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| Overall | Art | Animation | Character Design | Music | Series Story | Episode Story | Reviewer | |
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| Watch | 8 | 8 | 8 | 6 | 5 | 5 |
 Ggultra2764
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[series:2700#1552] |
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So, what exactly have I been watching? On paper, Karneval is yet another "good vs evil" style anime with a group of superpowered circus performers called Circus going up against a crime syndicate involved in illegal genetic experiments called Kafka. Tossed in this mix are our two male leads, Nai and Gareki, being caught up in the conflict as Nai seeks out an old friend currently in the clutches of Kafka with the syndicate interested in Nai due to his unique appearance and abilities. Unfortunately, Karneval's biggest problem is that it gets in too much of a habit of trying to keep its plot advancing at the cost of providing depth on many of its characters and elements. Despite their prominent focus, the members of Circus don't get much in the way of depth and Gareki's relevance in the anime is quite questionable considering he's mostly worthless in the battle against Kafka due to having no abilities or reliable skills of his own and is mostly seen angsting over either what to do for Nai or why he continues to stick around with Circus. In addition, we don't really know much about Kafka's motives and what they seek to accomplish with their genetic experiments. For the most part, Karneval seemed to only get by with the ongoing battles between Circus and Kafka, comedic moments off some of the quirks of the cast and showing off how attractive the character designs were. And in terms of visuals, Karneval does deliver rather well with bright vivid color and a great amount of detail applied with its scenery and characters, plus fluid movement and engaging battle scenes. Praises for visuals aside though, Karneval's quite a bit underwhelming for the Spring 2013 titles. While sporting attractive characters and gorgeous visuals, the anime's issues with depth prevent one from getting any attachment for many characters in the series and you don't learn much about the motives concerning both Circus and Kafka as they are left rather vague. This is easily the weakest offering among what I seen from the Spring 2013 lineup. Last updated Saturday, June 29 2013. Created Saturday, June 29 2013. | ||||||||
| Unevaluated |
 Stretch
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[series:2700#628] | ||||||
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(One episode watched): What the opening episode of a non-comedy new series has got to do to pique my interest is have interesting characters and a plot which is both interesting and understandable. Totally bizarre things can happen as long as some sort of halfway plausible explanation for them is provided--in fact, I often times enjoy shows like that a lot. But when loads of inexplicable 'magic' is hurled at me, and it has been worked by strangers who I know nothing about, apparently in an attempt to thrill me rather than tell a comprehensive story, then I do not become engaged and remain unentertained. That's what happened with episode one of Karneval. Most of the information in the synopsis above has yet to be delivered to us after the first episode, and no attempt is made to explain how magic (or whatever this was) is possible here. At the end of the episode I still felt that I knew practically nothing about Nai, other than that he had been imprisoned for some reason, was almost sexually abused apparently, and has odd ear-like things on his head. I know even less about anybody else; the characters simply don't talk much, instead they let their actions speak for them. If I know little or nothing about the characters, I can't bring myself to care what happens to them. Since this series will apparently place little emphasis on fleshing out the characters, I can only conclude that the style of storytelling here will be uninteresting to me and I would do better watching something else. Maybe the conditions which must be met to interest me are unusual, but personally I was not impressed by Karneval. Last updated Sunday, April 21 2013. Created Sunday, April 21 2013. | ||||||||
Other Sites
| Name | URL |
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| Official Japanese Series Web Site | http://karneval-anime.com/ |
