Asura Cryin Season 1 Review

Story 6/10

Asura Cryin is exciting from the start. It doesn't take long for things to really pick up. Since there are only 13 episodes per season, that's a good thing. It pulled me in immediately and it kept me watching. As interested as it kept me and as exciting as it could be, it's certainly not the best anime I've ever seen. The characters aren't much different from the usual but they are fine. They lack development, but so does the entire story. And there in lies the problem. The plot is as holy as a catholic church!! (Okay, that was a bad pun, but I couldn't resist. No offense to the Catholics.) What I mean is the plot is full of holes. I haven't watched the second season, but so far, it's not developing, and if they spend the second season trying to fill in all the holes, I imagine it will be very boring. I still enjoyed the first season, but I had to not think to hard about what was going on and not try to make sense of things. 
The situation isn't that strange at first, though I wouldn't call it normal. The main character is a boy, Tomoharu, who is about to start high school. He is moving into this big house without his parents and he has a ghost who follows him everywhere. Not normal, but ( I want to continue the pun...but I won't) not too holy, especially considering it's not even ten minutes in to the first episode.

Then a strange classmate brings a trunk case to his house. Apparently she knows his brother who is supposedly off studying abroad. Again, nothing too weird.

A strange girl with fire abilities crashes through his window demanding he hand over the extractor, the trunk, except he doesn't know what she means so he doesn't think he has it. Interesting, but the only a few holes to fill and twelve episodes to fill them.

Then it gets a bit crazy. Suddenly there are two different groups at least plus the girl, Shuri, who brought the trunk, that show up at his house demanding he hand the trunk over. They are blasting holes in the walls and guns are popping out of Shuris body and people are shooting. They start talking about a "Dark Society" and religious war and what all. And now it's weird. But wait, there is more!

Tomoharu opens the case and some black dark evil thing that looks like slime starts oozing out of it, and end of the first episode. Now it's weird and it's holy, but we still have twelve episodes for explanations.
The next episode starts, it should continue the fight from previously right. Wrong! It fast fowarded. We did get a bit of a flash back to a small part of what happened, but that's about it. It felt very choppy to me. So now someone is going to explain this "dark society" thing right? Nope. Well then they will at least explain what came out of that case right? Nope, not really. So what do they explain? Not a whole lot. It continues on and Tomoharu is asked to join the science club by Shuri who is also the president of the third student council.

Then Tomoharu meets the first student council president, Saeki, who is one of the people who destroyed his house. Saeki wants him to join the first student council. Now why are there three student councils (we meet the second one later). Is Japan that different from America that they have three student councils? Is anyone really going to explain any of this? Shuri explains a teeny tiny bit about Dark Society, but not enough to mean much. Still, I'll bite. Then Tomoharu learns that Takatsuki is the one who broke into his house originally. Takatsuki is a demon and the first student council is responsible for destroying demons. So we get a conflict with that.

Before long, we have mechas that appear from a dark hole in the shadow of their handler and run on the souls of a sacrafice. We have Misao the ghost who died and is the one in Tomoharus Mecha.

We have demons that look like normal humans and contracts with demons and familiars etc.

We have Shuri who has guns in her arms and legs, litterally, and reminds me a bit of Revy from Black Lagoon. We GD's which I don't really know what the point of them is. We have Dark society and light society and second student council, I forget what they are. And very
little of this is explained. Oh, and since when were guns allowed at school...or swords, or you know, ANY WEAPON?

To add to the confusion, Misao the friendly ghost is apparently visible and ghost like and also not. See she isn't at first. But then she eats a stabalizer thing and she is. At first it seems like this whole Handler and demon and ghost thing is kept secret from the general public. And then it doesn't. Misao floats around with her feet off the ground and is supposedly visible, but if she was visible, wouldn't people have an issue with the whole floating thing. I mean she walks in school, but other times she just floats down the street or sits in the air in public. Also, apparently sometimes she can touch things and sometimes she can't. She starts school with Tomoharu, so one would assume she can pick up pencils and stuff. Plus she hangs out with other girls and one would assume she is able to appear alive, except then at a party, she tells a woman that she can't touch anything and to demonstrate puts her hand through the chicken. If she can't actually touch or move things, how does she handle school? It's like the rules are constantly changing. The transition from episode to episode was rock at best for the first several episodes. Very little was ever explained. The characters don't feel very developed to me because I have no idea what this dark society and three student councils etc is. As for Tomoharus brother, that's a whole different bag of questions. We don't really know what he has been doing all this time or just what he is involved in and how deep, except that it has to do with the third student council. We don't know why he seems to be in league with the enemy sometimes. We don't know why doesn't contact Tomoharu directly, all we know is his name really. As for the action, it's not bad, but battle scenes tend to be rather short and sometimes a bit too convenient. Also, if everyone doesn't know about demons and handlers and mechas, then WHY ARE WE HAVING A BATTLE IN FRONT OF THE FREAKIN SCHOOL? Don't you think someone will notice. It's not like we have a shield or whatever its called like in Shakugan no Shana. There isn't anything stopping normal people from seeing this. And yet, somehow, no one seems to notice or care. Consistency is seriously lacking, and I mean SERIOUSLY!It's entertaining, but you can't try to analyze it too much or take it too seriously. I like to have full understandings and I tend to over analyze a lot, but if you just sort of accept the plot for what it is, and ignore all the holes, it's a fine story.6 might be a bit high, but it kept me interested so I don't want to go lower than 6, even though it might deserve it.

Animation 9/10
The animation is done pretty well. I don't really understand why Tomoharu has this one piece of hair that is longer than all the rest. It's a bit inconsistent with how solid and clear it makes Misao look. One of the characters looks like he has one vampire tooth, but overall, the animation is well done. It doesn't really subtract to the story. I give it a 9.

Sound 8/10
Sound is fine as well. There isn't an opening or ending song, at least not on the sites I've watched it on. That's a bit odd to me, but whatever. I don't think there was a huge amount of effort put into this anime anyway. I thought they did pretty well with the sound when the kids were in the plane towards the end, but that's the only part where it really stood out to me. It just sounded a lot like being in the plane. On the other hand, I disliked some of the voices because they sounded too alike in a couple cases. It wasn't overly bothersome though. Overall I give it a 8. It's not too impressive, but it's average.

Characters 6/10
As I said before, the characters are average. Nothing is too peculiar.  Most of the characters remain pretty static, but it's not too bad. What bothers me is we know more about some of the minor characters and secondary characters than we do the main character. We know how some of the handlers who are secondary and minor characters came about to possess the Asura Machina's than we do about how Tomo did. We know Tomoharu was on a plane with most of the other secondary characters, but we don't know what happened to him and Misao. It's a bit messed up. Because of that, I give characters a 6.

Overall, I give it a seven. It's about average. Nothing to impressive.


Oh, but we do get this explanation! It just takes us 13 episodes to get it.....