Reviews

First of all I might be the only damn person that would give a 7 to this anime, but I just couldn't help it when seeing all the 3s and 4s and 5s. xD This anime ISN'T that bad, KEEPING IN MIND that La Storia Dell' Arcana Famiglia is originally an otome game! Those of you who don't know what that is I shall explain. An otome game is a game for girls where you play as the protagonist and attempt to get close to one of the several male choices around you and practically get hooked together. Simple explanation, right? Now. Usually these type of games have that which is called "routes", which seem completely epic in game mode since each route concentrates on ONE guy. The main problem when you try to animate an otome game is that, maybe because of budget or other commercial factors, you unfortunately can't waste time and animate ALL routes and makes different arcs like in Amagami SS or CLANNAD. In this case, the producers had to insert a complicated, messed up plot, already divided by its different routes, into mere 12 episodes and actually make a sense out of it while trying to remain as close to the game as possible.
I have to recognize Arcana Famiglia, despite having a really good start and premise, after the first episode, it just gets dragged with random events making it look boring and completely unrelated to the real deal which is the Arcana Duello, with Felicita jumping to one guy to another all the time in order to flesh their personalities more. But I really don't have anybody to blame for it since Arcana Famiglia has a massive cast and in 12 episodes they just tried to develop every character as much as they could, which made them omit a lot of stuff to give space to something else that was considered more important, which in the end became a total mess and disappointment for those that really looked forward to a good anime. The only thing I can reproach is that the anime would have been better if the producers would have chosen a guy for Felicita to concentrate on more than the others or, even if differently from the game, they could have inserted some dynamical movement to it if the Arcana Duello would have started after the first 2-3 fillers and going on with a fight for a whole episode then bring in other 2 filler episode so we could have slowly found out about the characters' issues with eachother. For example I was yearning to see the fight between Luca and Jolly animated but it never came and I had to stick with the short versions of Liberta vs. Dante and Nova vs. Sumire when they randomly decided to make a love triangle out of Arcana Famiglia instead of a reverse harem. xD
The only praise I could give to the anime without thinking of the game is the comedy and art but that's all there is to it. Okay, i was also pleasantly surprised to have most of the last part of Jolly's route animated even though they could make him seem less of the bastard he actually he is, but at the same time they had Luca and Pace completely overshadowed by him, Liberta and Nova which was a real shame, despite me adoring Nova over all possible means.

All this said I think I don't really have anything more to add. The art was pretty high quality despite the low budget, which I think could have been a little higher because the PSP game was a complete innovation to otome gaming with it looking more like a picture drama than an otome, but hey! We all like ecchi harem stuff more so let's invest more in that type eh? *is completely ironic over here*

*deep sigh* Here is how another epic otome game was completely destroyed and misjudged because of an anime adaption. xD