First off, I gotta say it now- I don't do BL. I'll admit, I get the appeal, but morally, does. not. compute. Just thought I ought to get that out there. I don't mean to offend anyone, that's just how I roll. ^.^
Second off- I LOVE scifi. I adore it. Anything that has a good scifi plot, I'll probably see it through to the end. And that's exactly what happened in this case.
I'll talk about ...
First off, I gotta say it now- I don't do BL. I'll admit, I get the appeal, but morally, does. not. compute. Just thought I ought to get that out there. I don't mean to offend anyone, that's just how I roll. ^.^
Second off- I LOVE scifi. I adore it. Anything that has a good scifi plot, I'll probably see it through to the end. And that's exactly what happened in this case.
I'll talk about first what the series does well. :)
I instantly enjoyed the characters in this series. Yes, even Safu, whom everyone seems to love to hate on. She was quirky and cute, Shion was naive and so his character development was particularly interesting to watch unfold. Nezumi was fully three dimensional, and I loved watching a new aspect of him appear in each episode. Dogkeeper was by far my favorite- I think he/she is one of the neatest characters, period, and wish he/she'd gotten a little more screen time and back story. But alas, was not to be.
The story grabs you and holds you right off the bat. What's going on? Where did these bees come from? What's with this wind and song? I wanted to know, and I wanted to know
right now. It knew how to draw it's audience in, and for the most part was fast paced, at least enough for me.
The art is breathtaking. Sure, it's nothing you haven't seen before, but it was one of the things that really sucked you in. It captured every element it needed to. Even the scenes with blood in them (which I'm never a fan of) were done so beautifully that I almost enjoyed our beloved characters bleeding all over the place.
My only qualm with it would be that it was far too dark a lot of the time. I had to turn up my screen brightness, and even then I was still pointlessly squinting.
The music is also very, very good. From the OP to Nezumi's singing, to the ED, to the perfect tune for just the right moment, it was all executed very well. They brought on some good people for this one.
Now...onto the negative.
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Let's start with the story. As much as it built up to be something so amazing and epic, the only thing it was was an epic letdown. The ending was so pitifully confusing and stupid, I almost regretted watching it at all. Now, I didn't feel that way as I watched it- I cried and smiled, and got a happy warm feeling when it was over. But as soon as I actually thought about it, I felt cheated. I really felt manipulated- As happy and cheery as the ending is, we hardly got any explanation, which I felt as a viewer that I deserved. It was a cheap, plot-hole filled cop-out. Almost as if the writers said, "Well...we don't know what we're going to do, so we'll resurrect Shion, throw in another kiss to make the fangirls squeal, and stick a giant magical bee in there." I was not. Amused. My brilliant scifi just turned into MAGIC FOREST PEOPLE BEES!
I was rather unhappy that this anime wasn't labeled as a shounen-ai. Had it been, I would have never bothered. As it was, by the time it was blatantly obvious that it was, I was so far in the story, and so decided to see it through for the sake of the plot (what a joke...). It's mislabeled as scifi
and shounen, and I'd appreciate it if the dear peoples at Crunchyroll would fix that. ^.^
The only way this anime works is if you don't care about story, and just want a good shounen-ai. It succeeds at that, and you won't regret it for that reason. I'm not a BL girl, so it wasn't a good fit.
Sure, I enjoyed it somewhat, but it wasn't worth watching in the end. Which is sad, because it had so much potential. It did so many things right, but ultimately fell flat on it's face because of lack of pacing, cohesiveness, and just plain honesty with the viewer and it's self.
:(
