First Impression: 11 Eyes
Story: When Kakeru was a child, his sister committed a kind of supernatural suicide. Since then, he has grown up as an orphan, withdrawn from the rest of the world. His only friend is a cutesy fellow orphan, Yaku. The two of them are suddenly, for no apparent reason, transported to another dimension. In this dimension, midday Tokyo is still, the moon is red and monsters emerge from the ground. Can Kakeru protect Yaku from this terrifying otherworld?
Impression
You know you’re watching a bad anime when more time and attention is put into the school uniforms the characters wear than the characters themselves.
The schoolgirls wear complex uniforms that have at least three layers of clothing with elaborate frills, laces, shoulder pads, and sleeves. On the other hand, the boys wear standard-issue but smart-looking suits. But the people that fill these uniforms are little more than stereotypes, each of them as bland as day old oatmeal. Here’s an exercise for you: write down as many eroge game stereotypes as you can think of before watching this show, and then make a checkmark whenever one appears. Hey look, there’s the Silent Hero, the Perky Childhood Friend, the Perverted “Funny” Man, and the Sexy Teacher. The Mysterious Transfer Student also counts as the Cold Quiet Girl - double your points! You could make a drinking game out of it.
The plot of the first episode is just as dull. Silent Hero gets magically transferred along with his Obligatory Love Interest/Childhood Friend to some Dark World for no apparent reason. Then they get transferred back to the normal world. And then at the end of the episode, they get magically transported back to the Dark World. The series makes the amateurish mistake of thinking that if you explain nothing, that somehow makes the show more suspenseful. A good narrative guides its viewers, folks, but 11eyes throws them off a cliff.
Summary
The first episode gives every indication that 11Eyes is an uninspired, eminently skippable series.
By: Bradley Meek Series Premiere: October 1st, 2009 Director: Masami Shimoda Animation Production: Dogakobo
Written on Thursday, 15 October 2009 16:56 by Bradley Meek
