Fortune Arterial - Reviews

I have to do a review on this anime right now so that i can remember this episode 8. so keep in mind that ive only watched up to this episode.

First of all this anime is about a guy that comes back to his hometown, and all the characters have that child hood memory shit. When he comes back he finds out about a sister and brother(not his) that are in the student council and they are vampires. oh wow, didnt see that coming. The old immortals are smart and are in leadership positions. I also didnt see it coming that the guy (main character that comes back to town/island) and sister vampire have a "thing" for each other... or at least... she has a blood lust for him. Obviously he is special, but it hasnt clued anything else. Im getting tired of unoriginal vampire money making campaigns. I get the deal with vampires... its awesome, but damn this anime is aggrivating to watch.

Here are some examples of why its aggrivating:

1. The vampire sister is about to wipe the memories of this girl (again) and the main character guy is all worked up about it... they are fussing... making no sense... just when you think she wiped the girls memories... she didnt, and the two girls hug all lovey duvy..... Im sitting here screaming WTF OMG YOU SHIT at my computer monitor about to wake the house up. So it amounts to... the developers wanted to create a dramatic scene that gets you worked up. It just seemed to me like a cheap way of adding drama.

2. The girl that got saved by the vampire girl when they were kids, whom is also the girl that is getting her memory wiped has a sister. Their personalies are managable most of the time... but like in episode 7 i think... or 6... they try to make up with each other over their feelings and such.. and they just sit there basically screamilng at each other "I want you to be happy." That is basically all i heard for the 5 min. conversation. Why can they say "yes we have done wrong, but now i understand that we should both try to be happy together." They never even get to that point... they finally say "this is a wierd situation" with tears in their eyes... and it appears that they have made up. This anime just seems too simple and not well thought through... maybe its just me though.

This anime is ok though... For example... I like the vampire brother. He appears to be half way intellegent, which is the way someone who has lived for a long time should be. He is also funny. He understands that people need to laugh sometimes, and can make the situation fun and interesting/exciting. (for the people in the anime, as well as watchers). I am excited to see what the main character is, and what this new vampire is going to bring about to the story. So.. it has the possibility of evening itself out so to say... but it could also get worse...

So here is my advice... If you are looking for a anime just to sit back and enjoy with out and critical analysis (Meaning... your one of those people that give purpose for the quote "ignorance is bliss". You dont have a logical mind. You dont want to think a lot. You just want to watch good looking characters flirt with each other.)... this anime has some good points, but if you are looking for an anime that is exciting intuitively (mental stimulation) like detective conan, or at least pleasantly logical... look somewhere else.

I never try to discourage anyone from watching something. I just give my opinion and advice so that if you totally see where i am coming from then you wont waste your time. If you can watch something and enjoy it... isnt that better? than not enjoying it? If you have to do something... wouldnt you rather enjoy it than to sit there complaining the whole time.... This is a bit different though. Most people are not forced to watch anime. I wish i could enjoy it. It would be one more thing i enjoy.. so its not like i want it to be bad.

Ok it's my first time writing a review, this is the second time I was hyped by some anime so much, and then dissapointed soo much.

Story

It's about a random guy who changes of schools frequently because of his parents (old plot, very clichéd) and returns to a random island to start remembering he has two friends there and now he can stay in the random island. He  meets the vice president of the school who's weird and doesn't want to be too close to him, but she loves him. By the way the guy's name is hasekura kohei and the weird girl sendo erika.

SPOILER

TL;DR version the girl is a vampire, loves the guy, doesn't want to drink his blood because she wants to be a normal girl and it's afraid to spoil the guy life, but her mother wants her to make the guy her sexual toy, well her dependant lol.

I give the stoy 4/10 because it's very clichéd, and 12 episodes doesn't cover too much about it, instead they waste space and time with so many unnecesary plot, you think well fun stuff, but when you get to the plot is boring as hell. Just the two first episodes are good lol and the last 2 episodes are the only ones that inform a bit about the plot.

Oh and don't expect answers for the cliffhangers, plotholes, it's imposible with only 4 episodes that are worth of something.

Animation

While some of the girls look cute, their body proportion isn't equal to a 16-17 years old girl, they look like kids.

The colors are good, the background is ok.

The bunny of shiro is horrible drawn lol, well not so bad, but it's boring.

4/10 Like I said, good colors, nice hairstyles, but horrible proportions.

Sound

The only good thing here, some nice pianos.

The opening is awesome and the ending is ok, but it isn't a masterpiece like the ones made by uematsu or motoi sakuraba, so don't expect too much, ok?

6/10, the opening really did save the category

 

Characters

Ok, while Sei (the guy with white hair bro of shiro lol) and the president Iory are funny, most of them are boring, except kuze and Kanade

Sendou is ridiculous sometimes with her, I don't want to drink blood.

Shiro hmm is just there to serve tea no purpose.

Kohei - Hmm he should have learned kidos or something, he's boring.

Haruna - well the typical girl that likes the main, but has no chance lol.

Kanade - she's cool with her stickers

Kuze - I like girls that are quiet lol

Tsukasa - the friend of kohei, wtf he does there, he is just there to occupy space.

5/10, only 4 characters are fun, the rest are boring.

 

Overall

4/10 I give this rating because the anime is way too short to develop a decent plot, the studio didn't do justice to the game, this failed soo hard, they could have saved the anime by giving an interesting ending like the random guy lets the random girl kiss him, drink his blood and he gains powers to beat the mother of the random girl, because she's annoying.

Really, the only bad point it was the lack of plot and that it was too short with a fail end.

It's so dissapointing, as

Akane Iro ni Somaru Saka was, we expected something and we got something way too boring.

Soon my review of that horrible anime, well it wasn't horrible, but i'll explain what made it so full of fail.

 

See ya

 

My anime reviews are always simple, short and straight-forward and is 100% spoilers-free.

Genres: Comedy, Romance, School, Supernatural, Vampire

Additional Info: Leisure time?

Ending Rating: 80%

Short Review:

An average anime. It's not that typical romance anime where there's alot of kawaii and "ahhh" moments. But still giving it a shot doesn't hurt tho.

Animation and audio (especially the music) was good. It was pleasant to watch and all the graphical details were en par with most modern animes.The background music made me think of the tunes from Final Fantasy and both OP and ED music is decent (although you'll probably skip through after viewing it once).

The female characters are much like all harem setups where each person has a distinctive role to play - nothing new but their interaction was better than some shows where the main character becomes the proxy between the females and they are mere stereotypes. Fortune Arterial does not have this issue although the swarming of female characters around the main character still is a bit of a cliche.

The story is a mix of a harem setting, combined with school life and a dash of vampires. While this mix could have resulted in a very decent story, in the end Fortune Arterial does not pull through.

Most events in the story are unrelated to the vampire angle or a very shallow approach to it. Aside from the beginning and ending, most of it is trivial. The remaining episodes are not awful fillers, but could have been from any other school life / harem series.

The writers attempted to modify the stereo type vampires to make the story a bit lighter. While this worked superficially, there are some darker sides to the dilemmas they introduce. However, without actually dealing with these problems, the story just brushes past potential issues and leaves the viewer with a sense that the story is incomplete.

***SPOILER*** - Details about why the story does not hold up below:

I hated the fact that only a couple episodes actually dealt with the whole vampire aspect and the ending was rubbish. The hero rushes into a vampire mansion in the pretense to get his "vice-president" back because the school and the cultural fair need her. Note that he actually thinks of her like his "vice-president" in his mind, instead of calling her Erica.

So he is willing to risk his life and even become a slave for eternity because a fancy fair needs her? Really?

In the end, nothing changed and episode 13 would be where she loses control, rips his artery and makes him into a slave for eternity. But since this doesn't stroke with the light hearted story in the other episodes, the writers just left it all hanging.

My review of this anime will necessarily be coloured by my adoration of the original visual novel, so I might not be able to examine the anime very objectively. To be honest, I don't think Fortune Arterial is a bad anime, but neither is it a very good one, and in comparison to the original work it's rather pale. The biggest problem hands down is the lack of time, as the anime includes material from every route and still consists of only 12 episodes, which would be enough to properly adapt one route, but only one. The good thing is, this gives us a wider understanding of the world and the secondary characters. The bad thing is, there is way too little concentration on Erika to make it the touching romance that the original work is. It doesn't help that they cut out almost every single romantic scene between Kouhei and Erika.

I was really looking forward to this anime, especially after I learned that most characters have the same seiyuu as in the VN. The character designs are close enough to the originals, too. However, one episode was enough to convince me that the storytelling is nowhere near as skilled as in the original. I understand the need to cut stuff when you're forced to squeeze a long story into a short anime, but in this case the result just doesn't work very well. I feel that they should have either made it a 24-ep-series or concentrated on one route. Too many important scenes that I was looking forward to were either cut or watered down.

The dramatization of important scenes is generally pretty good, though I wish the musics were better. Both the OP and ED are forgettable, and very few BG musics stand out. The animation doesn't feel half-baked, but it's hardly cutting edge either. The atmosphere is there, but IMO it's weaker than in the original work - and considering the original work is just a VN without any animation and no voice actor for the protagonist, that's not good.

The characters are personality-wise generally true to the originals. The only major difference I noticed is that the protagonist isn't decisive enough in the last episode. Well, you could say that Kaya isn't as cruel either... But ultimately, those are minor differences. I'm quite happy about that part. Unfortunately, the fact that too many important scenes between Erika and Kouhei were cut, means that her character in the end isn't as developed and deep as she's in the original work. I'm not kidding when I say that I fell in love with her when reading the VN, but watching this, I had a constant nagging feeling of "meh". While her dialogue felt in character, there was something about her portrayal and the dramatization of her intimate scenes that just didn't give me any strong feelings.

On the other hand, I learned a lot of new things about the secondary characters. Iori is one of my favourite characters, and Erika's route in the VN sadly leaves him into a small role. The anime somewhat expands his character, though I have a feeling that there are still some things in the true route of the VN that the anime left out. The other four girls all get some parts of their own routes mixed into the anime, and I was happy to learn more about them. And the mixture actually almost works, I didn't notice serious problems with the plot continuity. Of course, there are the problems I've mentioned earlier, too little time to develop the main characters and all that, but the story still somehow advances gracefully enough for plot continuity to not become a major problem.

Did I mention that I read the VN (Erika's route anyway) before I even started studying Japanese? The thing isn't even translated, except for the prologue and some of Kiriha's route, so most of the story I had to read with the help of translators. The quality of the writing shone even through the horrible machine translations, that's how good it is. It was a lot of work, but it was totally worth it. I was totally absorbed into the story, I was able to get in character with the protagonist (even though he's not very similar to me as a person) and as I said, I got an actual crush on Erika. It should tell you something that in comparison, I'm not sure if it was worth the time it took to watch the anime. There is such a huge gap in the quality of the storytelling. A good adaptation of this story could have been worthy of 9 or even 10 points - this one, let's say 6.5/10. It's still above average, not a bad watch or anything, but it's not an anime I'd recommend.