; the anime fails to incorporate them into the intended theme of the story. And the award for the most useless character goes to Yuka; her undying love for her cousin (and they HAD to pull that incest nonsense) and whiny personality had no relevance to the story whatsoever... Kouta, the main protagonist, is equally unlikable; he is nothing more than the typical nice guy that likes everyone he encounters. So he invites all the female characters to live happily in his big mansion and essentially turns the anime into a harem.
Overall, a very unsatisfying ~10 hour experience. It didn't have any emotional impacts I was looking for in terms of relating Diclonius to some real world issues. The love story was underwhelming mostly because of unlikable characters with dull personalities/backgrounds. And don't even get me started on the 'ending'. I felt like the story could've been so much more but after watching the anime, think I'll pass on the manga.
Reviewer’s Rating: 2
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