One Short of a Dozen, Six Short of Sense

I had far too much time on my hands today, so I headed over to Crunchy Roll to try another of this season's new anime. Since I've been toying with the idea of alternate universes lately, I selected 11eyes. Nine of the twelve episodes have been translated so far, and I've fully caught up. The basic plot of the series has six high schoolers are uncontrollably thrust into a different world which they call the "Red Night". Appropriately enough, everything is tinted red there. They get attacked by various monsters and their apparent controllers, the Black Knights.

Here's where things get vague, I'm afraid. The Knights refer to our "heroes" as fragments, and for some reason this means they must be destroyed. What they are fragments of and why they need to die is basically left as an exercise to the viewer because they're certainly not going to tell you. They also are holding Lisette, a girl who they claim to be a witch, captive within a crystal. Who is she, why is she important, and why don't they just kill her? Hard to say. All we really have to go on after 3/4 of the series are a few random flashbacks/visions of a ruined kingdom. The king, Velad, claims the precognitive Eye of Aeon which he shares with Kakeru Satsuki, our protagonist, will bring unimaginable suffering. There's also a woman, Liselotte, who decides to destroy the world once she hears Velad has been killed. From the naming similarity Lisette and Liselotte are probably somehow connected, but that's not a lot to go on.

Of course, the biggest twist is still to be revealed, and yet is so blindingly obvious. The Black Knights clearly going to be revealed as having good motives (despite all the attempted murders). Of course, that means that the entire series probably could have been avoided simply by talking it out in the first episode which would have made for a short show. That, or a more interesting show where they try to work together to contain/destroy whatever evil is in these fragments without sacrificing innocent lives. We'd need a new villain, but maybe the crystal girl would actually have something to do then.

Anyway, back in the real world we have our "high schoolers." They certainly don't look the part. They're all drawn far too young. Normally this wouldn't be a big deal, but the animators seem determined to insert at least one gratuitous panty shot per episode. If this were normal fanservice, it would simply be dramatically inappropriately timed. Instead, it's downright uncomfortable. Sadly I looked it up after watching, and the reason for this turns out to be even creepier. 11eyes is based on an adult (read: porn) game. Sigh... Listen, Japan. Anime is a hard enough hobby to defend as it is. So many great works are lost on the world at large because they can point to this trash as representative of the medium. Cut it out!

Not done ranting yet. Now let's take a look at the characters.

Kakeru Satsuki - Our main protagonist. In the very first scene, his sister impales both him and herself on a bladed chain in the Red Night. Cut to high school where we find him wearing a fancy eyepatch. Apparently, the way he remembers it is that his sister committed suicide with the flashback just showing some broken glass in a bathroom. Once pulled into the Red Night, his main concern is protecting Yuka. He does this by abandoning her at just about every opportunity and getting into easily misunderstood positions with Misuzu. He also has a glowing yellow eye that can see the future. Whether using this will mortally wound him seems to be completely up to random chance.

Yuka Minase - Damsel in distress. Spends most of the series with no powers or purpose other than getting threatened. Episode 7 finally awakens her power nullification ability and transforms her into a sociopath gladly willing to ignore danger to anyone but herself and Kakeru. Our heroine, ladies and gentlemen.

Misuzu Kusakabe - Onmyouji and swordgirl. Dueled her own family, including killing her father, for five magic swords because she idolized an exiled ancestor. This ancestor turns out to be one of the Black Knights who is willing to murder innocents and engineering the razing of a city. Nice role model. Currently shocked into a near vegetative state by this discovery.

Kukuri Tachibana - Kakeru's sister. No, it's not confirmed but come on! She looks exactly like her, she has the exact same name, she has the exact same power from the episode 1 flashback, and she has no memory! Given that Kakeru, Kukuri, and Yuka all were orphans, couldn't the family name be explained by adoption? How can the characters be so incredibly dense?

Yukiko Hirohara - Cheerful optimist/deadly knife fighter. Her mind was fractured because she was forced to be a living weapon in Drasuvania (Maybe Velad's country? Again, kinda vague). Her personalities swap depending on whether she's wearing her glasses. She finally learns to trust and befriend people again over the first half of the series. By far the most sympathetic character until she violently murders the person she loves.

Takahisa Tajima - Pyrokineticist and lone wolf. Finally learns the value of friendship, family, and love from Yukiko. Gets rewarded by having his adoptive mother randomly murdered, going insane, and burning down his own home city. In the end, he's slain by Yukiko at his own request since he realizes he's doing something incredibly stupid and yet STILL CAN'T STOP. Maybe the explanation of being unable to control the fire demon inside of him might have made more sense if his powers had ever actually be established as demonic!

Seriously, who thought all this was a good idea?! There are so many loose plot threads, it seems impossible to tie them all up in the remaining three episodes. I'm not sure I'll ever know since the characters are now so twisted, unlikable, and useless I don't think I'll even bother. It's a pity, really. It started off decently enough save for the aforementioned fanservice. Around the midpoint, however, it just went into free fall.