ANIME REVIEW: Mekakucity Actors

Bear with me people this is a new feature and trying to review a whole season of an anime is very different from my episodic or single book reviews. Hope you have fun reading it.

Mekakucity Actors is a 2014 anime series that ran first from April 13, 2014 to June 29, 2014. Its producers are listed as Aniplex, Shaft and 1^st Place.

PLOT

The incidents which occurred on August 14th and 15th bring a group of young boys and girls together... They are members of a group they call themselves the "Mekakushi Dan" (Blindfold Organization) and each member possesses a strange power involving their eyes. Will the members of this peculiar organization be able to solve the mysteries behind these incidents and see the truth?

ANIMATION

The animation is smooth and incredibly well done but the animation style is fairly unique as such things go and most similar to the Bakemonogatari series which was made by the same studio. It is beautiful but very different and will take some getting used to.

WHAT I THOUGHT

This anime makes no sense.

This anime makes no sense.

This anime makes…

OH wait why didn’t they make that more clear in the beginning.

If you require require a show to have a linear plot moving from A to B and so on you need to stay well away from this show it might have an adverse effect on your health seriously at times this show can and will seriously stress you out.

Mekakucity is one of the strangest anime I have ever seen. It is not that the show doesn’t have a plot in fact the plot is rather expansive and pretty involved the issue comes around the fact that the plot doesn’t follow any simple timeline or logical progression it just tells you stuff whenever it wants and without warning. It jumps here and there and doesn’t explain itself.

Mekakucity Actors is based on a series of Vocaloid songs by the artitst Jin so perhaps that explains some of the weirdness of the show. The songs were apparently huge and spawned light novel and manga adaptions, the songs together tell a story which is something to note in terms of discussing the show itself.

There are things to recommend in this anime the art work is good but somewhat unique UNLESS you have also watched Monogatari and the related series which are all made by the same studio and do this weird thing where only the main characters have any definition and extras are often still silhouettes or disembodied voices. It is kind of creepy if I’m honest but meh.

I can recommend this if you want to take a look at a great example of non-typical anime, there isn’t a wimpy protagonist who just wants to become strong or humanoid mecha battles between warring nations. It is definitely an anime that you can’t watch passively you need to pay attention to what is going on and think about them in order to rearrange the jigsaw that is the plot of this show.