Anime: Night Head Genesis

This review is based on the first 24 episodes (as much as I have found fansubbed so far).

With its' rather titillating title, and its' mysterious and uninformative description (both on this site and others) I was hesitant to watch this series.

The series is just as mysterious and wierd as the description suggests: the brothers seem to be encountering various gruesome and evil situations due to something called "minus energy", a mysterious thing which is bringing evil to the world.

However, the storyis a bit repetitive over the first few episodes, and the series gets a bit boring after while. The series' slow pace detracts from my enjoyment, and the confusing and surreal nature of the story itself just isn't very interesting so far. There was a pretty convoluted plot during the late-teen/early 20 episodes which just finished and I have to say it wasn't too bad but it hasn't redeemed the series for me yet. As of now I have no idea where the story is headed.

The animation is solid; character models are well done, and the special effects for Naoya's "flashbacks" and Naota's "mind-power" are interesting. However, both of these special effects get old real fast.

The soundtrack, including the opening and ending songs, is terrific. The soundtrack really emphasizes the mysterious and surreal aspects of the series, especially the "X-File-esque" opening song. However, I think Naota screams "NAOYA!" about 5 million times per episode, and it is getting very annoying. Isn't there another way for him to show concern for his brother?

As for the characters, Naota is the typical over-protective brother with anger problems and a tendency to blow things up when he is mad (which is often). Naoya is weak emotionally and relies entirely on the support of his brother; everytime he sees a person's memories he screams and freaks out. Besides these two, there arn't any solid or established characters so far, though there are a few who have appeared in one or two episodes. Lack of supporting characters has really hurt this series so far; only the mysterious girl in space is semi-interesting. The villians arn't very villianous, most are pretty pathetic and uninteresting, only the main villian-woman is even semi-interesting, and we never even really find out her motives.

Be prepared to hear "Naoya!" and "Niiasan!" every five seconds in this anime; maybe it won't bother you, but for me I really started to get annoyed by the complete lack of originality in dialogue: it seems that Naota and Naoya can't express their surprise/concern/anger in any way other than shouting their brother's name.