11Eyes Review

Since the Valium Challenge is done and over with, and I didn’t screw it all up. Guess it’s time to rant about that stupid anime that I had to watch.

11Eyes is a 12 episode Action/Fantasy/Romance series originally based on the video game from Lass and was released in 2008. A manga adaptation published Kadokawa Shoten was released in 2009. 11Eyes is from Dogakobo (Yeah, I don’t know either) and is currently licensed by Sentai Filmworks, and has been released on DVD. It’s also available on Crunchyroll.

After losing his sister seven years ago, Satsuki Kakeru led a vacant life, only able to return to normal with help from his childhood friend Minase Yuka and other friends at school. Suddenly one day the sky turns red, and the moon turns black. Everyone around Kakeru and Yuka disappears and monsters start roaming the streets. They are able to run away and hide and after a while, the world returns to normal. But just when they thought this world was a dream, the Red Night occurs again. Kakeru and Yuka manage to find four other humans involved in this mysterious phenomenon: a red-haired onmyouji swords woman, a strange mute girl who looks like Kakeru's deceased sister, a lively young girl who reverts to the personality of a cold killer when her glasses are removed, and a young pyrokineticist with a heated attitude to boot. They get together and try to survive, but six shadows suddenly appear in front of them.... These six shadows call themselves the "Black Knights," and for an unknown reason wish to kill Kakeru and friends. As they go on trying to survive, the six teenagers gradually form bonds and begin to work together in order to defeat the Black Knights, in the hopes that this will end the Red Night once and for all.

Yup. Totally trying hard

So I mentioned that the studio behind this series is Dogakobo. If you don’t know who that is, the good on you cause I had to do some research. They actually don’t have a lot of series under their belt, production wise. They have a long list of animation work from Natsuyuki Rendezvous to Ghost in the Shell: SAC, but very very few of their own work. So, with a studio with very little solo credits, you’re going to notice how hard they are trying. And boy are they trying hard. The animation for 11Eyes is pretty average with a good amount of panty shots and very simple character designs. To be honest, it’s nothing to write home about. But, given their resume, I can kind of look past that and give them an A for effort. But that’s pretty much it.

I’m not gonna lie, I liked the story. Well, at least what the story was trying to to. It starts off rather harmless and begins to develop into a pretty decent high school fantasy series. But then as you slowly make your way to the halfway mark, the story starts to take a nose dive and give you plot device after plot device every chance it gets! It becomes so bad that by the last episode, I couldn’t take the show seriously anymore and just started laughing like crazy!

Yeah..... Yuka is a crazy b****

Characters. Oh good god those characters. There became a point while watching this series on Crunchyroll that I just had to look at the comments. And 99.99% of those comments completely and utterly slammed Yuka and her character. And I can completely see why. She is completely obsessed with the main male character, Kakeru, to the point where she takes the littlest things that should help progress the story into a completely different direction and even hinders the group from progressing. I feel like she could be tough competition for School Days’s Makoto for the worst anime character ever. And then you have Kakeru who, no matter how crazy Yuka becomes, is still loyal to her. No matter what. I guess it’s an endearing trait to have, but good god get out of there fast and just go with the red head! She’s way more sane and is totally into you! As for the rest of the characters they’re just your average stereotypes. The badass, the bubbly girl, the hot head, and the voice of reason (even though she’s mute. Go figure). Nothing really note worthy there either.

Thank you Sentai for not dubbing this series and may you still never dub this series. It in no way deserves one, and we don’t deserve to be tormented. There aren’t really any stand outs here, not really a good sign either. But I can at least see that they actors had a fun time and I can commend them for that. The only real notable voice actors in the Japanese are Yuu Asakawa as Misuzu and Oma Ichimura as Yukiko. All I can say is I never wanna hear Yuka say Kakeru’s name ever again.

By the end of the Red Night, 11Eyes just tried way too hard and failed miserably. The story is a mess, the animation is pretty average, and there aren’t enough likable characters to balance out the terrible ones. The only way I would ever recommend this series is if you want to just say you’ve seen it just like you have with School Days. Though, it’s not as infamous. If you can, don’t bother. If you do, I salute you.

Next time, we face our true selves. Until then, otaku on my friends!

Oh yeah. One more thing.....

Nice try, MadShadow. Maybe next time?