LobsterRyoma

11eyes, in the beginning, showed potential to be a "10" or "9" grade anime. Some shows went on and grew the beard. This one, on the other hand, devolved into something else. However, this wasn't exactly a devolution into the worst of the worst. Story - 4/10 The anime showed pretty strong potential to be a very good supernatural themed story. The concept was used before. This did not discourage me from watching it though. One can use mediocre concepts and turn it into gold. I first saw this aspect as gold. This view, however, devolved and the story slowly but surely turned into something else: Ascrewy and awkward one. An interesting story suddenly became VERY awkward and weird. Suddenly, it's like the other characters lost their competence and some even derailed into "dreadful and annoying" (I'm looking at you, Yuka.) And the rest just got... blah. I'll give it a 4 for managing to be really interesting early on. Art - 7/10 11eyes definitely has great art. Arts from other more complicated series cannot be compared to this one since its main focus was the "moe" aspect. Characters that have cute traits like big eyes and the like are found in it. Some battle scenes did look a bit awkward though. At one time, I was expecting an epic fight between two master swordsmen. It shifts to one scene. And then cue to a scene where one of them says "She's too strong." and don't fight anyway. It's like they ran out of budget to make a big fight scene. That was fail. This gets 7 for being really good at what the art's supposed to be. Sound - 9/10 The opening "Arrival of Tears" by Ayane and "Sequentia" by Asriel are suberb themes and are actually VERY addicting. The BGM of the show, too, was great. Epic music was around. This gets a 9. Character - 6/10 The characters are stereotypical, that's for sure. The characters were made to cater to your fetishes. This was ok, I understand. It was the point. And then IT happened. One of the main girls degraded into a sick little girl with her own sick little fantasies. And as I said earlier, suddenly most of the cast became incompetent in combat and the main guy just became central view of the show. What the heck happened? This gets a 6 for me. Enjoyment - 7/10 Although not that good, I definitely enjoyed this show. Admittedly, it catered to me, being a moe anime after all. It's my type. Later on this interest disappeared due to... complications in story. This gets a 7 in enjoyment - it's quite entertaining to watch nevertheless. Overall - 6/10 11eyes, though deserving lots of the flak from our fellow watchers, is a pretty ok anime. It barely crosses "5" territory, which for me is a low score already. Overall, 11eyes cannot be considered a great or a superb anime. But undeniably the show is decent enough to stand. But if one looks for story and development in an anime, 11eyes is not for you.

spiritsoftime

What starts out as an interesting supernatural mystery/action romance quickly devolves into the "I'm the main character and only useful one" cliche with a such a feeble plot that anyone with critical thinking skills will be disgusted. Story - 2/10 The plot is paper thin. High school kids are randomly transported to the Red Night, a red mirror world of danger and isolation, where they must fight for survival against random threatening things and, of course, the Black Knights. Although, it is explained later that these kids are "special", it is never explained why the kids, who'd lived lives of relative normalcy, aresuddenly whisked away on some random day to The Red Night. (Must be the power of adolescence.) The big reveal of the story is as poorly implemented as it is predictable. Instead of undermining the heroes' determination by causing confusion and guilt, there's merely a glaring dissonance between the bad guys' actions and their supposed motivations. The bad guys' actions should have taken on new meaning and made the heroes make a choice that would forever define their characters and wrap up the themes of survival, self-sacrifice, and friendship. However, it is handled so poorly that the Bad guys create the things they're supposedly trying to guard against. This dissonance precludes any type of meaningful conclusion because the series has apparently run against simple logic since the very beginning, rendering the conflict irrelevant. Art - 6/10 The art is fairly bland. There's nothing particularly wrong with any of the art, but there is nothing distinctly memorable either. The Red Night is unremarkable, merely a copy of the real world with a red tint, and the Black Knights' sanctum, if it can be called such, is never defined except for some red giant stalagmites. The most interesting things art wise are Misuzu's swords, summoned by the power of nail-polished symbols. (Hurray!) Sound - 7/10 The sound is good. Usually unnoticeable, it does a good job setting up the atmosphere. Character - 3/10 In a rare stroke for the 'highschool kids save the world' genre, the main character isn't given an immediate power up. Instead, he acts with a realistic mixture of fright, confusion, and desperation when he and his childhood friend/love interest are transported into a world that is serious about killing them. In fact, for their first few encounters with the Red Night, they must be protected by a kick-ass female swordswoman, who's competence and prudence is the only thing that keeps them alive, as the main character trains to be able to protect himself and his girl. This characterization was the first thing that drew my attention and gave me hope that we'd see mature character development throughout the series as Kakeru worked under Misuzu's guidance to become independent and a protagonist worthy of protecting what he held dear. Unfortunately, the main character becomes the most powerful of the heroes through a power up while the kickass female slowly loses her competence and independence for really no other reason than to make the main character look more manly and heroic be comparison. (Did the creators want to keep the suck ratio of the group constant?) Meanwhile, all the other characters who had their own strengths and quirks, regress to worthless, crazy, withering piles of fear and despair. Still, this could have been salvageable, by sticking to the harsh realities of the main character's unrealistic goal of protecting innocence, but the ending made whatever tragedies happened to the characters null. Enjoyment - 3/10 As someone who dislikes fanservice, this anime's constant use of panty-shots was an ever present annoyance. The anime never missed an opportunity to take off clothes and even used the cop out of "you must have sex to save the world" excuse to maintain the main character's integrity even though he was getting some from a girl he obviously didn't love. Although fanservice annoys me, I will tolerate it in anime where the plot and characters are genuinely interesting. However, since that is not the case with 11eyes, the fanservice sticks out as another detraction. Overall - 3/10 (Poor) While the first episodes look promising, the anime loses all sense of itself by failing at drama and backing away from the harsh themes they set up by its poorly written plot. You're better off looking for another supernatural series for entertainment as this one is a big disappointment. There are plenty of better ones out there.