I don't think there really is much story...I mean it's like a generic friend story and one friend goes to the dark side and then the light side has to bite the bullet and defeat the dark side and defeat their friend, ya know, Naruto like crap. Queue a shit load of build up trying to make the relationship between the two characters seem more believable and to try and make their final showdown more epic. Not that this series needs its fights to be anymore epic, though.
The animation is incredible, it drops a little but never greatly or enough to ruin the show. And the art in the manga is VERY bad so it was nice to see how nice looking this was, with fluid fights (something else the manga lacked). Everything just looked plain awesome. Plus it was nice to see such random weapons, Irons and Suitcases for example (both of which were surprisingly badass). Plus Yomi is just plain beautiful, I think I'm in love.
I never really know what to say for sound, yeah the soundtracks great, yeah the voice work is great. Pretty much sums it up.
The characters are quite bland, you have a pervert, a gay pervert, a coward, twins, sisters etc etc nothing really pushes the boundaries but all the characters are likeable or funny or hot or use a technique or weapon that makes them badass. You forget how bland they are when they're kicking ass and taking names.
Somehow, someway I feel that 12 episodes was too many, the way they did the intro and outro had way to much overlap (one episode was basically one of the episodes from the beginning with new bits pushed in the gaps), it could have been broken down into half the episodes, same with the flashback within the flashback that took up most of the series and moved way to slowly, I think their could have been other ways to build up the relationship between Kagura and Yomi and it be enjoyable for us at the same time. This could have easily been 3 - 4 episodes shorter in my book and it woulda made it more enjoyable, you got long, slow boring flashback episodes that didn't really seem to fight juxtaposed with incredible action sequences which did fit. I just wish they wouldn't keep taking their foot off the gas pedal. I feel almost that my time was wasted, there seems to be no plans for a sequel and instead of creating a sorta tied up prequel it was more like an intro into the manga, like a really long advert, I think they coulda done more with the episodes, had their own side story that started at episode one and ended at episode twelve.
Overall there needs to be more anime like this, the action was incredible, the story was nothing new but it was the Ga-Rei quirks which made it more than just a generic shounen. Sacred Beasts, Irons, Suitcases, twists and turns and characters that actually get their asses handed to them or died. Storywise it followed all the generic shounen patterns but it completely turned it on its head and it should be remembered for that.
If Bleach was seinen it'd be kinda like this...
I have to make something clear for someone who didn't understand this review. What I liked about this series wasn't so much the content but what the series....stood for.
It took a rather generic shounen story and turned it on it's head. It was dark and bloody and crazy and shounen is aimed for boys whose balls ain't dropped yet. So for that I take my hat off. Too many shounens limit themselves because of what they're but every now and then a series goes "FUCK YOU JUMP!" and does whatever the hell it wants. So yeah the inner flashback was pretty shit. But sometimes it's not just about the content.
