The story of Mekakucity Actors was, as I believe most people know, based upon an anthology of vocaloid songs. I think that this is already a very fresh, new adaptation, since most anime are based off light novels, manga, visual novels, etc.
However, this new concept doesn’t seem to be a very good one. I have heard, on a number of different sites (including MAL) that it is hard to understand if you haven’t read the manga (I think?), you will find it confusing. I’m going to verify that.
As someone who had neither listened to the songs, nor read the manga beforehand, I’ve got to say that this is possible the most confusing storyline I have encountered so far.
For starters, the layout of the episode is all wrong - they still have a vitally important story elements after the ending theme. As someone who prefers to skip to the next episode rather than sitting for another two minutes listening to the ending theme (unless I absolutely love it), I almost missed it.
That aside, the story is very disjointed. Flashbacks come and go without warning, so it often took me a few moments to realise that I had just watched a flashback, after having wondered why a certain event is going on at that moment. This contributed to the overall confusing aspect of this anime.
The story element also managed, somehow, to be incredibly slow-paced yet rushed, sometimes simultaneously. At the tenth episode, I was still wondering when the real action was going to start. It did in episode 12, but was so confusing that I didn’t value it at all.
In truth, the storyline didn’t meet my expectations at all. I was foolishly thinking that their red eye powers would come into use more than twice. I don’t think Seto’s powers came into play even once.
At first, I liked the fact that every episode concentrated on a different character, but I think that in the end, it pulled away from the actual storyline, as well as took away screen time from a considerably large amount of characters (Hibiya especially).
Had the series been executed more intelligently, perhaps even with more episodes, I am sure that it would have been a lot let confusing and much more enjoyable. The first few episodes were understandable, but the last few, notably, were incredibly rushed and even more confusing. Story gets a ‘4’.
The art element was very mediocre. Usually, scenery is a saving grace for most anime - not for this one, though. This was quite obviously a low budget anime, and so the art was not as enjoyable as it should have been. Characters were also affected. Their art was nothing special, and some traits were very strange, such as the tear ducts, or the often absence of pupils, changing eye colours (not including red eyes), and the very annoying background people. The producers hadn’t even bothered to give them traits, so all they were were gray figures. However, at the end of the day, I drew both Ene and Ayano, so it wasn’t all that bad.
The colour themes in particular were quite depressing and badly chosen. Often, there were colour themes, such as yellow, and as a result, the sky, sea and ground were yellow. In one of the episodes, the sky was red, in another, there were a whole bunch of tombstones, all black. Other times, elements, including characters, were simply white with black outlines. These were mainly scenery elements, but Marry appears to have white-white skin, which just looks weird. Features were also very ‘straight’ in a sense - instead of curves, there were straight lines and angles a lot of the time. Apart from a few characters, I did not enjoy the art.
The animation also wasn’t very good. Whilst it wasn’t extremes such as things passing through body parts, every time a character was running, it looked as if they were jogging on the spot, unless the viewpoint was from the sky.
I also give the art a ‘5’, since they put so little effort into it.
There was a fair bit of music, presumably since the whole series was based of a series of songs. Personally, the songs weren’t my favourites, but some of them, like ‘Ayano’s Happiness Theory’ and ‘Kisaragi Attention’ grew on me after I had heard them a couple of times.
My personal tastes aside, there was a good amount of music. At times, I found that the music was unfitting. And sometimes, it broke the silence only to make the ensuing silence all the more obvious. Similarly to the storyline, it wasn’t executed in the best way possible.
I really enjoyed the voice acting, though, and found that the voices were very fitting to the characters.
I think sound deserves a '6.5'.
I quite enjoyed the range of characters. Some of them were a little stereotypical, but all in all they were different, and likeable characters who had their own traits.
In line with the storyline, focusing each episode on a different character affected them both positively and negatively. Certain characters appeared all throughout the anime and got very good character development, such as Ene and Momo, others gave a wrong first impression of being notable characters before being forgotten in the shadows, such as Shintarou and Hibiya. I honestly wondered what Shintarou was doing in the anime (except for getting us to discover Ene’s existence), and thought that perhaps Hibiya had been forgotten. Needless to say, this created a huge imbalance between the development of the characters.
Since there were a few good characters which made up for the badly presented ones, I give this element a ‘6’.
Despite getting confused at times during the first 7 episodes, I still found the anime enjoyable and watched several episodes back to back, despite the anime having little to none OMG factor[1]. As the quality of the story line plummeted and the anime got more an more confusing, I started enjoying it less and less. I did not force myself to watch this, yet I did not find it all that enjoyable.
I give enjoyment a ‘4.5’.
Overall, this anime was poorly executed. As a result, the storyline was extremely confusing, the art was very mediocre, there were major imbalances between the characters and I did not enjoy it as much as I should have. I would warn all viewers that they may be disappointed, and I was very much so.
Story: 4/10
Art: 5/10
Sound: 6.5/10
Character: 6/10
Enjoyment: 4.5/10
Overall: 5.2/10 (rounded to a 5)
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[1] OMG factor: what keeps you watching an anime, in essence. Especially predominant at the end of episodes when they leave you with cliffhangers. Personally, what makes me look forwards to watching the next episode.
