Black Cat

First of all, to be honest with you all. I did not enjoy this series as much as i thought i would like it mainly because of the plot and how it got fairly rushed in the end. Story - The beginning part of the story i thought was very well made, it was very dark, mysterious but not scary at all for those who dislike scary storylines. But after a while the plot just seem dull and unoriginal. Typical protagonist trying to save the world, trying to protect his friends and trying to get revenge, all these types of storylines has been overused, if BlackCat had a better storyline, i believe it would have been better. Art - I liked the design of the characters, especially Train during the beginning of the series. So i have nothing to complain about the art category. Sound- Not much to review about sound, but i have to admit the gunshots were pretty real. Also, the voice actors fitted the role very well, especially Eve and Sven. The OP was quite nice, fitted into the anime quite nice.. Forgot how the ED goes so i can't review that. Character- One of the things that makes Black Cat enjoyable are the wide variety of characters. It is quite amusing watching Jenos and Rins yell at each other. So if your looking for some humorous characters, Black Cat has that for you. The one thing that i thought lacked in the character section was the sudden change of Train Heartnet. Although it says half a year has passed, I'm pretty sure people other then me wants to watch the process of him from a deadly assassin to a overly energetic young man. Another reason i suggest Black Cat was rushed. Enjoyment- Black Cat is actually quite enjoyable if you do not care about the unoriginal storyline seeing that the characters are greatly designed and there are many great fight scenes. Overall- Overall i would say Black Cat is a fair made anime that fails to achieve better due to the lack of storyline and how it is quite rushed. Although i say this, i still enjoyed Black Cat to it's full potential.

I’m gonna be straight here – Black Cat is one of the most disappointing anime I’ve ever watched. It’s been two years since I watched this anime and I’m still a little bitter at how much potential remained unrealized at its end. Black Cat is about this assassin named Train Heartnet (hey, at least he escaped whoever named all the characters in Geass). Or wait, it’s about this secret bio-weapon disguised as a loli named Eve. Actually no, it’s about this bounty hunter dude named Sven. Oh, wait, never mind, I remember, it’s actually about the villain, Creed, who has a hard-on for Train. No hangon, it might’ve been about the organization that Train worked for, Chronos… See, I’m writing all of this as if the abundance of disparate elements in the plot is a bad thing, but the thing is, the story started out with a ton of potential. The first four or five episodes do a great job of tying all these characters together in a sensible and, dare I say, a captivating manner. Seriously, the beginning of this show is excellent. It’s exciting and a bit dark without getting too edgy or angsty, the characters all have good synergy and play off of each other very well, and the pacing is near-perfect. And then the timeskip happens. I’ll try to be brief and not spoil anything here, but suffice it to say that a certain main character’s personality does a complete 180 after the timeskip, and virtually zero explanation for the change is given to the viewer, outside of occasional scattered hints that refer to certain events that happened pre-timeskip. This is unfortunately only the beginning, as the rest of the anime devolves into a giant mess of hastily-introduced and poorly-fleshed-out characters, a distinct lack of focus on core plot points that the initial episodes tried to establish, and a ridiculous number of plot contrivances that attempt to reconcile this lack of focus, to no avail. The pacing is haphazard at best and has all the grace of a one-legged donkey at worst. The only relatively consistent character throughout the show is Sven; everyone else undergoes obscenely rushed character “development”, which is really just most of the characters overreacting to major events and, much like aforementioned main character, completely flipping the script on their personalities and becoming the exact opposite of who they originally were. This isn’t even mentioning the staggering number of characters this show introduces. There are like 10 new villains that arrived on the scene halfway through the show, plus all the Chronos assassins and executives, plus the guys who were in charge of those 10 or so new villains I just mentioned…the list just keeps growing and growing, and almost none of them get any kind of proper characterization, let alone development. It’s as if Naruto or One Piece were to condense themselves into 25 or so episodes, and cram their entire casts and plot into that timeframe. It’s insane. All that being said, the anime does have its good qualities. As I said before, the first part of the anime is very well done, and it constructs a reasonably compelling narrative while introducing a pretty solid cast of characters to drive it forward. The art and animation are also good, although the color palette was a little weird and off-putting at times. The soundtrack is fairly strong as well, and I am particularly fond of the opening theme. Ultimately, the overwhelming number of flaws prevent this anime from being anything more than way below-average at best. In truth, the last three-quarters or so of this anime are straight up terrible in terms of execution. Still, though…I can only imagine how much more enjoyable this anime could’ve been if they had just stuck to the format the first few episodes had established. It’s a damn shame.

At first I didn’t like it, but it grew on me after a while. I didn’t like it at first probably because it was a bit serious, and its first impression on me wasn’t that good. The storyline for the first few episodes didn’t grab me, and I found myself always distracted by something else. The storyline was promising, but I felt like the creators tried to fit as much as they can in only 26 episodes. Only the last three episodes were dedicated to Eve’s true nature, which was almost forgotten. Character design was average. The Numbers and the other villains who had the powerof the Tao looked impressive (Specially Leon), but Sven was just weird, Eve had a big head (although she was adorable when she became a bit human) and Rins tried to pull of some fan service but it didn’t work too well for her. I have to say the characters were poorly managed – there were just too many of them and in the end, not everyone was able to get a good amount of screen time. I don’t even know the names of most of the sweepers from the sweeper alliance. A lot of them were unnecessary too. Although I still find myself liking Train. He was so cool and mysterious at first but in the end he became so wacky and funny and just adorable. Drawing style was so – so. I felt like it was almost there, but still quite lacking. Train was well drawn, but there were times when the drawing style would change and his face would morph. Speaking of morph, I noticed that the colors were inconsistent, specially when it came to hair colors. Towards the end I noticed that Sven’s hair was a darker green, and Eve’s hair was a paler yellow, and Rins’ hair was also a lighter purple. The colors were just sub par. I would also like to note the use of CG, which complimented the animation. The voice acting was okay. At first I thought Train’s voice didn’t match him, because he looked too young and his voice was too low. When he became more cheerful and friendly, his voice changed and became more suited to his personality. I was also happy to find out that Number X’s (Shaolee?) seiyu was the same seiyu for Kohsaka from Genshiken, Wolfram from Kyo Kara Maoh!, Junior from R.O.D the TV and Robert Haydn from Law of Ueki. I love all of those series and I thought the seiyu for all those characters did well too, so it was definitely a plus to have her be a seiyu for Black Cat as well, even if it’s just a supporting role. I’m a big fan of the BGM for this series. I thought the BMG complimented the scenes well, and if not, improved the feel of the scenes. I was a bit indifferent towards the opening and ending themes, specially the first ending theme – I just thought it didn’t match the anime at all, but it grew on me. Same for the second ending theme which was a bit dull and boring, but in the end I got to appreciate its beauty. It did reach my expectations – it lived up to the name of Gonzo after all. It was a good decision to watch it and I understand why it’s so popular in the Philippines. I can’t say it’s great, specially since the ending under whelmed me (yet again), but it was a good watch for most of the time.

The purpose of this review is to express my disappointment as someone who read the manga first and enjoyed it a lot, and I will actually put my conclusion as an introduction so that at least some people will not summarily dismiss this (although I do not know how effective that will be; people tend to rate based on if the scores agree with them). None of this is to say that the anime is not worth watching if you have not read the manga, or even if you have, everyone is different and you might wildly enjoy it. It has a genuine plot that hasa clear goal and approaches it with a fairly consistent pace; it is rather all the little details which detract from this anime for me. The manga's art is more enjoyable since it is not poorly animated, its plot is executed more grandiosely, which is the main difference besides art that bothers me, and the manga allows you to imagine how the characters act a little more, and while sometimes an anime exceeds my imagination, as I am not very creative, it did not in this instance. I think the easiest place to start is the art. If you have watched a lot of Gonzo, then you probably have found that although maybe not always superb, they have had a hand in such creations as Gankutsuou or Last Exile with superb animation that moves very naturally (except in the terrible mech scene), and even in less refined instances like Full Metal Panic! or Gantz is still quite acceptable typically. In this anime it moves very awkwardly and left me rendered uncomfortable the entire anime. It is not the worst art ever, and I am giving it a three not so much for the actual drawing style, which is probably around fairly typical, but for the emphatically terrible way in which movement occurs. The voice acting is stellar. In regard to music, I usually try to rate it this way: if it does not detract from the anime, then I am not upset (if it detracts I will rate it a 1 or 2 by default). In this case, it is certainly no Cowboy Bebop or anything, but it never terribly detracts, distracts, or annoys. I want to give them the benefit of the doubt and say that the plot changes they made were for the amount of time they had allotted to do with the amount of episodes, but I found almost every plot change to be for the worse, which is why I penalized the story so highly. It is much more exciting and constantly 'epic' in the manga. I will not spoil them here, but if you have read and not watched or vice versa, then you will easily notice them.

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