|
Art: 8
A visually impressive series, no doubt. In general, it all looked very sleek and smooth, but then I generally expect SHAFT to excel in the visual department. The animation itself wasn't so hot, but the art style softened that blow some.
Voice Acting: 7
Voice actors were well suited to their roles and delivered strong performances all around. That being said, there were only a few parts where it felt like the voice actors were able to really flex their muscles, as it were, so I can only give it a somewhat above-average score.
Script: 7
Good material overall. Characters were written convincingly and consistently for the most part, but as with the voice acting, the script only rarely breaks above the 'pretty good' mark for me, and I tend to reserve scores of 8/9/10 for things that really pop.
Soundtrack: 7
The ED is excellent, and if I were judging the soundtrack by that alone, I'd probably be giving this a 9. However, there are other tracks to consider, which struck me as decent at best. Nothing bad, but nothing so good I couldn't forget it. "Renai Circulation" was cute and quirky, but that only goes so far for me.
Editing: 8
You can certainly tell that a great deal of work went into the editing process, making sure the cuts were meaningfully placed, but I have to say that over the course of the series, there were times when it felt overused. It's as though the producers were just trying to distract from the consequences of their approach to the actual content--mainly the sometimes jarringly uneven pacing.
Enjoyment: 6
Despite my gripes, I did have fun with the series for the most part. It was a nice, easily digestible series that I could unwind my brain with after a long day, or something simple to start it running early in the morning. I enjoyed it most early on, when I was getting acquainted with the first batch of characters, though as it went on, it quickly became very predictable. Without reading any spoilers, I reached a point where I wasn't surprised by anything that happened from episode three onward. Sometimes that doesn't really matter. Here, it felt like it detracted a lot for me.
Emotional Involvement: 7
Are there attachment-worthy characters? Yes. However, the main protagonist is not one of them. Araragi fits the martyr archetype to a T, with his only distinguishing trait being that he is also a vampire. Hitagi, Suruga and Nadeko are all significantly more textured. Meme was also interesting, even if the 'cagey mentor' is itself getting a bit overdone. It's not that there aren't characters I can invest in substantially, just that they're not the ones the story focuses on.
Overall: 7
Certainly worth watching, and I'm glad I had the experience, but it's one of those series where I wouldn't particularly care to see more of it. Probably much more appealing to strong fans of fanservice and/or harem stuff, but for me it's basically light viewing to space out other shows.
|