In Winter 2015, I was badly in need of seinen genre anime to watch and picked Isuca [イスカ] series. Its trailer at that time was lure me, but sad to say, after watched the whole show I feel disappointed. Let's start the review of ISUCA series, started as manga by Osamu Takahashi on 2009, serialized as an anime television by Studio Arms here ( •͈◡•͈ )
【Download the theme songs here ♪♩♫♬】
The main character, Sakuya Shimazu, is a short-tempered weak type of girl which makes every action looks terribly bad and goes to negative side. Whenever the action goes through our screen, that's also the time Sakuya bluntly goes freak or uncontrollable. The action itself isn't something so wow about, too average even the genre itself is mentioned action and supernatural. Sometimes I wished for the action but I was half-hearted myself to watch the battle scenes. Sadly, it's worsen by too much talking during fights (lovey-dovey between Sakuya and Shinichirou is damn fail ouch), and logic thinking to explain the fights plus strategy is poor.
From what I can assume, the weak characterization is showed to lure our feelings like she needs to be caring of, weak enough to get attention and pity from viewers. I regretted it because it makes Shimazu as if she doesn't have the real feelings as core of the story and influential characters. The deepening characterization is faint by its forcing weak characters. It tried to boost the sense of loss Sakuya of her parents after all. The characterization focuses on this loss and unstable maturity.
For a show with a little explanation of Specters, the family head, summoning and so on, it does really a slow one to come up with conclusion or strategic planning, like when the logic way to prevent attacks, logic way to explain cases, or even logic way to just elaborate how the enemy works (ex: a smoke spirit in the tunnel goes offense effectively in a small place and with its smoke to ambush them). Then, the gore I expect wasn't proven by the show, similar like other series which involve quite harsh battles where you can find slicing parts of body, splattering blood, so simple like that.
[somewhat SPOILER] The silly scene was in the first battle that involved appearance of western mage in their school, where their friends captured and Shimazu just focused on attacking the enemy without letting her heart answered. and when it answered and decided to help them, it was freaking too late. Their friends captured and sunk into a concrete wall, they died because of the attack Shimazu gave to the enemy's force, then the show told us about the absolute incident like this will occur if the enemy's force killed when captured humans, and showed how shock and trembled Shimazu. What the heck was with the feeling and poor rationality in the late time? duh
The music aspect doesn't help either but the soundtracks aren't as bad as the show itself. The OP theme is sung by Afilia Saga titled "Never say Never" and for ED theme is sung by TWO-FORMULA "Somebody to love".
I can't agree for more with majority of reviewers, say this anime is bad, I would like to give it 2.
Cons:
- The animations
- Poor characterization, too out of focus
- Unworthy plot
- I feel the series has no meaning to be delivered except being weak will help you gain supporters.
増原 紀花