STORY:
Mekakucity Actors is an anime about a group of teenagers that have been granted supernatural powers due to various accidents. The story is told on various fronts, and details from the distant and recent past are told in flashbacks at strategic points. The entire present portion takes place over one day – if I’m not missing something.
The first episode makes for a great hook, but for the full effect, you need to watch the next one or two episodes, as they happen at roughly the same time from different perspectives.
There is a lot of talking, so prepare yourself. I had the same problem with this anime as I did with the first season of the Monogatari Series (Bake-) which was that there was really no cool off for the tension, so watching felt very tedious. There is some action, but it’s really nothing special and is generally over in a few seconds.
There are a few emotional moments but they lack a real punch.
The story itself isn’t that hard to comprehend, but by the end there were some major details left out. All the skipping around can be tiring. Towards the end it seemed as if everything would be wrapped up quite well, but in the last two episodes there was too much material for the allotted time.
ART+ANIMATION:
The background art is great. There is a lot of metaphorical meaning behind the backgrounds ranging from sterile, repeating industrial elements, to average looking neighborhoods and schools, to chaotic traffic signals and power lines. If you have seen works by Shaft before, you will recognize it immediately.
The animation is also very Shaft, with the over-the-top neck craning and interesting idle animations to fill the ocean of talking. There is one scene that uses horrifyingly bad CGI but it is just that once.
I won’t pretend to know anything about the source material, but from what I hear, Mekakucity Actors is based around the music videos of each of the characters. The music itself is great, but the lyrics are so dependent on the story that out of context would seem a little weird – at least that’s my impression based on the likely cut versions included occasionally in the show. The in-show background music is mostly absent in Shaft style, but what is there is generally somewhat dreary.
Sound effects are good.
CHARACTERS:
The characters in Mekakucity Actors are various teenagers who have been unconsciously intertwined in each other’s fates due to the events of the story.
The characters all have decent depth and major archetypes are all but absent. Most of the character development happened over the course of time between the chronologically first flashback and the present day. Every character is given time for backstory.
Character design is very good. The characters are meant to look video-gamey. There are a few scenes where they wear school uniforms, but otherwise they wear more casual clothing.
The voice acting is top-notch. There are a few big names present, as well as a few of my favorites from Shaft’s other projects.
ENJOYMENT:
This show looked to me at first as if it would be really exciting. I loved the Monogatari Series as a whole, with the art and various story-arcs. I was hoping for a similar feeling of involvement in Mekakucity Actors, but by the very end I had too many questions. The ending feels quite rushed and full of BS. Had the show been given another episode to get everything to properly stick it would have been much better. Alternatively, they could have spent a little less time on some of the less useful conversations and mood-setting in order to invest more time in the end.
I first heard about this anime through character art, mostly of Ene. I really liked her super-hacker theme, but was disappointed when she and Shintarou took a backseat in the show.
There was large amount of talking for the sake of backstory and huge build-up to the underwhelming end - of course I was left disappointed. There isn’t much humor to lighten the mood either.
The music videos were enjoyable, even with the occasionally edgy lyrics.
OVERALL:
A great exercise in character building and metaphorical art. Overall very well produced, but left feeling disappointed in the end.
