The story centers around Ritsuka Aoyagi, a grade school boy who lost all of his memories two years prior to the start of the series. At that time, he also did a complete 180 in personality, going from an outgoing and popular boy who didn't have the best grades to a student with perfect grades who avoids any kind of social interaction. This apparently put such a strain on his mother that she began frequently beating him (and much worse in the manga) and claiming that he isn't her son, but someone else in her son's body. Apparently, if he does anything that the old Ritsuka wouldn't do, his mother will beat him. Things were at least tolerable for awhile, since his older brother, Seimei, protected him from his mother's beatings, but then Seimei was discovered burned to death in Ritsuka's classroom. The anime itself begins after all this when Ritsuka is transferred to a new class. A girl named Yuiko tries to befriend him, but Ritsuka regards her coldly since she's only doing it because her classmates put her up to it. After receiving harsh criticism from Ritsuka, Yuiko decides not to be pushed around by her classmates anymore and pushes for a genuine friendship with Ritsuka. After that, Ritsuka meets Soubi, a man who claims to be an old friend of Seimei's. Soubi tells Ritsuka about his arrangement with Seimei that if anything were to happen to Seimei, Soubi would "belong" to Ritsuka. Soubi turns out to be Seimei's "sentouki," a companion who would fight battles with magic, while Seimei was the "sacrifice," or the person who would take the damage in these battles. Since Seimei is now dead, Soubi must become Ritsuka's sentouki and Ritsuka will become the sacrifice.
Oh, and did I mention that it's a huge plot point that virgins have cat ears? Yeah, way to throw random sex into the plot. That's one thing I really hate.
However, after that huge info dump, nothing is really completely explained again. Most of the episodes consist of Soubi battling another pair of magic fighters and trying to protect Ritsuka in between molesting him. The story itself is so poorly explained that I had no idea what was going on half the time and ended up consulting wikipedia and the manga several times during the course of an episode, and that is not a good thing. I gave it a decent rating merely because it was interesting, but it never did anything more than that. I never really even knew why half these characters were fighting other than some taboo about the fact that Ritsuka and Soubi shouldn't be a team because both their names aren't "Loveless" or something like that. The only thing I could understand was the adult molesting the child frequently. Hooray for pedophilia, I guess! Especially on an already traumatized and broken child!
The art was...well, it was actually fairly good, at least on the characters. The backgrounds were a bit lazy most of the time, but at least the magic battles usually looked good, and the character designs were at least distinct. However, the style reminded me a lot of Higurashi in that, while it used bright colors, it always looked like there was a film over the animation giving it a weird misty look that seemed out of place, though that could be because of the poorly done backgrounds.
The sound was easily the best part of the show. I can't really say the dub of either language was particularly outstanding, but the soundtrack was done by Yuki Kajiura. 'Nuff said. It's far from being her best work, but it's Yuki Kajiura nonetheless. What's not to like?
The characters are not so lucky. Most of them are boring, unlikable, or underdeveloped. The worst offender of this is Soubi himself. Since he's one of the two main characters, he should be someone the audience can cheer for and want to see succeed, or at least care somewhat about what he's doing. I really didn't feel anything toward him, even when part of his history as revealed. He has very little personality, and he's constantly flip-flopping when it comes to his actions. I can at least understand his motives of wanting to keep Ritsuka safe, but it's hard to relate to that when he's such a shameless pedophile. The only reason I gave the characters a decent rating is because of Ritsuka. He wouldn't have much of an effect if he was a side character, but as a main character he does well. He has a very distinct personality, and his development is very well handled. Sure, he starts off rather depressed at first, but he has every right to be, and unlike some anime characters he does grow quite a lot. His circumstances barely change at all, so the fact that he's able to change his attitude is impressive.
However, the fact that Ritsuka's such a good character actually works against the series. When you actually care about a character, it's not enjoyable to watch him suffer so much without any happy ending in sight. Nobody who knows about his abuse is doing anything about it, even Soubi who claims to love him. Soubi's sexual advances on a boy who's underage even in Japan, especially one who has enough mental trauma on top of amnesia and a possible personality disorder, is just disgusting. I continued watching until the end in order to see something good finally happen to this kid, and it really doesn't. I could barely stand a moment of this, so the enjoyment factor was very low. I was able to enjoy the few quiet moments Ritsuka had with his friends, at least, but that's about it.
All in all, there were a few things in this series that were okay, and the main character is really good. However, it's just unpleasant to watch and I find the fact that all of this is fetishized to be disgusting. Any time I hear someone praising this series, I feel a little sick inside. I suppose people are allowed to like what they want, but I personally find this show terrible. The overall score of 3 out of 10 is surprisingly generous, and I only gave it because of Ritsuka and the soundtrack by Yuki Kajiura. That's all.
