Story:
Everything seems to be going right for Mikage Aya. She has a good relationship with her twin, Aki. They're about to celebrate their sixteenth birthday. And she just floated to safety after falling from a high place and was caught by a handsome passer-by to boot. Then they find out that they have to celebrate with their entire family and Aya quickly finds herself marked as a danger to the family and with the personality of her own celestial ancestor, Ceres, inside her body.
Let me start by saying, there are some interesting ideas in this. Sure, the whole body swapping thing was also in 3x3 Eyes and it isn't the first anime to be about a powerful family turning on one of their own but that doesn't mean it can't use those ideas very well. And there was a point where I thought it might turn out to be a decent anime, possibly even really good.
Unfortunately, the series goes out of its way to drop, weaken or outright destroy every potentially interesting idea it uses with horrendous execution. Tooya's back story is absolute rubbish once it gets explained. The whole element of examining the dark side of old fables is destroyed towards the end when the ultimate facts are revealed. Aki's struggle against the Progenitor gets dropped until the very end where it suffers a very anti-climactic conclusion. Even a potentially interesting loss gets reversed because the writer doesn't have the ovarian fortitude to let tragedy befall the main cast.
Everything with the potential to be interesting falling apart isn't even the only narrative problem with the series. The romance is absolutely horrendous. It pretty much starts with "I barely know you but I love you so huggy muggy much." Moves into "I love you, but we can't be together because plot contrivances are happening." And just keeps going with more melodramatic nonsense and a complete rubbish dynamic betwixt the leads. The series also suffers from that old syndrome of bad writing, All these characters are morons whenever it suits the plot. The powerful, "secretive" Mikage family literally sends attack helicopters after people on crowded roads on more than one occasion. Because nothing helps keep your evil plans secret like a massive public display that anyone within a twenty kilometre radius will notice. There's also Aya who quite literally lets herself get captured and nearly has horrible things happen to her multiple times because she can't be bothered to let Ceres take over for no adequately explored reason.
Characters:
At best, the characters in this series are mediocre. And that's mostly the Aogiri family characters. Aya is a rubbish heroine. She never moves past the whiny little damsel in distress stage. She makes Fushigi Yuugi's Miaka look like a strong independent woman who doesn't need any man. Tooya is a boring character with less personality than a bit of lint stuck in your navel. The antagonists are basically just scumbags who do bad things that make very little sense so that they can twirl their imaginary moustaches. Ceres starts out as the most interesting character but a lot of what makes her interesting is the whole element of exploring the dark side of folk tales and she just becomes dull as soon as that element gets dropped.
Art:
The artwork is mostly fine. The character designs are a bit bland. The action sequences aren't very good but they're passable. The backgrounds are pretty decent. The animation uses some definite short cuts but it's fine.
Sound:
The acting is sub-par, at best. Remember how in 3x3 Eyes Hayashibara Megumi did the voices for both Pai and Parvati but managed to make them sound distinct and very different? Well, the director for this series clearly didn't have that much faith in Aya's actress, Kakazu Yumi, since they got a second actress, Iwao Junko, to voice Ceres. I know Kakazu isn't a bad actress since she voiced both Yuffie and Aizawa Mint. That being said, I understand that decision when I listen to her acting in this. It's a pretty pitiful performance. Very whiny, over the top overly melodramatic during the rubbish purple prose scenes. Whereas Iwao has the strongest performance in the series and even hers is just okay. Definitely not on par with her performances in anime like Perfect Blue or Cardcaptor Sakura. Sakai Ryou's music is definitely the best element of the series. It's quite good. Well composed, nice to listen to, it would be suitable for the series even if the series had decent execution.
Ho-yay:
There's none to be seen. Which is probably for the best given how bad this series is at romance.
Areas of Improvement:
1. Know when to commit. One of the huge issues with this series comes down to the simple fact that they back pedal on certain aspects that could have been interesting and just undo them or heavily weaken them to make the story more generic. Which only serves to make it utter tripe.
2. Actually develop your romance. This purple prose, melodramatic shite they've got is not a good romance. It's not even good enough to be sub-par romance.
3. Have your characters do things that make sense. Does it make sense for a powerful, secretive family to try to eliminate certain people it sees as threatening to its power? Sure. Does it make sense for them to use the most bombastic, attention grabbing methods possible to eliminate people? Fuck no. That's exceptionally stupid, in fact.
Final Thoughts:
Ayashi no Ceres is a pretty bad series. It didn't have to be. It had good ideas. It had potential. It started out pretty decently. But then you factor in the terrible romance, the crappy characterisation that never improves and to top it all off they toss out everything that could have been compelling and make it all rubbish. My final rating for Ayashi no Ceres is going to be a 2/10.
