Day Break Illusion: il sole penetra le illusioni

AnnaSartin Dec 12, 2017

4

This show wasn't great and it wasn't horrible. It was forgettably average, which is a shame because a lot of the plot elements were interesting and deserved further exploration. - Things I liked - The four main characters Each of the four girls had her own backstory and personal motivations. We had a chance to get to know each of them and understand what makes them tick. They got genuine character development, learning from their experiences and reevaluating their beliefs as they were presented with new information. None of them were above realizing their own flaws and weakness and they all worked to rise above them. Akari and her friends were also fun to watch interact with each other once they resolved their differences. I particularly enjoyed the episode of the group hanging out and having a good time together. The "tarot" aspect While the use of cards in anime is certainly not original, the use of tarot cards in this show didn't feel old or stale. Little things, like Akari's ability to unconsciously make plants grow because of her affinity with the Sun card, were nice touches. Luna's confession about her lesbian crush Always nice to see characters who can admit their feelings for a person of the same gender without protesting or making a lame statement about the other person being the same gender. I'm so tired of hearing it that I feel like Luna's honesty about how she really feels deserves recognition. - Things I disliked - One-dimensional villains Cerebrum and the corrupt politician were simply not interesting. Being one-note characters, their actions were hardly surprising and there was nothing to them other than doing some random evil thing most of the time. By the time Cerebrum decides to "go big" toward the end of the series, I had long since stopped giving a crap about him. Unanswered questions Unfortunately, the series crammed too many plot elements into 12 episodes, leaving viewers with a lot of unanswered questions because there wasn't enough air time to wrap everything up. We learn, for example, that one character has a twin sister who went missing years ago. The show does absolutely nothing with this information, which feels to me like a waste. The girl is not found, nor is she even searched for during the show. We never even learn why exactly she went missing in the first place. Another example: a person in the show randomly comes back from the dead. If they are able to do this, is it possible to help others who have died under similar circumstances? Yet another thing I wanted to know was why Etia and Laplace have "restrictions" placed on their abilities. The unanswered questions go on and on, leading me to believe this would have been better as a two-cour show instead of just one. There was certainly plenty of material to work with. Inappropriate remarks and fanservice involving the pre-teen characters When a twelve year-old character is transformed into a demonic wolf-girl, her bare breasts and crotch are exposed. The only clothing on her body is a sort of corset on her stomach, and as a result, she spends a few episodes looking like a prostitute roleplaying for a client. I really didn't think this was appropriate given the age of the character. Someone also tells a different twelve year-old that he "wants to mate with her" which was a total cringe factor for me. She's twelve years old, freak. Go away. - Final Comments - Something I strongly I disagree with is the number of people calling this show "a Madoka Magica rip-off". The only things I think Daybreak actually has in common with the show is being in the same "dark magical girl" genre and a few minor story elements that are found in multiple anime franchises. It seems to me that Day Break Illusion and later members of its ilk (such as "Yuuna Yuuna Is A Hero" and "Magical Girl Raising Project") all suffer from constantly being compared to what is currently the most popular show of its genre, which drives people away from even giving it a chance. Does it mean I think these shows are amazing? No. Each had its own unique strengths and weaknesses. But anime that is merely average (or even plain mediocre) can resonate with the right viewers if they are willing to try them. This current cycle reminds me of a similar pattern around fifteen to twenty year ago, when every new magical girl series that came out was immediately compared to Sailor Moon - often called a rip-off by people who hadn't even watched the show! And those that did would find very generic elements to point to as a reason for this comparison, such as "They both have magical girls!" or "They both fight new monsters every week!" A weak argument at best, and while Sailor Moon was certainly a global phenomenon, it is certainly not the FIRST magical girl show ever created. Nor was Madoka Magica the first "dark" magical show ever created. In the end, if you like dark magical girl shows you may want to give Day Break Illusion a chance. If you don't enjoy this particular genre, however, then don't bother- this isn't the right show for you.

Dionkeykong Jun 18, 2018

4

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.

ZetsubouKaiji Jun 26, 2014

5

Day Break Illusion is the hardest kind of show to write about because it's not terrible and it's not good but instead falls dead center in average territory. It's pretty obvious the story here took heavy inspiration from Madoka. However, that's not a reason to dismiss the show out of hand. If you're going to take inspiration from another anime then you could make much worse choices than the excellent Madoka. However, Day Break Illusion does try to go in it's own direction creating it's own story elements and generally having it's own voice. The anime fails though because it doesn't manage to build up the characters or it's own mythos the way Madoka did. Madoka was great because it really made you feel for it's characters and their plight, as well as building up a surprisingly deep mythology for itself. The story of Day Break is pretty simple girls with magic powers have to fight humans taken over by daemonia using the power of tarot cards. Like Madoka the story often takes on a very shounen attitude not often seen in magic girl anime. The action scenes all tend to be rather well done and world of the Astrolux where most of the battles take place is very reminiscent of the various witches' worlds in Madoka even if the Astrolux isn't nearly as visually interesting. The plot of Day Break isn't bad, the problem is it gets shoved to the background after the second or third episode in favor of monster of the week antics until the last handful of episodes. These monster of the week episodes are meant as character development for the main quartet of girls, but they fail to add much depth to the characters. Instead these episodes are chock full of cliches and reinforce the cliche feeling the characters already had. In the main cast there's Akari- the overly sensitive chosen one, Luna- the weak willowy one, Seira- the angry emo one and Ginka- the annoying one. The episodes meant to develop them just pushes them further into their own cliches and does nothing to really endear these characters to the viewer. The rest of the plot is pushed into the last five episodes making it feel very rushed. Even worse this being a dark series there's a lot of bad shit that goes down in the last few episodes, but since the characters are so hard to care about it has little or no impact when something horrible happens to the characters. The anime just kind of lurches to a conclusion that elicited little more than a shrug out of me. The art and animation were decent. Personally, I thought the character designs were awful with the exaggerated noddle limbed loli look, however everything else looked pretty good and the action was generally well animated. The characters all had pretty shrill voices which could get kind of grating, especially when they were upset or laughable when they were trying to be tough in fights. The opening, ending and general OST were all forgettable. Overall this series is what it is. It's not good, it's not bad. Just a very average anime. As a Madoka clone I'd call it competent but not particularly inspired even if it had some good ideas of it's own. Unfortunately those ideas don't get nearly enough development. I would recommend this anime to someone looking for something a little different from the usual magic girl fare, but only if they've already seen Madoka.