Anime: Ayashi no Ceres

Romance is a very specific genre. There is not much variation to how “boy and girl meet” and usually everyone expects the exact same thing to happen in the conclusion. That is why to spice things up, the conditions under which the boy and the girl meet or the ordeals they are going through need to be different each time, in order to at least make the world around the otherwise one-track romance to appear interesting.

Take this series for example. We have quite the usual fuss. Naive good girl meets mysterious pretty bad boy and falls in love with him 0.13 seconds after they meet. Why? Well, she is naive, he is a boy, he is pretty, and apparently being bad is quite fascinating if you spent your life pampered and see this as a way to get wild before you grow old and wither away in boredom with some fat, bald poor business man who cares more about football than you. Ok, I understand; it’s been like that in most corny shoujo and it still sells today no matter the stupidity of the whole deal. For more information, check out the success of frakking Twilight .

With that said, this anime was not somewhat famous during its airing because of its romance, which to be honest is following the book of corny romances to the letter. All the fame was about the world around that romance.
-Let’s have the girl being the reincarnation of a celestial being, whose death during adulthood magically signals the prosperity of her family.
-Let’s have her knight in shining armor be a super mercenary of some shady secret organization performing inhuman experiments.
-Let’s have her twin brother being possessed by her ancestor and have him try to rape her.
-Let’s add a hundred other people trying to exploit, survive or just have fun with all that.
-Let’s add carnage. Lots of it.
-And tears. Lots of tears.
-And let’s always end the most important episodes with a cliffhanger.
Yeah, sounds great already.

The premise of this anime is amazing as it has a lot of things going on at once. But once you dig a bit deeper you can spot things most fangirls … err… viewers don’t notice. The pacing for example suffers from tuberculosis. It has no smooth unraveling of its plot, some parts are damn boring, some others are hardly affecting the overall, and the finale is a drunken old man writing poetry on a serial box… with a toothpick. Basically, it’s a mess. That aside, no matter how shocking the premise was at the time, it means nothing if you happen to have watched many series that also begin with a bang and have far better animation. The plot is as I said a complete mess, with slow pacing and a rushed ending. There is not much replay value because of it, especially in the second half where the pacing becomes slower than a turtle.

Of course the core audience never cares about the pacing or the plot since they will be too busy yelling “Kyaaa, the boys are so dreamyyyyy!” In case you care, thought, they are far from dreamy.
- Most side stories are hardly affecting the overall plot and yet they are there to force more drama down our throats.
- The way the fated couple keeps copping with their ordeals looks silly at best.
- Here’s another super powerful dark side coming out to save your ass in the nick of time whenever you are about to die for the sake of plot armor.
- The pacing keeps slowing down to the point you think you are watching the Hueco Mundo arc.
- The ending becomes supersonic and wraps up everything in 10 minutes.

The visuals are dated as heck, obviously, and only a few aesthetic touches here and there stand out. The budget was not the best even during the time the show was made, so the cinematics look cheap. The character designs have simplistic anatomy and facial structure, set apart only by their hair color or clothes. Of course this being a romance means most will only care about how pretty the guys and the gals look (or better say the same guy and gal with a different wig and uniform) and won’t give a frakk about the awful way they move… or don’t move at all. Yeah, the animation is so rare they mostly stay frozen with a flapping mouth.

The cast is actually quite interesting on paper as there is a plethora of different people with different goals and demeanors, and most of them do change or mature or simply get killed. As far as variety goes, there is lots of it and their behaviors are very well excused through their backdrop stories. The concept also expands beyond the main duo and shows how one person can indirectly affect thousands of others by simply not … dying during the designated day.

What ruins it is the way they mature / develop, etc. It feels so… silly in the least.
- Aya is memorable only for her crying. That’s her most distinctive feature; crying over the cruelness of the world every 5 minutes. Up until the finale she is a generic naive girl in constant urge to be saved or kissed by a random bijin she fell in love within a fraction of a second.
- Toya is to the most part as cold and bitter as a half-drank cup of black coffee, hardly able to relate to. Probably done deliberately so my ear drums will explode from the sound attacks of the fangirls.
- Aki is hardly a character. He is just there… and then he is no more; absorbed completely by Mikage before offering nothing to the story.
- A monologue by some good guy is enough to change one’s worldview immediately.
- Heartless villains try to look sympathetic to us ten minutes before they kick the bucket. I’m sorry, it’s too sudden to mean anything.
- Most characters appear for one or two episodes and are disposed of like they didn’t matter one bit.

Bottom line, I don’t recommend this anime. It has zero historical significance in the medium since there is nothing in it you won’t find better in newer shows.

If it can be considered possible, I think that this anime is both too busy and with too little development. Secondary plots are abudant here, and characters are introduced and then brought to a conculsion (whichever that might be) within the span of a few episodes, never to be seen again. This design produces a lot of secondary characters with little depth or development in their screen time, and sadly they never become interesting enough to make the viewer care for their fate. Their only appeal is that they make the setting richer. The premise of the anime is that there is a metaphysical background to the world as we know it, and relatively few people know about it. Introducing additional characters and organizations with new information on the tennyo makes the whole setting a bit more spherical and believable.

For better or for worse, all this parade of secondary plots doesn’t leave enough exposure for the main story to unfold. Aya and Toya’s first meeting is done in a flash, and she leaves her falling in love with him, for reasons that are neither apparent nor explained anywhere during the course of the series. This kind of love at first sight, against all odds and against any obvious emergencies, obstacles or (killing) intents seems too forced to be attributed to destiny. This relationship between the two protagonists is then shown to bloom slowly if a bit clumsily during the first half of the series. It then picks up momentum out of nowhere, with the characters reaching life-changing decisions within the course of single episodes, with no previous foreshadowing or development leading up to their decisions. This kind of progress seems unrealistic even if the characters are blinded by love; the progress and culmination of their relationship should be a bit more smooth, even just for the sake of the viewers. The deepest and most heartfelt displays of care and love are actually made by some of the supporting cast, especially Yuhi, who grows and learns to temper his love throughout the series (even though his eventual reward feels like a cop-out).

It should be mentioned here that any deaths and losses that take place in the frame of the aforementioned romance are almost never peaceful or in silent pain, as in other romantic anime. In Ayashi no Ceres, characters are often found splattered in blood (sometimes their own). This amount of gore ties in with the dark atmosphere present in the anime from the very beginning. Although the mood lightens in some degree as the series progresses, the amount of blood and violence is more than usually found in romance anime.

Physically speaking, the characters are very competent for the most part. On the one hand, the character designs are very nice, with beautiful silhouettes and faces displaying a great range of emotion, from comedy to tragedy. Unfortunately, not much effort is put into making each character’s design unique, or at least distinguishable. In the end, the characters seem like a bunch of dolls whose only differentiating feature are the colour and cut of their hair. Whenever one’s hairstyle changes (over time or for plot reasons), there is some confusion in tracking down the character among a cast of similar faces.

The sound section shares a similar fate. As far as the voices are concerned, about half of them are very well suited to their relevant characters, being able to display varying emotion and setting the right tone. Aya’s and Suzumi’s voice actors are among the highlights. The other half of character voices are more or less plain, with Toya’s voice acting verging on being too monotonous.

The sound score fits well the romance genre, but it is nothing out of the ordinary; the same music could have been used any romance anime.

I honestly can’t find the “catch” that will make this anime an exceptional representative of its genre. It has some nice character designs and a semi-interesting metaphysical backdrop. Other than that, it is starting to show its age, so if you have half a mind to view it, do so before it is buried by other anime of the same genre.

I rarely review an anime, but after seeing the high ratings and relatively good reviews (which tricked me into seeing it) , I had to state my own opinion.

Animation:

The animation is fairly tipical for an old shoujo anime. The character designs are good, so are the backgrounds. The problems start when things start to move. Movements look fake and special effects are done way too simplistic.

Sound:

The seiyuu do their job pretty well, although Toya does sound a bit robotic. The op/ed songs are a pleasure to listen to and the other music fits the moments when it is used.

Story:

The story is just a mess. The plot holes are the size of continents. Things happen just for the sake of a bit more tragedy or gore. Too often convenient stuff happen just to further the story and screw everything that was going on till that point. I'm going to give a few examples (read only if you already watched it):

Towards the end new characters are added and disgarded just to fill some episodes.
Still there are quite a few number of really good episodes (mainly those that didn't have anything to do with the main storyline). So i can't give it less than 4 for story.

Character:

The characters are hit and miss. Some of them are really poor while others are complex and interesting.
Lets start with the 2 leads. Aya is your typical 16 yo. She loves her family, especially her twin brother. After being subjected to a lot of psychological trauma throughout the series she manages to find the will to go on. She is also spoiled in the beginning but eventually grows to be strong and take decisions for herself. So why is she such a poorly written character? Quite simply because she acts very curiously at times and very out of character which makes her hard to take seriously and to make a connection however small.



Toya is a blank shell. He is nothing. He has no personality, no traits, no nothing. He acts just for his own purpose and does anything to meet that purpose. For most of the series. Even after that he is still a blank.



Yuhi is very well developed and goes through a series of changes that make him better. He is realistic in his actions (most of them) and his feelings are all nicely presented.
The episodic characters are developed enough to play their part but that's it.

It says a lot that my favourite character (read character I didn't dislike) is Yuhi and not one of the leads.
It's sad that no matter how many people died in the series, important characters or not, I just didn't give a damn.

Value:
Absolutely no rewatch value. This series will be forgotten and the possibility of this airing on tv again is zero (it would still be zero even without all the unnecessary gore).

Enjoyment:

I have to be fair. There were about 5 or 6 episodes that I truly enjoyed. Other than that I had a minimum amount of curiosity to see how it will end. And the ending was mediocre with one good thing about it:

Final remarks:

Shoujo romance and gore DO NOT MIX.
An anime is not the average of its parts. So I give this title a 6 for good music and several very good episodes.

I have been watching a lot of anime with promising starts lately and this one is no exception. However it never quite reached the great heights of Escaflowne or even Sailor Moon in portraying star crossed lovers. Too much melodrama and side stories that go nowhere got in the way for that.
As it is though it is still a very enjoyable ride with aspects to do pay off in the end.

The animation for this series was nothing spectacular. The character design was on the attractive side of average with the boys the perfect definition of bishounen and the girls fairly sucessful too. The problem I had was that the designs were very similar, there were barely any variation in hair type and colour within the main cast and some minor characters. As a result no one really stood out from the pack.
The backgrounds were good too, with the cityscapes reminiscent of City Hunter with of course, more refined detail. What makes this series good in terms of animation is mostly the really beautiful beach sceneries and the application in making them almost an ethereality with the contrast in mood. The other aspect I enjoyed was the fight scenes. They are choreographed beautifully and never drag on too long. The characters come alive very successfully on that front.

The sound for this series is mostly successful. The intro and outros were great songs and conveyed both the romance and the action of the show very well. Some of the background tunes were also very beautiful and successful but others were average and cliched sound effects.
The voice acting is mostly a success here with the seiyuu for Aya the stand out performer. She portrayed Aya's range of emotions very subtly. Ceres was also very well executed and the Mikage voice actor was also very good. Then you get the ones between good and average and they would be Yuhi and Mrs.Q with enough range to portray the characters but nothing really out of the ordinary. The ones I did not like were Chidori and Touya's seiyuus. The seiyuu for Chidori was a bit too cutesy to get the real complexity of the character and the Touya seiyuu was overall a little too passive for me to connect with him.

The story is a mix bag in the big scheme of things. It has a great start and real potential that surprisingly did not get fully explored. Instead a lot of side characters are brought in to advance the plot but instead they take away the time that was needed to develop the main cast to make them more believable.
I recently viewed an interview with Yu Watase and she does reveal that they were planning on making the series longer than it is now but those plans got scrapped. This could be why a lot of these side stories go nowhere since they did not have the time to make them connect with the major plot. The ending is also a disappointment as it is very rushed and unconvincingly tries to please both fans of Touya/Aya and Yuhi/Aya with one last twist that just did not do the complexity of the characters justice.

The characters range from very interesting to really forced in this show. Aya is definitely an interesting lead who with more screen time would have been a big success on the character front. She instead gets used as a "vessel" for Ceres who tends to play too much on the one dimensional front. Towards the end though, Ceres starts to come out as an interesting character too but the timeframe did not allow the character to be convincing overall.
Touya was a bit of a disappointment. His role is played complaisantly most of the way through and comes to a satisfying conclusion. However they bring him back for one last hooray and the explanation for it seemed a little inconsistent with what else was happening in the story. Yuhi was an interesting choice for a possible love interest but he reaches background status as the story develops.
The biggest surprise for me was Mikage. At first he seemed like your perfect crazy psychopath but as we got to the end, his backstory comes along and shows you just how human and flawed he really was. His love for Ceres was real even if jealousy and misunderstanding got in the way.

Overall I think that the creators should have stuck to the main love story they were telling. With the inclusion of so many side stories that go nowhere by the time the series ended, it feels a bit disappointing. These side stories also create some inconsistencies and plot holes but they never truly take away so much from it all that you feel you have wasted your time.

This is probably not a title I would revisit in its entirety anytime soon but I think it has merits. It was also enjoyable and entertaining, but it never quite got to the requited viewing status.
I definitely feel that there is an audience out there for it though so if it sounds interesting to you, do give it a try it is worth it.

I’ve always despised Yuu Watase’s manga and have mixed feelings about their anime counterparts. Although her stories almost never fail to entertain, her annoying lead characters and exasperating love stories practically ruin any attributes her stories have to offer. But for some odd reason, I find their anime versions to be more enjoyable despite having the same salient flaws. In Ayashi no Ceres's case, the story is quite good. Almost good enough to ignore that Toya and Aya need to be shot.

Using cliff-hangers to bait viewers into watching more, I see little reason why the first episode wouldn't hook viewers. At this point, viewers certainly wouldn't be yawning or in a coma. Why would you be when there is murder in the first few episodes? Unfortunately, in the second half of the series, pacing falters. The plot has almost haphazard pacing: the first half is well-executed. Nothing happens to slow or fast. The middle episodes are rather slow, taking time to "develop" (loosely termed, trust me) a relationship that I despised. Near the end, the series becomes an emotional whirlwind- bodies fly and Aya cries. A lot. If I recall, she literally cries in every episode save for the first. Despite the sudden change in pace, the series is allowed to get away with it. Although following the dreaded soap opera modus operandi, the surface plot- the relationship between Ceres and Mikage and Kagami's monstrous experiments- were enough to keep my eyes on the television.

Although a few faults in pacing can ignored, the irritating main characters, however, cannot. The anime's biggest flaw is the relationship between Aya and Toya: I couldn't stand it. As always with Watase, the romance portrayed is unrealistic, an idealistic picture where girls fall in love within minutes. If you believe in love at first sight, then this is the series for Aya falls in love with Toya before they even had a real conversation and he has done nothing to deserve her love. Their relationship made for a typical, predictable, and annoying love plot: “Damsel-in-distress falls for knight-in-shining-armor.”

Like so many anime, the supporting cast outshines the main characters. Yuhi is probably the best character in the series and he certainly developed as a character. In the beginning, he will do anything to win the heart of the woman he loves, but as he sees her falling in love with someone else, he decides to step aside and accept the consequences of his feelings. He even says this himself in one particular scene. However, I felt that Ceres, Aya's alterego, developed the most. Because of her own suffering in the past, she learned to despise humans, particularly men. She doesn’t even see them as men…just as creatures, “seeds” needed in order to reproduce. One of my favorite scenes in when a character (a man) tells her that, "love is only an illusion to make reproduction possible." Later on, she threw the words back at him, and his reaction was great. But watch the anime and you’ll see how she changes.

The villain undergoes what my brother and I like to call the "Villanious 360-Degree Turn." Watase seems to have a problem with giving her characters probable motivation behind their actions, and it's the villain is no exception. Changing his tune will be fine and all, but when he's despicable all the way until the last ten minutes of the final episode, we have a problem. (The sad thing is, I am not exaggeratting.) Aki, Aya's twin brother, is the most disappointing character (and I mean Aki, not his alter-ego, Mikage). I really wish he would have had more screen time than he was given. To the series' credit, however, his absense, is of course, the whole point of the anime, but I wish there was a little bit of more Aki BEFORE his alterego takes over. Obviously, Aki's personality is very different from Mikages (heh), but it's hard to sympathesize with him if I really don't know much about him. He definitely should've been a stronger character. Mikage, however, happens to be a great character. I was amused to see him say things like "Where's my woman?" Classic.

As stated before, the last half of the series goes very fast, and in particular, the ending is rushed. This is unfortunate because there's really nothing wrong with the ending other than it happened too quickly. It certainly has a better conclusion than most anime as most plot points have been resolved. All in all, very unlikable main characters and pacing issues are the only major flaws this anime has. It's about us, after all. We're not saints. We're not gods. We're not demons. We're human.

Animation
Although I'm not a fan of Watase's manga, I am, however, a fan of her art work. In fact, I own one of her art books for this series. Her art is absolutely gorgeous, and though the art in the series is certainly not as attractive as the "real thing," it's still quite nice to look at. And like Fushigi Yugi, there are actual pictures thrown in for the opening and ending videos. I appreciated that. Oh, and expect a lot of bishounen.

Sound
I originally gave a nine in this category, but lowered it to an eight after I realized that perhaps I was overreacting to the amazing opening theme, "Scarlet." The OP happens to be my number one favorite, and it's a beautiful ballad (sung by Junko Iwao, Ceres's seiyuu) accompanied with piano. There are two ending themes and both of them are average, though the first is better than the second. Aya's voice gets annoying when she's whining. Oh, and avoid the dub at all costs.

Character
There were a few minor characters that played major roles. Those episodes probably should've been cut for they were essentially only fillers. Ms. Q provided excellent comic relief.

Value
Unfortunately, Ayashi no Ceres has minimal replay value; it's only something to watch once. In fact, it's one of those anime that you may start to dislike if watched again. I myself only watched the whole thing once. And it certainly wouldn't be the first anime I'll recommend to guys. It's a shoujo of the highest order. It's a good collectable, though. I have the Special Collector's Edition and ordered the art box from VIZ.

Boasting a rather wierd story with incesteous overtones which couldnt be ignored, Ayashi no Ceres falls flat on a very ludicrous plot backed by aweful characterisation. The main character Aya is so much like the girl from Vision of Escaflowne that its mind boggling. Always the easy one to cry over and over and over again. It felt through the most part of the anime that I'm just watching a bunch of people cry with the "Oh Woe Is Me" crap. Not only the main character but the supporting cast as well.

Each had a sappy story to tell alongwith the tremendous amount of tears. Because of the overuse of terrible melodrama I couldnt feel for any of the characters.

So in the end the anime is downright average, I've seen worse so it wasnt too bad. There was some potential in the story, but I think its completely ruined because of bad characters.

Animation
So So.. cant really say much. Nothing spectacular.

Sound
One of the stronger points in the anime. I kinda liked it.

Story
Very average storyline.

Character
Bad...bad enough to ruin the anime.

Value
Probably never watch it again.. very disturbing incest theme... sick!!