Note
I rate my reviews by Plot, Characterization, Emotional Pull, Episode Quality, and Creativity. Depending on how this media has done in those categories will gain the overall score at the end. If you prefer plot over character development, then pay attention to how the plot did. This is so you can gain a more accurate opinion of whether or not to view this media. With this in mind, this review is based on how I enjoy the elements of the media, rather then my enjoyment of the media as a whole. Thank you for reading.... and Happy New Year.
WARNING possible spoilers WARNING
In case you were wondering what this anime is, it is a romance supernatural anime, with slight moments of horror. Twin characters are turning 16 which in their family is a big deal. Using an ancient artifact, the family revives certain ancestor personalities, and try to kill the girl. The girl awakens her dormant personality, kills a few guards, and ends up fleeing as a celestial girl. Being one of the more powerful ones, she fights what her family has been doing behind the scenes which involves genetic mutations, celestial beings, and manipulation. Her personality is looking for a cosmic veil of sorts, a power that was taken from her long ago from a man whom she loved, but ultimately fell into greed over power. That man is reincarnated into the girl's twin brother who is trying to fight his personality due to the persona being obsessed with his sister and her inner persona. Also things get interesting when a man with no memory falls in love with the girl.
If you are trying to process all of that information, good luck. The plot itself never looses itself really, but it is rather over zealous at the same time. Is the plot interesting? Yes, but it is very confusing and rather hard to sum up honestly. A kind of "have to see it for yourself" thing, but the plot does have plenty of good points to it, and again the anime never really drifts away from this main theme of the heartache and power behind the two beings from the past, and the people now in the present trying to deal with the mistakes of the past in a very literal form. I know it seems confusing, but it is a pretty good plot.
This is were things get a little messy. There aren't really bad characters, and it isn't as if the characters don't make sense, but it takes forever and a day to get to the point where they do make sense. Ceres, the celestial being reincarnated into the body of Aya keeps secrets and tells lies which makes the illusion of Ceres being slightly bi-polar, but in the long run, she is just a woman with powers dealing with heartache that has lasted several hundred years due to the change in her husband and the abuse she suffered from it. Aki is a brother who loves his sister, but Ceres' husband is also in his body, and he loves Aki's sister in a totally different way which causes a lot of suffering from his character.
If there is one character that I have a hard time grasping it would be Toya, Aya's main love interest and the mysterious guy I talked about earlier. He is manipulated and his memories altered a lot in the series, and due to this, he seems to left field the entire anime rather often. He isn't a bad character, but he is certainly the wild card, and his transitions make nearly little sense, which wouldn't be so bad if he wasn't so essential to the plot as well as Aya's characterization as she is the main character. It is a shining flaw to make the anime seem more tragic and to hurt Aya in the long run, but it really takes you out of Toya's characterization as a whole. Also Ceres makes little sense as well, she threatens Aya so Aya will find her celestial robes, but doesn't actually tell Aya what it is she is looking for (which looks nothing like a robe until Ceres actually uses it). It wouldn't have progressed the anime any faster really, but it would make sense that Ceres would do this, no one really finds out until the end what it is they are looking for. There are a lot of good characters in this anime, but there are some larger flaws.
This anime gets dark quickly and suddenly. The shock value works as it does build Aya as a character and makes her sympathetic when a rather innocent anime has someone's head blown apart by a bullet. While Aya never lets it affect her too much, she does grow from the experience, and to emotionally invest the audience, I feel it works rather well. Even the mess of Toya's characterization works well to make Aya very sympathetic. In fact, the romance, while touching at times, is the last thing you will be looking out for.
Let me tell it to you straight, there are a large amount of characters in this anime, and most of them die rather tragically. Some survive to the end, but this is several steps away from being a Shakespearean tragedy (you know, the ones where everyone is dead by the end of it). Also one of the characters that makes it to the end talks about their own death in a couple of days, so there is that. Some of the better characters I didn't mention, and some of the forgettable characters often die in this anime, and often in tragic circumstances. Makes the emotional building for some characters really good though, and it works well in this anime. Also there are some rather decent fight scenes and action scenes even if they are few and far between.
There is literally an episode involving a character that dies later in that episode. The only thing it accomplishes is removing a shield that was barely mentioned in the first place. Yes it is tragic, and it doesn't loose sight of the overall plot, so it isn't completely pointless, but it might as well have been. It only made Aya feel guilty, which could have been done in an earlier episode. In fact, a large amount of the episodes happen specifically to make Aya feel like trash, I know it tugs at the heartstrings a bit, but it gets overly done. While it is a short anime already but it could have been clipped down to far less episodes, however it also could have been expanded upon and made a longer anime series as well. There are a lot of development points where it felt like they rushed something which didn't help the already confusing plot. There are some good episodes don't get me wrong, but the rushing through some of the concepts and characters is a large flaw that can't be overlooked, at least in a review.
There are some difficult points here. The power sets for certain characters is pretty cool, and the fighting styles are well done, some of the characters are really well designed, but the people with celestial powers either have purple hair and yellow eyes, or transform into something similar. Also how the powers work is lost in the anime, making the powers seem like they are more plot points and less like a lore of the anime. There are some great creative choices, but that one just seems like it doesn't fit in at all and is placed where ever without any type of rules half the time, shame as there are some truly great points of creativity too.
There are a few larger issues in this anime. First off, I feel the anime, like a lot of animes before it, was rushed to get to the end of the series. The plot is decent though slightly complex, and most of the characters are pretty good with a shining flaw here and there. The emotional pull is great, the episode quality is good but rushed in some areas, and the creative designs are great in some places and lack luster in others like some of the character designs and lore.
This anime is aimed more towards females, but does get unexpectedly dark in some areas, often times when you forget how dark this anime can be something happens to remind you. If you are still interested in all this, give it a shot. It isn't a great anime, but it isn't that bad either, the flaws may turn off some people, but the good points will capture some people as well. While the series is rather cheap, perhaps doing some research before adding this to your collection would also be wise. It is a good anime, but some shining flaws keep it from being a great anime.