Reviews

Jun 10, 2008
I'll try too keep this review rather short and concise, but I'll probably just start rambling and won't be able to stop myself if I get out of hand. Since I'm such a rambler, please forgive me if it sometimes seems somewhat unorganized even though I'll do some organizing when it's done. If you're not bothered to read the whole things I wrote 3 pros and 3 cons at the bottom.

Personally I watched this before Ayakashi - Japanese Classic Horror which this is a spin-off from and you can go ahead and watch this without having seen it.

First of let me start of with that the art was really intriguing. I like animes with a more experimental approach to the art. Not nearly as experimental and artsy as Mind Game, which remains as my favorite anime-art to date. Sometimes the art just feels like stylized art with a filter put on it, which is pretty lame. Despite that this is one of my favorite arts to date. It goes very well with the stories and really raises the mood and atmosphere rather than just being a medium of information. Not recommended for fans of the stereotypical huge eye school anime style.

The soundtrack is good though it's fairly underused throughout the series. The sound effects feel fitting. The voice actors do their jobs as they should, it feels natural and synchronized with the animation, correct tone etc.. Onto the substance of the anime.

Mononoke is composed of five arcs, all of which are only related by the recurrent main character and similar plotline. The story follows a wandering medicine seller who combats malicious spirits. One gets to observe group psychology as unsuspecting humans confront supernatural as well as life threatening situations. Note that I said observe, one never really feels 'connected' and feels for the characters. It is the result of a main character with nerves of steel and a heart of ice, I'm not saying his character is bad though, it's a very intriguing and interesting one. I really like the main character, I fell in love with him the first episode, so damn cool ^^. This is one of those odd and seemingly emotionless types. There are a few moments where he gets a little too flat (for example in the last arc). You never get a background or introduction on the arc characters, it charges almost immediately into the story. The result is as said before, makes you more of an observer instead of feeling with the characters. This deems the horror part of the story pretty useless since you won’t feel their fear as a spectator. Or I don’t know, maybe I'm just hard to frighten? I hope I don't seem like too much of a "zomg-iem-totali-not-afread-off-anithyng" type :P.

The most important part of the anime are the mystery aspects, figuring out the not so understandable main character and of course the mystery of the Mononoke - the supernatural haunter - itself. The medicine seller needs to know a mononoke's shape (Katachi), truth (Makoto), and reasoning (Kotowari) in order to combat it, as he tries to figure this out you get to know the story of the mononoke as well as the story of the people involved. The mysticism remains truly thick throughout the series. Though each arc has its conclusion, but if you didn't really pay attention and didn't try to figure it out at least partly by yourself the conclusion might not be so clear. One of my favourite pleasures while watching it was the almost surreal symbolism playing mind games with me. It's not quite surrealism though, since surrealism holds no sense at all and most usually no symbolism. This is one of the most thought provoking anime titles I've ever seen. Though I'm sure there are a lot of people out there who have seen A LOT more thought-provoking animes than me, but I'd say that I've had my fair share, I'm pretty sure they'd agree with me anyway.

Here are a few pros and cons. I tried to write what others might consider as cons and pros.

3 Pros (if you consider these as pros):
- Thought-provoking
- Atmospheric
- Interesting and realistic* group psychology scenarios

*Not realistic in the sense that nothing out of this world is occurring but in the sense that the characters react as real human beings would.

3 Cons (if you consider these as cons):
- Unscary horror
- Unsympathetic characters
- You may find the conclusions blurry
Reviewer’s Rating: 8
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