Anime Hajime Review: Ayakashi

Series Synopsis

As a child, Yuu Kusaka (voiced by Daisuke Kishio) witnessed a strange sight. In the dead heat of summer came a mysterious snow fall. Little did the boy know, this unnatural phenomenon would lead to a horrific fight to save the world.

Now in high school, Yuu has become a bit of loner after the death of one of his most beloved friends. Ever since the day of the summer snow, Yuu has been able to tap into a strange power which has caught the attention of some dangerous people.

Yuu is not the only person with supernatural abilities, but he is the only who doesn’t know how to control them. There are people who now want him dead and he would be if it weren’t for the intervention of Eimu Yoake (voiced by Nana Mizuki).

For unknown reasons, Eimu proclaims she will protect Yuu from those who seek to harm him. She also explains the power within both of them is due to parasitic-like beings known as Ayakashi and using their abilities will eventual result in either physical or mental ruin.

While not sure how to take in what's happening, Yuu realizes he can't sit and do nothing. Despite Eimu's urging, Yuu decides to use his power to protect the people he holds dearest.

Series Positives

Yuu

I want to start off by saying I’m getting tired of shows being labeled as horror simply because there’s a lot of violence, blood, and gore. That’s not what makes horror and to that extent Ayakashi is not a horror anime. Violent yes, gory quite, but not horror.

So how does this series stand up as the science fiction action story that it is?

Ayakashi is serviceable. That’s it.

Eimu

There are problems, there are lots of problems. There are good things. Not as many good things as there are problems. Yet what’s good is enough to make this show watchable and entertaining to the necessary degree.

The Leads

Ayakashi passes because of its two leads, Yuu and Eimu. Because of these characters, this series, with all of its issues, is able to carry on and move past them.

Yuu has a lot of the characteristics of a main protagonist which I don’t like. He doubts himself, which is fine except he keeps it up until the absolute last second when he, of course, gets the confidence to triumph. It’s standard and has been done to death.

However, Yuu makes up for it because he asks questions. He’s always trying to figure out what's going on. He knows he doesn’t have all the information, he knows people are not telling him everything, AND he doesn’t like it. Instead of acceptance, instead of not saying anything or doing anything, Yuu does the opposite. He does stuff. He goes forward on his own and tries to solve the problem.

It doesn’t matter if he’s wrong in the beginning. It doesn’t matter if he's in the right. Yuu is doing something with the facts he has. If he f@#$s something up, if he gets something wrong, that’s not on him. That’s on the people not telling him the story. 

Yuu comments on a lot of the bull s@#$ going on around him. He’s very aware of the nonsense and that’s what saves him. It’s makes him worth caring about, worth following, worth routing for because this whole time you know he’s trying to find the answers.

This is great, especially when this is the type of story which wants to play keep away for reasons that are stupid.

Compared with Yuu’s base character of whining and doubting which I usually hate, Eimu’s base character I normally don’t have problems with and it’s the same here.

Unfortunately, she was part of the reason why Yuu had to ask questions. She was the one holding the information back.

Eimu had a reason do this. There was something she wanted to keep secret. This made her silence and vagueness excusable; to a point. There were things she could have disclosed. For example, what are the Ayakashi, what's going on, who is “him”. That’s the kind of stuff she should have said pretty early on.

It’s starting to sound as if I actually have a problem with this character. I do, yet I still liked her simply because she felt necessary and that’s going to become important later on.  

Eimu could fight, she could make a stand, she could win by herself. She didn’t need Yuu to pick up the slack. She dealt with her fair share obstacles and situations. Often times, she had to be the one to overcome and to get the victory.

Eimu was a good lead because, again, she felt necessary and that's such a key word because there were a lot of things in this series that weren't necessary.

Series Negatives

I already touched on one of the major problems with Ayakashi; it's insistence on withholding information and not explaining, particularly not explaining without a good reason. The show tried, it did try to bring about that reason. It didn’t work.

Eimu’s secret was her own personal thing and not the big picture. Even by the end I wasn’t and am still unable to tell you everything that was going on or why any of it was important.

Plus, the main villain of the show was boring as hell; just terrible. He's completely forgettable, not at all interesting, and was threatening only because the series said so.

Conveniences

Ayakashi doesn’t have a well told plot and is the type of story which relies on conveniences. It does so because this show only has moments.

All stories are made up of moments. Good, bad, it doesn’t matter. There are key points that need to happen. They keep everything interesting, and keep the audience invested. Every story has to have these.

Ayakashi's moments, on paper, were fine. Too bad there was nothing linking them and that’s where the conveniences came in. The plot only progressed due to events that happened…because.

The first signs of this were in episode two.

Yuu and Eimu have just met this one character who is very aggressive and is out to kill Yuu. It comes to a head in a park, which is completely deserted. Everyone talks, it quickly gets heated, and a fight breaks out.

Then out of nowhere, literally everyone shows up. “Where did they come from,” I asked myself and the answer soon became clear. These people where fodder. They showed up only to be killed and to be killed gruesomely to establish this as a violent series. Instantly the type of show this was going to be revealed itself.

It didn’t stop there.

Besides Yuu and Eimu, there was a third character, Hime (voiced by Miyu Matsuki), who was completely useless. She was the damsel. I’ve got a whole other set of issues with this, but this show takes it’s a step further and takes Hime out of commission.

So what happens next is Eimu becomes the new damsel and that pissed me off. Eimu suddenly became useless out of conveniences, going against everything which had been previously established.

Eimu proved time and time again that she was a formidable character who could hold her own. Except when the story needed something to happen, then she became someone who needed saving. This was a one time thing by the way. This moment didn’t last all that long, two episodes at the most, since Eimu eventually had to become useful again.

God forbid you were a side character in this show. With the exception Hime, any and all supporting cast had only a few purposes; cannon fodder, forced plot progression, or pseudo feels.

There were moments in this series that were meant to be emotion, that were meant to get you deep right in the heart. But since Ayakashi keep using convenience, it spent hardly any time on character development for the side characters that these events were happening to.

Some people died and I didn’t care; gave zero s@#$. That’s not good since the show played it up like I was supposed to feel sorry for these people. Nope, doesn’t work that way

Take all that and add it to a climax which was lackluster at best, plus a throw away villain, then have a light show ending instead of an action scene, and you get Ayakashi.

Final Thoughts

This series is hard to recommend. It’s missing something crucial; a good story.

I want you to image a bridge. A well-built bridge needs support; something strong, something solid, something that will keep it on its foundation. A good story can be this main support. Can you make a bridge without it? Yes, but you need a lot of reinforcement to make up for it.

That’s what Ayakashi has, reinforcement. Good lead characters, decent action at times, and moments which were okay. There’s enough here to have a bridge which is able to serve a lot foot traffic. However, one too many heavy loads risk the whole thing coming down and this show was one bad f@#$ up away from crumbling. Yet it's still passable.

And that’s where I leave Ayakashi. It's passable.

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