- - - S T O R Y - - -
Okay, so the story starts off really dark with some creepy kid who avoids making friends. He keeps a daily journal of the things he observes. He likes to spend his spare time sitting alone in his room with a blanket wrapped around himself, where he gets into "the zone" and hangs out with his imaginary friends, who are evil gods that have no regard for human life. At this point in the story, it's got you thinking this is pretty twisted and you're wondering what's gonna happen next.
The basic plot is simple, but effective - kill the other guys before they kill you; the winner becomes the god of space and time. Not knowing the identities of the other people turns it into a sort of psychological game, which makes it more interesting. Now, this was good when the enemies actually desired to become a god, but later in the story, there are characters who don't really care about that. So, you think they'd just stay out of things and keep their identities hidden? Nope! They attack the main characters head on for no apparent reason.
Anyway, about halfway through the series, it starts to get pretty senseless. Eighth's diary is based on the power of a computer server. Why? They didn't really explain this, so it makes no sense to have an ability like that. I can speculate and say it's because Eighth didn't actually have a diary and that the blog site she hosted allowed other people to write on "HER" blog, but c'mon. That's as stupid as saying that the cell phone diaries belong to the phone manufacturers. This part of the story also just really overcomplicates things without making it interesting. It just becomes less interesting as it is nonsensical.
Yukiteru eventually has a little revelation, causing him to change from a wimp into James Bond. Um... I guess it was cool to have a main character who acted more like a main character, but this was far too sudden and out of character. Akise reveals a "shocking truth" about Yuno, which is supposed to be like some ultimate plot twist... except they didn't give us enough clues to make it worth anything when they revealed it. The plot twist only makes sense after you've seen the entire thing, so it um... kinda fails as a plot twist.
There ends up being some big final battle between two characters that we really didn't get to know or care about. It's a battle with lots of beams and explosions, which uh... seems really out of place. It's like this anime was trying to be too much at once. The last episode doesn't really conclude things, so prepare yourself for some disappointment.
- - - A R T - - -
The art was okay, but it seemed a little cheaply animated at times. It seems up to standards, but sometimes it just stuck out to me how the animators looked like they got lazy.
Somehow, it feels like Yuno was in her underwear too often for no reason.
- - - S O U N D - - -
Nothing in particular really stood out. Same high pitched female voices you hear in any other anime.
- - - C H A R A C T E R S - - -
Oh boy, here we go.
Yukiteru - He starts of being some creepy kid like I mentioned earlier. This was interesting. He's kinda wussy, like any average 12 year old boy would be, but he's not unlikeable. It took him a while to realize how he felt about Yuno, but it was good to see the progress - it made it believable. His character does a sudden 180 later in the story. This kinda ruins his character since there was no real development leading up to that and no real development afterwards; he was just suddenly a completely different person. This was disappointing.
Yuno - She's a "stalker", which um... is a weird concept in itself. When you think of a stalker, you think of a 50 year old pedophile or something. In Japan, for some reason, I guess they consider kids and teenagers "stalkers" if they watch the person they have a crush on. Anyway, Yuno is supposed to be some psychopath who can only be tamed by Yukiteru's love. Can he help her calm down and give up her lunatic ways? Find out next episode!
It was fine that way. We could see their relationship develop. Then at the peak of Yukiteru's love and trust in Yuno, the writers thought they'd give us a plot twist? It was one of the stupidest plot twists I've ever seen. It ruined Yuno's credibility as a character and was just... why? What was the point? It made no sense at all for that to happen. They had what they wanted, so why the fuck would things downgrade to the point that their relationship might as well have never existed? They should've stuck to building her up into a respectable character instead of um... ruining the entire series. This was disappointing.
Eighth - What the fuck is she? Seriously. Her existence simply does not make sense. She is a chibi middle aged woman who is also gigantic. She is clearly not human, but nobody cares.
Eighth's Lucky Star apprentice girl - She was part of the Sacred Eye cult, then she became a member of Eighth's orphanage. In world 3, she is simply with Eighth, though. What a plot hole.
Akise - He's pretty much the only cool character. However, he is gay and kisses Yukiteru for no reason. Was that supposed to be a plot twist? I don't even know anymore...
Ninth - She's kinda stupid. She introduces herself in some kinda Victorian dress and big poofy pigtails, yet she's supposed to be some terrorist who specializes in explosives. She's loud and pretends to act a little crazy. She falls in love with the person she thought she killed, she becomes friends with the person who destroys her eye, and she plays a big plot hole role later in the story. This was disappointing.
- - - E N J O Y M E N T - - -
The plot was really enjoyable at first... y'know, before they butchered it. There was some mild fanservice, which we easily could've lived without. It was a strange kind of fanservice, though. Yuno's swimsuit falling off and floating gently down the stream? A pretty typical occurrence that happens to every anime girl at least once in her life, right? Instead of making her panic and bounce all over, instead of making her use this to seduce Yukiteru, instead of drawing her looking like she's ready to be raped... they honestly made it a pretty modest event. Yukiteru also accidentally pulls a girl's pants down, exposing her underwear, but they didn't draw the girl to look sexy or anything. She was simply a girl with her underwear exposed. These scenes were 100% unnecessary and added nothing, of course, but I was glad that they didn't try to make it look like hentai.
There are also 2 rape scenes and 1 sex scene, but they leave it entirely up to your imagination instead of making it really graphic. Again, I'm glad they didn't try to make it look like hentai. People can watch porn on their own time; it has no place in telling a story, and I can respect that this anime didn't ruin itself with that. However, I have to say that using rape in a story is pretty tasteless, lazy, and overdone. Getting to know the backstories of these characters, becoming a little emotionally invested in them, then they just have something like that happen to them... it's just a disgusting thought. I can understand if they wanted to make the characters tragic or like we could know more about them by seeing their hardships, but rape is just kinda crossing the line. It's not interesting and it's too harsh for simple entertainment.
I think the two most interesting things in the anime are the relationship Yuno and Yukiteru develop (before the retarded plot twist kicks in) and the betrayals. This anime has a lot of thrilling betrayals in the first half. The ones in the later half are kinda boring since you don't get setup to believe in the trust the characters share.
- - - O V E R A L L - - -
This had a lot of potential to be good. It's really disappointing they ruined it with all those inconsistent and random ideas. I wouldn't recommend it to anyone, really, as it is just a big let down. If I knew ahead of time that the story was gonna go downhill so badly, I don't think I would've watched it.
