If we want to talk about characters, the only ones that mean anything are Eiri Kurahashi and Cossette. There really isn’t much in the story that shows just who these people are actually and so the characters seem bland. We do get story line from Cossette but nothing that actually shows her personality. She is just a little girl but she is nothing innocent at all. It’s like she’s a demon the way she acts around Eiri and by the second episode, I stopped feeling sorry for her because she became like the no name Elfen Lied girls. All she really did was torture porn. Even though she is rather young, has the heart of a jaded lover inside her. She is rather manipulative and a strange trickster.
Eiri isn’t much better, in fact, he’s worse. We get no info on his back story or personality, nothing about his friends that he was around in the beginning (we only see them once) and the girls that he’s around are bland and again, we hear nothing about how they are together. It’s just boring. There wasn’t something for me to grasp onto so I was sitting there laughing about how stupid he was for throwing his life away for someone he barely knew.
The storyline would have been better if it was either longer with more detail in the story, or a movie. I would choose the first since a movie like this may be a little two hard to do. It’s sad you can’t feel for any of the characters at all.
The artwork is rather pretty, the details striking. Cossette seems to feel more like a doll in some parts though, much too pretty and porcelain like with her pale skin and sweet eyes. Unfortunately, it becomes a bit to oil paint-ish in a lot of parts. When that happens, they look like still shots. The only thing that really awesome is the shots. It’s a lot of surreal angles and out of control beauty where we don’t see the stupid looking characters in the back room. Mostly, I think this was done with the idea that they wouldn’t have to animate much.
The music is hunting and playful, almost like a music box. The English voice acting sounds rather well done. Maybe a bit too well then it has any business being, although it does start to sound cheesy when they start talking in poetics. There are a lot of questions that keep being said throughout the show and sometimes I thought it was much better when I didn’t try to think too much.
