Welcome everyone to what is universally conceived as a Madoka rip off..For the sake of my mental health,in case anyone gets offended by words on the internet bugger off cause i'm gonna shoot the F word like a AK47 from hell..Or Russia,which is the same thing really!
Now there is certainly a reason i started with the Madoka ref cause this anime is very much like Madoka in almost every aspect.But that won't keep me from giving this a fair shot and review it for what it is.
And let's start with the opening sequence,shall we?It was a bit bland and very much forgetable.It's also the thing i would expect to hear in cute girls-doing cute things type of anime,which is strange to me given the tone they wanted to give the anime.Imagine for example watching a splatter movie and the soundtrack was Britney Spears..Doesn't work does it?
With that outta the way let's see what this baby has storywise..DBI follows Taiyou Akari,a tarot cards fortune teller.After some shit went down,she gained special powers related to the Sun arcana,becomes a member of an organization called Sefiro Fiore,which specializes in recruiting girls who can see the so called Daemonia,and having them fight those pesky bastards with their tarot cards.
So DBI starts all guns blazing,unlike Madoka which gave the characters a headstart before going nuts.As a result of that there's no real tension,no build up.
Other than that the format is simple..Too simple if you ask me..It starts off with the boring monster of the week format where a person gets corrupted by Daemonia,our character agonises over having to kill them and there's always something lurking behind the scenes.But the biggest flaws this anime has is that during a great shitstorm,it plays the outtamyass card to resolve everything.
Sure there are plot twists,there are many great moments where the anime could take off but instead decided to take a nap,no explanations given.My feel was that the plot twists were there to serve as a reminder that this is a "dark magical girl anime",but that's all they were in the end..A reminder and nothing else.And plunging them in a sea of suffering just for the sake of suffering felt very contrived.
Then there's the worst thing of all..The damn rape card..Now i need to remind you that the girls here are 12 at best,so why on earth did they decide to throw such a thing in there?To be more dark?But even then the whole thing seems like an afterthought.Which is the case with every storyline with this anime..Just a general idea of where to go and build it from there..Thing is they decided to take into account every suggestion made and there weren't enough eps to pull it through..Maybe if it was 25 eps or so or if it had a 2nd season,maybe things would be better,but as it now stands......Big no..
Then there are the characters themselves.We have the cute and kind Mary Sue MC,the ice cold bitch who later on becomes a docile puppy,the energizer bunny girl who is always on meth,and sure as hell the rich girl..So far they're characters we've seen countless times before,and their backstory doesn't help things get any better..The rest of the cast are underdeveloped one trick ponies..And as for the bad guys?Well basically they're pedophiles..
Worse than that DBI does absolutely fucking anything to make us care about its characters,and when they do try to make us care about them it feels too damn cliche,boring,lazy and forced as fuck.Oh it tries to be somwhat original by throwing in some Tarot shit,but it doesn't even do anything with them other than them representing certain characters,that's it.
Animation was 10% some very good moments and 90% total fucking airborne disease that melts the eyes.It looks weird to say the least.The characters' legs look so freakin skinny,you'd think they could snap like pencils at any given moment and they have huge eyes and even more huge heads..Background was just a background..Nothing stood out.As for the side characters?Well they looked like they couldn't even bother to draw them properly.It's like someone drew the characters in a hurry and then did some scribbles on his Ipad and that was the side characters done.
Music was ok for the most part and there were some moments were i was properly astounded by the combination of music and tone.The VA's were as wooden as a wooden plank of wood.
To conclude,it was a bad anime..Was it the worst i've ever seen?Not in the slightest cause there's always anime like Aika and Burn Excess.But it was definitely dull,the story didn't grab my attention,most eps were fillers and once the final eps kicked in i stopped taking it seriously altogether.It did have potential to be something better than total horseshit but it didn't have the balls to do it and relied instead to a faux shock factor and too many Deus ex Machinas.