-Story-
'D'Eon' begins with the best first episode I have ever seen, hands down. It's fast-paced, exciting, and establishes the setting clearly without resorting to infodumps. I was completely hooked and expecting the ride of my life. And it's a very good ride for the first arc, but when the second arc starts things begin to go off the rails. While 'D'Eon' establishes itself as a supernatural murder mystery set in pre-Revolutionary France, it makes a jarring transition to political conspiracy about halfway through. The cast seems to forget exactly what they came to do and get tied up in political arcs that are only tangentially related to finding Lia d'Beaumont's murderer. The ending certainly has emotional impact, but so many *WHAT A TWIST* moments are thrown on screen that it can be hard to piece everything together. The magic system behind the supernatural elements is never fully explained, there seem to be no hard and fast rules such as "Equivalent Exchange" to give it order and structure. But it does have plenty of 'cool' factor in that the spells are activated by quoting various Biblical Psalms (although the one quoted most often is not Biblical but written specifically for the anime).
The main theme of the story is loyalty: what are you loyal to? The old order is being challenged by the rise of the Enlightenment and the French monarchy is blissfully unaware of how close the country is to a full-scale eruption of chaos and ambition- exactly who and what do you swear loyalty too? Family, individuals, institutions, ideals? What price are you prepared to pay for your loyalty? How far are you willing to go? And what happens when loyalties conflict? The topic is covered in moderate depth, but never truly delivers any revelations beyond how hard it can be to pick the right side when the world is shaking around you- good but not earth-shattering. In short the story needed tightening up and better flow to take full advantage of its cool elements.
-Art-
When the art wants to be beautiful, it can be beautiful. During fight scenes animation fluidity is excellent even by 2015 standards, the lighting is dramatic, and the backdrops are gorgeous. The catch is that more low-key moments clearly have more basic art. Detail drops noticeably during long-distance shots and you can occasionally catch the character designs going off-model. If quality could have been consistently maintained this would be a 9 or 10, but alas it's hit-and-miss. The character designs are solid, none truly stand out as unique, but given that this story takes place within the context of (alternate) history there's only so far that they can go. Still, the designs made the characters immediately recognizable, which is important given the size of the cast. The CGI is fairly well integrated for its day, but the CGI's best work is in a case where it DOESN'T fit perfectly: the mercury blood of the Gargoyle monsters is done in CGI and doesn't quite match the 2D animation it's paired with- which gives it a very otherworldly feel. The art has its stunning high points, but it's clear money and effort was spent unevenly.
-Sound-
A high point of this anime. The English dub actors all manage to fit the characters well, and Funimation avoided reusing well-know voices (as they are known to do fairly often). D'Eon sounds confused but passionate about his cause. Durand gives little verbal clues that he's cynical, calculating, and not showing all his cards. Robin sound young and devoted without being annoying (not the easiest feat), and Teillagory fits the cool old man archetype to a 'T'. The side characters have no weak points worth mentioning. I do have a pet peeve in a couple scenes where a ship's horn is clearly heard, even though it's a century too early for such an invention. The opening fits but doesn't stand out, while the excellent ending song "Over Night" by Aya has a very brooding, cold, and distant tone that has me looking it up on YouTube to this day. The background music sets the tone, but does little else.
-Characters-
There is some potential to work with here (The Queen of France carries around the skull of a small girl- don't tell me there's nowhere that could go) but overall development is fairly weak. The high point is Durand, he actually surprised me by showing sides of his character that didn't mesh with his initial impression, but still made sense given the development shown. D'Eon has an intriguing premise in that he is constantly battling his sister's vengeful soul for the possession of his body (Jekyll and Hyde conflicts are fascinating for me) but his exact goals as a character are unclear. He DOES want to find his sister's murderer, but that storyline loses impact with all the aforementioned detours and delays the plot takes (though I believe he's supposed to be a conflicted character, so I'll go a bit easy on this weakness). Robin's arc was fairly obvious (nobody that idealistic gets through an anime like this unscathed), and Teillagory got rushed and not entirely convincing development at the last minute. The villains are uninspiring as well (except for a gleefully psychopathic man-child in Peter III of Russia) with no clear motivation beyond starting the French Revolution ahead of schedule.
-Enjoyment-
I was hooked from the very first episode, which played directly into a lot my biases by using a number of my favorite genres. But this anime suffers from a clear case of 'The Sagging Middle' and some episodes between the first and final arcs I simply watched in order to not risk missing anything important. A re-watch also showed some cracks in the story I overlooked back on the first run through. Still, it's a historical fiction Gothic horror mystery thriller, so I never hated it (I can't exactly find a lot of anime in THAT particular genre anyway) and it's positives do make it moderately enjoyable.
-Overall-
A series that blew its potential is worse than a series that never had any, in my book. Refocusing on a more simple "Find the guy who did it and get him" plot would probably have helped the story (the recent American film "True Grit" used this plot very well) and digging deeper into the characters never hurts anything. But for all its faults, it's still worth a watch for people who like its genre (but fans of other genres will probably be harder to win over). DANG IT I REALLY WANTED THIS TO BE EXCELLENT AND ALL I GOT WAS A BIT ABOVE AVERAGE. (I'm going to go read 'Dracula' or 'Jekyll and Hyde' now, I need some Gothic Horror...)
