Warning: If you're expecting some mystery in this anime then I would suggest you to immediately drop the idea.
Story: 5/10
"The fake is of far greater value. In its deliberate attempt to be real, it's more real than the real thing."-Kaiki Deishu
This is not a mystery anime, instead it looks like a fantasy anime.
If I were to compare this anime to a piece of art, it would be some popular painting like the Mona lisa. Looking at it in the surface, many people are praising it and it is good to look at that the visuals are jaw dropping. But upon closer inspection, you will see that the painting has too many impurities, it is imperfect, far from the original. Well in short, it is fake trying very hard to become real and deceive some people. After watching it, I feel like this anime is trying so hard to call itself a work of art when in reality it is not.
Good points:
Don't get me wrong. The start of this series is very good. There were symbolism used, and some of them are pretty clever. The flashbacks are timed well and the character backstories are good. Dark themes are used. I also liked how the series ended(not the epilogue). Pretty much the synopsis is the crux of the first episode, we have the 3 characters kanba, shouma and himari. Himari is terminally ill so she won't live very long. So after some little timeskip, she died, her death is somehow temporarily reversed by the penguin hat that she had asked for. It's a provisional resurrection, however, and it comes at a price, to keep Himari alive they need to find the mysterious Penguin Drum and so the 2 brothers go onto a journey to find this penguindrum. So far the story is ok, there were some introduction of new characters here and there, and there were some small twists at the start. But!
Bad points:
After a couple of episodes, the story completely went 180 degrees. Simply put, the plot hole of this anime is even bigger than your house. The story is very inconsistent and illogical. There were a lot of plot devices used in this show that were just used to complement the situation. Normally, I won't bat an eye on those things, but on this anime it was too much and it really irritated me. Like for example, what the hell is with those memory-erasing ping pong balls. After those were introduced, I simply facepalmed myself and try to tell myself to ignore it. Another thing is that, in the middle of the story, I really felt that I rode an up and down roller coaster only to find that the roller coaster is only 3 meters high. Some of the scenes are also overdramatized(I guess this is shoujo drama) that I was laughing very hard or facepalming myself. The shifting of tone is also really fast that I was thinking if this show is mocking is viewers. There was this one episode that showed a flashback of someones grandfather, the tone shifted from serious to funny vise-versa very fast and not only that. After some lots of shifting, the grandfather died in a stupidly way like WTF? Oh I almost forgot! The numerous symbolism used in this show! To be honest, if you asked me, there are two types of symbolism, first is the one that contributes a lot to the development of the story and the second one is the one that even if we find out what it is, the viewer doesn't even care because it contributes very little to the story. For me, most of it sadly falls for the second one, I just didn't care even if I find out something about it. I wasn't like, "OH LOOK AT EPISODE _ THERE WAS A SYMBOLISM USED TO SHOW BLAH BLAH BLAH, WOW BEST ANIME EVER". Instead, I was like, "Oh ok, meh". Lastly, there was only slight to none foreshadowing used to hint what was going to happen next. Characters magically appearing in the scene was commonly used. There was this one character shown in the early episodes with less than 5 minutes total screen time and this same character magically appeared in the later episodes and guess what? HE PERFORMED SOME WTF PLOT TWISTS.
In a mystery anime, the plot is its foundation. If the plot fails, then everything fails and that is what happened in this anime.
Art and Sound: 9/10 and 8/10 respectively
The saving grace of this anime is the art. I watched the BD release and I was amazed at the animation. Backgrounds are totally good. Some scenes reminded me that I was watching some shaft animation. Some scenes were recycled. The Character designs look shoujo-ish to me but for me, its not a problem.
The sound is also good. I'm not really a fan of the OP and ED. Overall, good but not outstanding.
Character: 3/10
Oh god, this is terrible. Most characters shown in this anime are again inconsistent. Their motives are very inconsistent. They tend to flip 180 degrees in one episode and flip 180 again in the same episode. I will not be surprised if Ikuhara Kunihiko reveals that these characters have Dissociative identity disorder. But the biggest problem of all is that, IN 22 LONG EPISODES, these characters didn't seem to grow at all. There were a few exceptions like kanba which I will mention later. BUT IN 22 LONG EPISODES, these characters seemed to wail like a baby saying that this is the curse of fate. Granted they are given backstories which are sad but for 22 episodes, hey aren't they overdoing it? Watching these characters reminded me of Suou Amane of Grisaia no Kajitsu(the Visual Novel). However, in that novel, amane changed while these characters did not(or at least did not for at least 22 episodes). What irritates me more is that, there was an inconsistent use of emotion of the characters in the face of adversity/tragedies. Remember Himari? Yeah she's only a plot device. Ok anyway, *Warning minor spoiler* well yeah, she died multiple times in the course of the show *end of spoiler*. What happened in these characters was that, they cried, YES! THEY CRIED EVERYTIME IT HAPPENED LIKE IT WAS THE FIRST TIME which seemed really unusual. Shows like Steins;Gate, Madoka Magica perfectly portrayed these characters changing in repeated tragedies while this anime failed HORRIBLY. The only thing they did right was Kanba, good thing he at least changed throughout the show. There were also characters that also changed but it really didn't matter or it was too late.
Enjoyment: 5/10
I enjoyed the first part at least, but the second part ruined it. It was a struggle to finish this entire series. This show reminded me of Chaos;Head which also started good only to fail later. I was also Irritated in the epilogue because too many problems were never solved, the character back stories were mostly never resolved like there was not a proper conclusion of the series. In the end for me, this anime is like a wasted potential.
Overall: 5/10
I started watching this show because many called it a work of art/masterpiece. I looked into countless reviews and the majority said that it was good. Sadly for me, the minority who said that this show is bad is true. Throwing random crap is what really ruined the show. Best anime of 2011? Really? This anime is lightyears away from Steins;Gate, Madoka Magica, Fate/Zero which shook the audience while it is still airing in the same year.
Recommendation: Do not watch. But I guess if you turn your brain off and just accept what the author is throwing in the plot, only then you might enjoy this series.
Recommended Related Anime: Shinsekai Yori
If you have already watched this and (miraculously)liked it then I would suggest this. Both shows have Dark themes attached to them and this anime is good.
Ok then, Before you press the unhelpful button, I would like to say that there were 0 penguins that were harmed in the making of this show.
