Aoi Bungaku Series has an interesting idea of adapting famous short novels, but falls short trying to do six of them in 12 episodes of about 24 minutes an episode. What is really fun about this is that every episode starts with a real Japanese man generally informing you what the story is about and information about the author.
No longer human (episode 1-4): This one I thought was the most interesting one. It tells the story of a young man that no longer believes he is humans and merely a "ghost". This is mostly because he simply doesn't understand humans, is alienated by his father because he wanted to be an artist and as a child several women had taken advantage of him (not that he seemed to mind, but still). He is tormented by the fact that he failed his double suicide with the woman he loved and is called a murderer by society. Even after that he wants to try being human and fit in while living by a reporter and her child. Of course all good things end. He ends up in a cycle of alcohol and sex with the female bartender. He really breaks after the talk with the child he had grown fond of and who even called him her dad. He runs away from the conversation and later has a nice talk about how society is just a group of people with the woman that constantly criticised him for drinking so much. The conversation made him care less about being human and she becomes his goddes. In the last episode they're married because apparently she really didn't want him to be a drunkard. They buy an appartment together wich he pays for as a succesful manga artist, which may only be because of the favours his wife has done. Those favours cause her to be raped, witnessed by him and his friend who doesn't really matter overall and came to say goodbye because he's going to work for the Japanese army.
She wants to kill herself after the rape, but he stops her and tries to kill himself instead. It ends with him escaping the hospital, going to some woman that looks like the double suicide woman and asking her for some drugs to stop the pain.
Yeah, pretty anticlimactic. The most annoying thing to me was that he is just engulfed with despair and never really reflects on his emotions and actions.
Sakura no Mori no Mankai no Shita (episode 5-6): This one is a weird one. It starts simple- there lives a kind bandit in the mountains that doesn't kill and occasionally kidnaps cute woman to become his wife. Also, he has a big fear for cherry blossom that never really is explained. There's also this boar that can talk for some reason as a background character. In short, the bandit lives happily with his wives until he meets another beautiful lady, but this one's from the city. She causes him to kill almost everybody and lets him deliver their heads to her, because that's what she's into. In the end he wants to go back to the mountain, he hates the city. She agrees, he takes her to the mountain, but for some reason he walks to the cherry blossoms that are in bloom and which he is afraid of. His wife turns into a demon on his back, so he starts to choke her. Plot twist: she wasn't a demon, the bandit was the woman all along, she is dead, he may be dead and glasses waifu is alive and well with Boar-kun and waiting for someone to return as the note told her that was left behind in the house he had stolen for the new wife.
This story is all over and may be liked (or hated) because of its cryptic storytelling at the end. Doesn't excuse the weird out of place comedy that you find in your typical slice of life comedies. The highlights of this story were the songs new wife sang.
Kokoro (episode 7-8): This is about the love triangle between an ojou-sama, a 'sensei' and a monk. The first episode is seen from sensei's perspective, with the monk being pretty intimidating and ojou-sama being a victim of his mannerisms. Sensei warns him not to go for her and monk says he's not into her. Monk commits suicide after he learns sensei and ojou-sama are going to get married, sensei marries ojou-sama and is still not happy because of the suicide that haunts him forever.
Then the second episode begins, from monk's perspective. He sees the world as a bleak place, with ojou-sama, the sunflower of his world, being the only one that literally brings color in his life. He sees sensei as intimidating and tries not to fall for her, but does. It's mutual ad they want to elope because of the arranged marriage with sensei. They plan to meet up at the train, where for some reason she doesn't show up even though it was her idea. This causes him to go into some meltdown, he tries to kill sensei, but decides killing himself is a better idea. He does leave a message that he didn't regret it as it was his warmest winter. This story is pretty straighforward, nothing really special aside from the color change with monk's POV.
Run, Melos! (episode 9–10): A playwright writes a play based on the story "Run, Melos", and deals with his own feelings of betrayal towards his childhood friend. Also very straightforward, but the scenes where they tell the story through an actual play were pretty interesting and well done.
The spider's threat (episode 11): There's this evil bandit that kills for fun, he kills some kid's mom and is stabbed by him later on. This causes him to get caught later on and publically excecuted. But because he didn't completely stab a spider while trying to escape from the city guards (this scene was so stupid) he gets a chance to escape hell. Of course he fails because he kicks other sinners from the string and calls it his own. it breaks, everyone falls back into hell, the end. They probably should've focussed more on hell and not on the bandit being an asshole and killing people honestly. Then it could've at least looked cooler.
Hell Screen (episode 12): Takes place in the same universe as epoisode 11. The greatest painter in the country, is commissioned to draw his greatest work, an image of the king's country inside his mausoleum. But the king's an asshole so the kingdom is absolute shit for the commoners. So he wants to show that. In the end the daughter and king die in a fire and that inspires the painter to draw hell instead of suffering commoners, also, evil bandit guy is in the painting for some reason. Then the painter dies laying on his greatest work. Pretty stupid how it ended, but my opinion doesn't matter.
Overall, the stories weren't well done, although most were at least interesting. The characters weren't that interesting though, everything seemed to focus more on the story itself. Maybe they just should've made a short anime series for each short novel and call all those the Aoi Bungaku Series so they could've gone more into detail and wrap it all up better.
The art is solid as to be expected from Madhouse. As for the music, there were some really good scores, but the rest was okay.
Not bad, not good, a fair 6 six for you, from me.
EXTRA: In the short novel of No Longer Human the ending was decent/good so you can buy that book and read it for a better story overall. As for the other works, I'm fairly sure they're better from reading their synopsis. Like Kokoro, which has a lot more to tell than the anime had shown.
