Forum - View topicBrynhildr in the Darkness (TV).
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Gatherum
 Posts: 773 Location: Aurora CO |
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This series probably doesn't deserve as much of a comprehensive concluding thought as I am about to give it. The amount of plot holes, cheap conveniences, and nigh-offensive lapses in scientific logic make it very hard to appreciate the series for its positive points i.e. the main protagonists themselves (though only a couple are worth mention). Ryota, in spite of my complaints about him falling into some of the same nervous adolescent anime male tropes that plague every character of his archetype, was as intelligent as he possibly could be in this show, not to mention passably caring. He really did everything he could for the witches he took in, and I can appreciate him for that. Kazumi stole the top spot amongst the witches from a conceptual standpoint, being, as far as I know, the only witch with a truly defined and sympathetic justification for her behaviour. The others may as well have been background noise--even Kuroneko, who only seemed to become more and more obscure as the series dragged on. And indeed, for being a one-cour offering, it did drag and meander through an unsightly series of episodic events that didn't lead into the finale so much as finally get out of its way.
I'm not even going to talk much about the ending, suffice it to say that I find it almost offensive that the series' creators tried to arbitrarily spoiler[martyr Ichijiku even a little bit. Shielding Valkyria at the last moment from concentrated fire from multiple automatic weapons was not only completely out-of-character, but served to rob the protagonists of any opportunity to be resolute. Do anime production companies just not understand that a protagonist who is both aware that somebody as dangerous, morally underdeveloped, and influential as him needs to die, and is willing to do what is necessary to make it so, can still function as a good, non-antiheroic protagonist? Do all villains, even those as psychopathic as this one, need to develop some kind of humane side to them? I'm sorry, but that man had not even begun to show any signs of a sense of decency by the time it happened. Hell, Ryota himself stated that Ichijiku was the one with no right to live! The whole scene was jarring and a real eye-roller. I was honestly hoping that Ryota would have found a way to corner him and unload an entire clip into his body. That, I would have nodded my head to, not merely because Ichijiku is both a terrible character and terrible person, but so I can finally see an adolescent male protagonist nut up enough to actually do it.] Also, spoiler[a black hole of that mass, and stable at that duration, would have sucked in a lot more than just Valkyria and Ichijiku's corpse, to include Ryota, Kana, Hexenjagd, that building, the surrounding landscape, and the rest of the Earth, not to mention that it would shred Venus and Mercury and slingshot what was left of Mars into an elliptical orbit around the Sun if it didn't just splash into it period. Even more asinine was that Keroneko was still in existence when it dissipated, after having been inside the centre of mass. I understand that in situations like this, it is wise to cop out with the dismissive "it's anime" argument, but come on, for a show meant to be halfway serious about its themes, you can at least try, can't you?] Also, I have no choice but to assume that the spoiler[evil chairs of Vingulf aim to shrug and jack off in the middle of their own desolate planet (or wherever the hell they are) now that their plan has--wait a minute, what was their plan again?] I suppose that it did make me root for the good guys, the dramatic weight of the endgame was apparent (rushed as it felt), and they did preserve Lynn Okamoto's penchant for spoiler[extremely bittersweet endings]. Nevertheless, it is damned to live within the shadow of Elfen Lied as the latter's confused and physically disabled sister. If Elfen Lied is moe's answer to psychologically grief-driven, yet halfway intelligent torture porn, then Brynhildr speaks to whoever likes to see cute girls spoiler[die quickly in a mess of melted flesh and unfulfilled, yet ill-explored, hopes]. The difference in actual thematic depth and significance is actually quite staggering. The art was, thankfully, quite consistent, but the animation was certainly nothing to write home about, especially compared to other series by today's standards. Even the opening and ending sequences seemed to be, once again, little more than montages of leftover clips that they didn't find other uses for. I'll concede points for its soundtrack; it's not groundbreaking stuff, but it's different for anime, and I can like that on principle. Ultimately, I stuck with it for the sake of feeding my completionist tendencies, and to give me something to do during lunch breaks, but began to favour the good of One Week Friends very early on. I don't really like it, but I can't say that I hate it, given the aforementioned characters. I reluctantly rated it not really good--reluctantly, because, as much as the inanity of Chaos;Head drove me to declare that title to also be not really good, it did, at least, resolve all of its plot threads by the time it was over. But, I figure that rating it any lower solely for that would be a gross exercise in being harsh for the sake of it, and and I think we've had enough of that for a season. Last edited by Gatherum on Thu Jul 03, 2014 9:28 pm; edited 2 times in total |
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HaruhiToy
 Posts: 4118 |
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^^
The characters calling it a "black hole" doesn't necessarily mean that it is an object that follows the physics that Stephen Hawking would recognize. Same goes for the "antimatter." If they had called it "magical concentrated energy blasts that do what we want" instead of "antimatter" and "black hole" would that have made everything OK for you? The fact is that the magic used in the final battle is no more or less scientifically plausible than the other girl's teleportation, energy blasts from the mouth, mind reading, mind manipulation, future forecasting, body regeneration, or for that matter even being able to live with a metal cylinder hosting an alien in place of where your upper vertebrae happen to be. I think it is kind of silly after taking in all that to be complaining about "well according to SCIENCE a black hole would REALLY have ...". If I were inclined to complain about something, I think the whole show appears to be a vehicle extended from Elfen Lied to indulge in a fetish for young, cute females to be imprisoned, isolated, desperate and nonetheless murdered brutally. I am in fact not complaining about that because I knew pretty much going in what to expect, the same as if you went to see a mainstream horror movie like "Saw" (which I haven't seen -- just the previews.) As it is, there were some things BITD offers to offset/justify that, but not very much. |
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Volibear
 Posts: 344 |
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Urgh. I hate it when series get adapted into an extremely rushed adaptation (in terms of story, not quality, although that sucks too). I feel like this could have been a pretty good show but they tried (and failed) to squeeze too much content into too short of a series.
Shame really. I like bleak, sad series and this was one of them. Very indicative style of the author and it's one that I really dug with Elfen Lied but it felt ruined by all the constraints and reductions it faced in production. |
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thebeats42
Posts: 43 Location: Manila, Philippines |
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I know right. I was really excited when I heard of this anime but totally disappointed because it ended up like Elfen Lied with such a rushed ending. The manga of this is really good they should have continued with the anime. |
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