Saturday, January 1, 2011

[Ended] Shinrei Tantei Yakumo: Clever, but anticlimactic


Four episodes ago, I said this anime just played its biggest trump card with a quarter of the series still left to go, and I was right.

After the story had peaked in episode 9, while it didn't quite fall as low earlier part of the series, it never got high enough that I would consider it to be the climactic ending. In fact, I consider the ending highly anticlimactic. Seriously, you'd have seen that coming miles away. While the pace of the entire series isn't fast to begin with, the final battle is nothing short of painstakingly slow. Sure there is a small chase, but after that, everything just switches into slow-mo.

I admit there are some cleverness in this last two major arcs, but an anticlimactic ending killed them all: Audiences aren't going to get any satisfaction if the story moves so slow that they had enough time to figure everything out way before the story actually get their.

Final scoreboard:

Drama: 81 (Acceptable)
Comedy: N/A
Action: N/A
Art/Animation: 80 (So so)
Sound/Music: 81 (So so)
Character: 75 (Well developed, but doesn't feel too real)
Plot: 78 (Only if it moves faster)
Ending: 71 (Anticlimactic)

Re-watch value: 20 (Once is enough)

Overall: 78 - Clever but Anticlimactic

Recommendation: If this series had ended in episode 9, I still might actually recommend it. But since it had turned out as it did, I would not recommend this to anybody unless you have too much time to waste.

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