The art is by far the best aspect of Mononoke. All the clothes, surroundings and sometimes even faces are covered with color. On top of that there appears to be a grainy texture covering all of it which also doesn’t seem to move, as if a colorful drawing were to be covered with a transparent sheet with multiple scattered smudges of white and grey.
When the story of an arc fails to be mind blowing, the art makes up for it as I get lost in the beauty of the visuals. It was much like Gankutsuou but it had a more dispersed variety of color.
The stories of every arc are simple and some quite common but are packed with loads of emotions. But what makes them so different and great? Well, that’s where the Mononoke come in. The idea of Mononoke and a lot of mythical Japanese creatures make it seem like it’s very unique and makes it stand out a lot. None of the stories hold back and are brutal, dealing with the ‘harsh’ truth and many depressing realities of life although in a very exaggerated way.
The downfall of this anime is that it tires way too hard to show it’s viewers that it’s outrageous and sometimes forces the viewers to feel the emotions that it wants them too. It repeatedly drags things out and tries to make them as dramatic as possible to be extremely dark. It told more than it showed. It would have been even better if the darkness was conveyed mostly through their actions and the plot but it has a habit of repeating things in the form of dialogues or random sound effects to make the matter at hand obvious to the viewer so they recognize the unbelievable situation.
Each arc was however quite different from the previous one and each has it’s own speciality. What was best about them was that they completely absorbed me into the intense story. Each arc was nerve wrecking and I wouldn’t be able to look away for even a mere second. It told simple stories in a very hyped, complexed and brilliant way. The beauty of it lies not in what it had to say but how it said it.
I enjoyed it to a great extent though. It was as if reading about ancient Japanese folklore and it had this sense of mystery and suspense topped with stunning art and it’s own way of doing things.
