Naga

STORY: (4/10)

There’s not much to this shallow story since everything from start to climax looks pretty much as mixture of delightful content that was made to impress the younger bloodthirsty audience. There is no serious development but rather a bunch of time skips, plenty of flashbacks without a cause and occasional progressing plot, which is 60% action and few dialogues. Dialogues tend to be intelligent and deep but aren’t since the show lacks any serious character base or wielders of wit, since everyone is almost plain, absurdly generic or just blank so no one can be taken seriously, if anything those dialogues can set the atmosphere and give away that mysterious tone which follows the series quite well.

In the beginning show held some promise of feudal horror with flavored grim romance of sorts but ended briefly, insatiable, and transitioned into a bit disappointing dystopian future in which the actual, not so good, plot starts.  Though plot is not the strong or even better to say present point show is still captivating and surprisingly fun to watch, mostly because of the good action and few witty moments.

In a nutshell; this show is pile of wasted material and crumbled potential that could’ve been so much more if they managed to define themselves at the some early point and stick with it till the end. What we have now is just a bunch of nonsensical ideas flavored with blood and silly, yet well made, violence/action. 

ANIMATIONS: (8.5/19)

Animations were the strongest point, since it is an anime from 2008 and produced by none the less than studio MADHOUSE. There is not much to say than few praises because animations really contributed a lot to this show. It enhanced the gloomy mood and made all fights extremely fun to watch, which is in the end the best part of this show.  No matter how bad it gets, animations were here to make the bothersome content a bit more watchable than it really was.

SOUNDS: (8/10)

Nothing particularly stood out, neither following music nor OP/ED. None the less music was very fitting and almost always immanent, so in the end it´s also a good piece of work.  Voice acting was solid, very good at best. Since I have nothing more to say it was a good soundtrack; very moody, always fitting in a situations and contributing it´s best for the dark, almost aphotic, atmosphere.

CHARACHTERS: (2/10)

Since I mentioned it in the story section there is not much to say than that it was a horrid cast of characters. Even the MC is somewhat failure in my eyes - I almost always saw him as either time stopping matrix wannabe or just a retarded punching bag. Without him even speaking that much, like some petty afro man, he is one of the worst samurai I have seen in anime. I can understand that he´s completely oblivious to everything but he is not doing  much except searching for his beloved, which makes sense if you can swallow their undeveloped romance that seems to happen out of blur. From the start of second “arc” his only motive is to find her… well apparently just for the sake of it. Their relationship wasn´t developed past the fact that they are in love and they were apparently companions through all these years. Minding that he doesn´t know her at all and lacks almost every memory of their millennium of knowing each other it´s kind of creepy if anything. I still think it is solid motivation but that is not my problem with this show. Problem is in every other character, including these two. Only two or three characters were provided with some sense in development or motives, leaving everyone else looking like bunch of senseless apes. Interactions were horrible even with the Kuro and Kuromitsu, which can clear out how well were others did. Every secondary character was bad and the minor ones were even worse. I was taken aback by this poor set, I daresay one of the worst I came across in a long time.

OVERALL: (4/10)

Overall it is still eligible watch for the bloodthirsty people out there that won´t mid the shallow plot and downright retarded cast of blank super warriors. If you can endure the silly yet sometimes charming dialogues and idiotic characters, without any purpose but to die or kill, then you won´t have any major problems with this as I did. If you absolutely want to watch something grim and violent here you go, turn off your brain and have fun. Sure it can sometimes get intelligent but just remember who is talking and it will slip away as this show will from my memory, in a year or so at least.