(I wrote this in a rush, that’s why it’s more terrible than normal. Also, some, not all, has been stolen from my own review that’s posted on MyAnimeList, which is much better than this…)
I have not played “Chaos;Head”, nor have I read the graphic novel or what ever it is either. I have only seen the anime, and thus this review of Chaos;Head is of the anime only. I had watched Chaos;Head almost as it was aired, (depending on Fansub releases) and finished the series about 5 days ago. In the hope for something super awesome, I was really disappointed at it’s final result and overall story, as you will read on in my review:
Plot: An Otaku called Takumi lives by himself and excludes himself from the rest of the world. One day, he receives a message from a mysterious “Shougun” with a link to a highly disturbing image of a person staked onto a wall. The next day, after walking through Shibuya, he runs into an alleyway, and accidentally stumbles into a man having been staked to a wall, exactly that in which he saw in the image. As it turns out, these are a series of mysterious seemingly supernatural events referred to, as the “New Generation”. Eventually, Takumi gets caught-up with the events of “New Generation” and becomes paranoid of things around him and starts having delusions. He becomes troubled as to who he can trust, what aren’t delusions, and who is this mysterious “Shougun” who seems to be around him all the time?
It started off really well! It was pretty good and caught my attention at first, but around episode 9, the whole thing blew up on itself! Where were the twists? Where was the unexpected? Where was the “I want more!” feeling? It had a lot of potential in becoming quite the awesome in terms of being a psychological thriller! Questions left unanswered, a little bit of science here and there. It really was a good set up! But things became way too obvious, and a lot of scenes became absolutely pointless! The bugs? Why on earth were they there? There are too many times where you could say “Why didn’t you do that in the first place!?” and “Isn’t it obvious?”. The ending seemed way too rushed, and definitely not very well thought out.
As with quite a few anime, there is one guy, and he is accompanied with many girls. This is fine as long as each character has a purpose. A good example of this being pulled off well, is Higurashi. Chaos;Head really needed better character development. Many of the girls seemesd as though they were “just there” without much purpose. And overly obnoxious villain who doesn’t have a real cause? Come on! Really, all this crap we get taught in English isn’t actually all crap!
Animation and character design were standard, and nothing really stands out… The Di-Swords were very nice though! The background music was all over the place really. Sometimes, it fit the mood nicely, while other times, it just didn’t match at all. The Theme Songs didn’t really match with the theme of the anime, but I have nothing against the actual quality of the openings and closings.
To wrap it all up, Chaos;Head really was just a messy, rushed and not very well thought out anime. It just didn’t have that suspense, and nor did it have that much complexity. It certainly had huge potential, however the series just couldn’t pull it off. Perhaps if the ending weren’t as rushed, and things not so obvious and pointless, I’d be able to give it a better score. I feel I’m being a little generous here, and this is what I have given Chaos;Head:
Story – 6
Animation -7
Music – 6
Characters – 7
Enjoyment – 6
Overall Rating – 6 out of 10
More info on “Chaos;Head”: Wikipedia ||| Anime News Network ||| My Anime List
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