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「闇夜の暁 a sötét hajnal」 (Anya no Akatsuki)
“Dawn of the Dark Night”
There was no deux ex machina to give us a good ending, but the whole parallel worlds bit had its fair share of conveniences. The previous episode turned out to be a complete fake-out, with the majority of it being the bad outcome Kakeru foresaw with his Eye of Aeon.
First off, kudos to those who suspected this might’ve been the case. I applaud the screenwriters for the execution here, though it would’ve been better if they didn’t tip anyone off by showing Kakeru at the end last time. That said, it still doesn’t change the fact that the ending felt kind of forced. A lot of the plot that unfolded had no precedence, so one could argue that they did pull a deux ex machina. This is partly attributed to the conveniences of the parallel worlds I mentioned above. In addition to being a useful plot device for explaining everything, it also came in handy in other areas. For example, it turns out the scene in the very first episode where Kukuri killed Kakeru actually happened, but not in the world the Aeon-bearing Kakeru we know is from. By killing off the Kakeru from an alternate reality, they were able to build suspense with no consequence on the actual characters we ended up following.
From a pure plot point of view, the explanations made sense and tied things together. In Kakeru’s sister’s case, Shiori went to the various worlds to warn all the Kukuri’s about Liselotte and the Hell Fall threat. With no way of knowing which parallel existence possessed it, all the Kukuri’s decided to take their own lives to reduce the number of fragments. As for the one who actually had it, she also reluctantly killed the Kakeru of her world since he might possess the Eye of Aeon. All in all, an eye-opening revelation that finally answers all the questions I had concerning Kukuri’s peculiar actions the series opened with.
My main complaint is how nonchalantly this explanation came out in the very last episode. It was jarring to learn that Shiroi has the ability to travel between worlds when there was no prior indication that she could. It didn’t help when the solution to sealing away Liselotte was reliant on this ability either. The whole bit on her space-time abilities transferring over to Kakeru from her fragment was something we as the viewer had to accept in the last ten minutes. As such, I have some qualms with the delivery of the story. In particular, how this turn of events comes off as a last minute addition to the script. The same could be said about Yuka’s ability to magically save Kakeru after he tried to kill himself. I’m also on the fence about the post credits revelation where Takahisa, Yukiko, Saiko are alive, simply because they’re now in someone else’s world. While this gives us a good ending, it takes away from their deaths and relies on another convenience of the parallel worlds. (i.e. Misao taking Kakeru, Yuka, and Misuzu there after the fight.)
Despite my somewhat negative views on the ending, I’d still recommend 11eyes to anyone looking for something different. The show had a slightly different feel from the very beginning (due to its eroge visual novel roots) and some surprising twists along the way to reinforce that notion. For the majority of the series, the story unfolded well by focusing on the mystery behind the Red Night. The characters were amiable (even Yuka) and we got a nice mixture of high school and supernatural settings. They even had a great fake-out episode leading up to the finale. When you take all this into account, my complaints sound like nitpicking more than anything else. Let’s not forget how one could easily argue that a lot of the mystery would’ve been lost if they revealed the story elements here earlier, so there’s always that side of the picture too.
Overall, I enjoyed this series much more than the similarly visual novel-adapted CHAOS;HEAD. I’d even go as far as saying that 11eyes may get my vote for the most surprising show of the year. Surprising in the sense that it turned out much better than I was expected and not so much for shock value. (Although seeing Misuzu use the life-eating Doujigiri Yasutsuna for the first time falls into the latter.)
Well that was unexpected, but stil 11 eyes is a great series.
gotta hand it to these guys.. was kinda on and off but a decent ride nonetheless.. thx for blogging this divine, and a merry christmas as well 😀
The precognition here kind of reminded me of the crappy movie, Next
Good series up until the stunt pulled at the end of episode eleven. That always comes off as an inability to properly pace the overall work on the part of the staff to me. The final episode was by far the weakest in the entire series as a result.
LOL horrible ending.
I’m just going to believe ep 11 was the last one and go into denial.
lick that eye ball!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
So if ep 11 was a fake; the sex was fake too ? 🙁
Overall it was good until this last ep. As I said before; I liked the “dead” characters and bringing them to life again substract value. The same goes for Yuka, all series long she get developed into a nut crazy pshyco and in two minutes they give the sweet Yuka that saved Kakeru so many times and must be loved forever. If producers tried to confuse with this last ep; they did good. I’m missing something and can’t really point what is.
Going to re-watch the whole thing again and try to fit it all in.
Heh, since it was similar’ish to chaos;head, I dropped this (after 3 episodes), since the formerly mentioned is one of the most horrible animes i’ve seen
Not being arrogant or anything (really!), but I actually suspected it was all a “ruse” even without the tip off. Color me a skeptic; while the series has always been full of surprises, I’ve never really expected it to take the edgy end. Didn’t mind the ending, but didn’t impress me either. More or less an average show, in my opinion, but still interesting. And Yuka? Ugh. ‘Nuff said. 😀 (If I didn’t know any better, I’d say they were redeeming her character, after episodes of making her the most annoying character ever.)
I wonder what in the world the upcoming OVA will be about. More Yuka in her pink undies? Heh. Happy holidays to you and your readers anyway. 🙂
I’ll agree with Divine that this show turned out a lot better than I thought it ‘d be. The thing that bugged me the most though was the whole “Yuka is crazy – nah, in the past she cared for Kakeru so she isn’t” kind of thing, it’s like the episode that she put pins into Misuzu’s cup of tea didn’t actually happen. Also the series started kind of slow and it only picked up in the last 3-4 episodes, so it wasn’t that fun ALL the time. In a sense what surprised me the most was that the creators managed to make the show interesting when I was thinking about dropping it.
Hmm… Is the Misuzu at the end the Misuzu they know or the Misuzu from that universe?
Also, from what I know, this isn’t the original VN ending. The VN ending had something to do with Kakeru going Bankai or whatnot.
P.S. Kukuri > The other girls =w=
Holy parallel world chaos, Batman!
Convenient as it were, the only let down of all this is that Kakeru ends up with Yuka (somewhat) only because the crazy yandere has been alongside him all time. Even if she’s the default girl, that may be the worst choice of 09′, as Misuzu is clearly superior in all aspects.
About the casualties, they really happened. Takahisa, Yukiko and Saiko really died… in the respective dimension. The world Kakeru, Yuka and Misuzu ended is only one of 6 (now 3) dimensions, and there, their respective characters, sans they 3, are still in one piece, but without any knowledge of the events of the party.
what the hell? Despite showing plenty of fan service like Yuka being stripped, they can’t animate the scene where Liselotte gets stabbed? A bad ending is more fitting for this show.
looks like they pulled a higuarashi/umi neko on us
So what I gather is Yuka pulled him into her world before he was killed, so what happened to her Kakeru?
Then the yukiko and saeko and takahisa we know don’t exist in that world, so it isn’t a resurrection.
If there is an OVA, let it feature crossover’s story.
This anime is different from the game where he merges with the spirit Aeon.
so eh anyone want to explain the red moon at the end? abit thrown off
The world that they were all gathered in was Yuka’s to begin with. But with 7 bloody worlds to deal with, that means that there were 6 other versions of those idiots to screw around with.
OK, that’s about as sensible I can be with this garbage. Its even funnier since they don’t even know what world they’re in (but its not Yuka’s), but who cares. This crap was really a terrible ride (more like bumper cars). I think I lol’d more at this ending more than any other show, for obvious reasons. GJ!
I’m … kinda confused as to what I think of this ending. I figured they were going for a ‘Save the World’ ending, after they literally killed everyone in episode 11. They did manage to explain wtf was up with Abraxas and finally made sense of Kukuri killing Kakeru at the beginning of the show. I guess the Aeon Kakeru was in Yuka’s world? Or did Yuka switch the Aeon Kakeru and her own? I’m still a bit confused with all this world-swapping shit. :/ Sealing Liselotte in a time/space rift seemed way too pat of an answer, too … why didn’t Shiori do it in the first place? Preferably without even taking her out of the crystal prison? And finally, I was annoyed that the whole Yuka-being-a-psychopath thing was completely abandoned so they could give the finger to Misuzu fans. Yuka sucks and I wish she’d stayed dead. >_<
Still, overall this has been a very enjoyable and surprising series. Thanks for blogging this Divine, otherwise I might not have given this the shot it deserves. 🙂
Too happy ending for a series like this, I didn’t like it 🙁 I don’t have any problem with defeating Liselotte, but I think a more dramatic end would have fit the show better. I also agree with divine on a lot of things regarding the last episode, a lot of events came out of nowhere. What was surprising to me that Liselotte didn’t stop when Vlad told him to do so. She was doing all these things to fulfill his desire, no? Complete nonsense.
But I liked the series in overall despite its mistakes, I would rate it 8 on a scale of 10. I’m gonna rewatch the whole thing today evening or tomorrow.
Merry Christmas to everyone!
d ending is ok, though it has its problems…..
I was expecting a deus ex machina (like d lame ass anime, pretear)
Ruined series~ The game was so much better simply because the anime took all the fun out of it.
@ Megas
is that it? seriously? i thought there were those parallel dimensions and 1 red night? guess i didnt listen correctly
*facepalm* I love how everyone is smashing these series to bits. I’ve been keeping up with the comments for the past few years here at RC and I’ve figured out that a majority of you people say in most animes up to now have very shitty endings. Okay? How about you guys try and make the story into your own with a budget more or less with 12 episodes? You expect way too much these days. Now I agree the ending was somewhat better off not showing Kakeru at the end of 11 to make up for 12. Then again we wouldn’t know how it worked in 12 without that little “NO” he made at the end of 11. I extremely enjoyed the ending to be honest and it’s better to go out and see all your favourite characters than them still dead. If you want some good endings check out Asura Cryin’ 2 that went off really well.
I think of the series having 2 endings.
Ep. 11 was the bad-guys win ending, and Ep. 12 was the good-guys win ending.
pick your pick.
@Jurkasz Eh no she did change her plan. It went from destroying the world to “obtain Velad’s eyeball essence for all eternity.”
Overall I thought this series was pretty decent. However, this end seems to suffer some pacing issues though. A ton of last minute explanations and random waivers to get things patched up occurred. For example, Shiori is suddenly an animated doll ala Touko style? Lol.
@Jason Haha yeah Asura Cryin’ 2 also had a parallel worlds gig. Only it was a main focus and not an afterthought. Personally I thought it ended very well. Kind of like how 11 eyes ends, only happier. It’s funny how two somewhat similar shows aired their last eps on the same day.
Messed up Ending!! They picked the bias ending instead of the original ending of Misuzu.
Meh; not being one for the parallel world animes myself, a hellofa lot of episode 12 went right over my head. And Yuka’s whole random personality switch basically made me start hitting myself with the stapler (I was a Misuzu fan…). But they wrapped up things quick but cleanly(ish), we got some decent Ayane OP greatness, and… er… at least Tajima&Co. winded up alive in the end… although I thought they died? (Yeah, you can see I’m still pretty confused here).
Let’s hope the OVA – if there is one – focuses on CrossOver and not on alternate endings and all this crap.
In the end this is nothing more than a spin off. A lot of things were changed and at a certain point in the series the anime had already decided to go down its own original path. Which isn’t always a bad thing, but in this case it was. I’m disappointed because its really a fantastic game. It deserved a little more devotion than it did. I mean the anime is based after the game, so doesn’t it make sense to cater to those fans? Well I guess I’ll have to play the game with crappy translation now if I want to see how it really ends. Since Wikipedia doesn’t reveal that. Oh well, at least they gave it a shot. I’m happy that we got to see the characters animated. Although…. in the end it really should have been Misuzu not Yuka! :p
Agrees with the post above. They should’ve went 26 eps and stays original to the game. And unability to see Misuzu’s awesome solo fights (vs Ira and Misao) makes me sad. 🙁
The ending I’ve always wanted to see in the anime was actually Verard-Lisellotte happy ending. I mean cmon, from the beginning to the end the crazy goth loli babylon witch suffering almost a millenium, at least she deserved some happiness, not just sealing off her in a dark hole or something.
yeah that would have been nice. care to elaborate how that goes down in a spoiler?
Yuka did not die… Ending failed.
After watching all the way through… I prefer the Ep 11 ending.
Yuka was/is crazy… She needed a good killing… worse that Yukiko’s.
She even got rid of Kukuri just because she is a nutter… (admittedly she created her)
I would have to say this season has had some of the best anime in a long time… with the worst endings. Why is it that the awesome female characters always lose to the really irritating ones?
PS: Is it just me.. or is Abraxas related to Rider from Fate/Stay?
Game was 1024x better.
-__-
They didn’t even use the true ending from the game – Kukuri-neesan!
I was angry at this ending- but it’s still an anime which i’ll love 😀
I was really angry at the end- but it’s an anime i’ll love 4eva