Ayashi No Ceres Review

Platy had given me 2 sleeves of anime that he hadn’t watched. "Watch and tell me if it’s good." I was really into this anime Full Metal Panic, but didn’t have anymore episodes so I glanced across my dresser and pick up a CD labeled "Ayashi No Ceres". I remembered watching a few seconds of it at Platy’s house, noting that the art wasn’t too great. Whatever, I was bored.

The first thing I was greeted with was a piano solo leading into a kickass opening. There were feathers, a mysterious badass, and a naked chick all just in the opening! Kickass already. As the episode started, however, I began to doubt the kickassness of the series. The art wasn’t too impressive, neither was the animation. It starts out with a brother and sister, Aki and Aya respectively, planning for their 16th birthday party. Instead, their parents force them to go to their grandfather’s house for a special party. Up till this point it was all pretty gay. But one scene where Aya is about to fall off a bridge, this horrendously badass individual flies across the street and grabs her, saving her from death. He was tall, had red hair, sunglasses, and a really really badass outfit. Sadly he disappears for a while.

Ok so it turns out the Mikage family (Aki and Aya’s family) owns this secret company or something and that Aya is a threat to the family because she has the blood of a tenyo (angel). So like Aki gets cut up for some reason that we don’t know yet and Aya goes crazy and turns into this angel. Unfortunately the angel doesn’t really look that badass; it’s just this chick with blue hair named Ceres. But wait, the badass comes back. His name is Touya. I remember telling myself at that moment that Touya was going to kick a lot of ass throughout the series; indeed he fucking did.

The story doesn’t stay this bad. It begins to pick up after a few episodes when the Mikage Company tries to capture the tenyo and use it to genetically create their own tenyo/humans, naming the project the C-Genome project. Aki and Aya are separated and Aya falls into the hands of another woman with tenyo blood and her ex-husbands younger brother, Yuuhi. Touya and Aya fall in love and another sub story revolves around Touya’s loyalty to the Mikage family and his mysterious past. This is just the basis of the story, it gets much much better.

The music is amazing in this series. I was hooked on the opening and the ending is equally catchy. You don’t really notice the music within the series as standing out but it blends in well enough to not be noted as bad. Again, through the series the art switches between badass and not so great but the story immerses you so much that you don’t really notice. The male characters do look really cool though. Almost every single male character looks badass.

THERE ARE NO FILLER EPISODES! Let me repeat. THERE ARE NO FILLER EPISODES! I loved this. All 26 episodes are in directly correlation to each other. It’s just one big story. This is also probably why the series engages you so much. You’re never stuck on a boring episode. Like most animes, you really have to wait for a few episodes to really feel the effect of the anime. When the story really picks up, around episode 10, you just wanna keep watching it. It seriously hooks you.

Sure, the art isn’t too great, but the story and general impact of the anime hits you hard and drags you in for a chaotic 26 episode ride to the insanely cool ending. Trust me, when you see Touya rise out of the water with these huge angel wings and deflect bullets, you realize this is one of the greatest animes you’ve ever watched.