Deadman Wonderland is the story of an ordinary high school student (for 2 minutes at least) named Ganta living an completely ordinary life. That is until his classroom is blown up by a mysterious figure in red, killing all of his friends in the process. Ganta is falsely accused of the crime and is sentenced to life in the most awful prison imaginable, Deadman Wonderland. In Deadman Wonderland, prisoners are put through fatal challenges and experiments, all while under the guise that Deadman Wonderland is a simple theme park. While inside, Ganta realizes that he has the power to control his blood (Hemokinesis is one of my favorite powers btw) and use it as a weapon. He must learn to control this new power if he hopes to survive in a world where the only rule is survival of the fittest is the only law, and get his revenge on the man in red. (I just now saw the side that says not to write a summery, but I already wrote it and I'm not going back on my work now.)
I'm sorry that the summery was so long, but this anime needs a lot of prior explanation in order to understand without seeing the first episode and thinking "What am I watching exactly?" This anime is by no means bad, it's actually quite an interesting concept for an anime, one that feels fresh and unique. If your seasoned in anime viewing and want a new kind of entertainment, I give this anime a slight recommendation. However, if your new to anime, this may go a bit over your head.
The characters were very much in the "eh..." category. They weren't bad, but they weren't exactly good either. The main character keeps having these moments of "I have to be strong to survive" where upon he acts upon them. While this is normally a good way of pulling the audience in and making them care about the character, this seems to be the only trick the writers could come up with, as this same exact moment happens over and over again, with the same music to boot. When a character intends to make a change, he has to make it permanent, and than he can adjust his beliefs to meet the situational needs.
While everything thing else in this anime was either average or slightly above average, a kick ass intro song being one of the best parts, the main thing that drags this anime down is exactly what I stated at the beginning of this review, the pacing of this anime is far to fast. Important events are blown through without giving viewers time to analyze the situation and figure out if they should care about what is happening in a given scene. Instead the anime just pushes you ahead as if saying "No time to dilly dally, keep walking, nothing to see here" WHAT ARE YOU HIDING FROM ME DEADMAN WONDERLAND?!
All jokes aside, I assume it was done this way in order to squeeze as much out of the manga story into the 12 episodes that they had to work with. If it had paced itself out, given me maybe 26 episodes, and given me a conclusion that didn't leave so many unanswered questions, I would have given this anime a 7 or an 8. I give Deadman Wonderland a 6/10. Nothing makes me angrier than an ending that makes me want more when there's no chance for a season 2.
