s.CRY.ed

The premise of Scryed seemed reminiscent to X-Men, certain people had special powers which led to discrimination from the general public. There's a team of them working to iron out the differences, while others resort to violence. I found the series to be pretty enjoyable despite it's simple plot and progression, although I started to become disenchanted toward the end. Most, if not all of the fights were up-front with little thinking or strategy, and after seeing them play out the same way over and over it became boring. I didn't really care for the way the ending was handled either, but I won't describe ... it to avoid spoilers. Overall a decent sci-fi action anime, but you could do better imho.

✪ Genre: action, drama, proxy battles, sci-fi (human enhancement, human experimentation, cloning), shounen, superpower with elements of romance (love polygon, unrequited love) and parallel world


✔Positive Aspects✔

◧ Gorgeous soundtrack: it was comprised of a variety of different songs, spanning quite distinct, non-overlapping genres (saxophone/trumpet based smooth 'jazz', uplifting Japanese-pop, nuevo flamenco, new age, and others).

◧ Wonderful animation work: this series was more on the 'cartoonish' side (not on the level of Devilman, though) but with pretty saturated and adequately vibrant colors - I loved the fact that the characters themselves and their Alters were 'popping out' against the landscapes and the man-made structures.

◧ Concept-wise: an interesting ... take on the good ol' notion of a natural or man-made phenomenon bringing out mutations in people who are located within a specific geographical region that resulted in them obtaining all kinds of superpowers.


✘Negative Aspects✘

◧ Character development: although it was not bad per se, it made the gigantic mistake of not delineating gradually the protagonists' and antagonists' motivations, intentions, beliefs, and thought processes, but instead, it opted for randomly dropping this kind of information when the circumstances of the narrative demanded it.

◧ Action scenes: generally, they were wonderfully shot, but completely lacked any intrigue. As far as shounen anime series go, it's not that I don't expect a certain type and amount of cliches, but I expect them to be built up steadily and solidly. The overwhelming majority of battles felt choreographically impoverished. Also, I am the kind of person that genuinely loves frequent battles, even to an excess, but they do have to serve a purpose. Many of the series' battles felt completely meaningless.

◧ Gore elements: again, I don't expect massive amounts of blood loss and/or ruptured intestines from a shounen anime, but based on the unmistakenly destructive battles that tended to occur, I think that, one would reasonably expect something more than paper cuts and shaving nicks.

◧ Plot: instead of focusing on a central antagonist, which is to be expected of a 26 episodes series, it spent the 1st half of its airtime on an antagonist that ended up being a de facto ally, while the 2nd half on the actual antagonist, with which the protagonists mostly engaged via proxy (a single person), before concluding with a 3' air battle. Also, the series concluded before adequately tackling with its most narratively significant theme, the existence of a parallel world.


Overall: A technically solid work that did not take its non-technical aspects as seriously.

Story: The story is mostly amazing, but it is also character-centric to a high degree. The reason I say "mostly" amazing is because of its male characters having tons of powerful scenes, but the non-amazing parts of the story are terrible as they deal with the female characters. This anime comes off as very sexist. None of the girls really pose a good fight to anyone and they are all put into serving roles 95% of the time while having minimal personality. I mostly remember them moaning, crying or calling out the male character names. They are basically objects and servants or non-existent. It never ... makes sense to have physically weak female characters in a world where super powers exist and while there are many, MANY shows that have managed to do it anyway. Even so, S-cry-ed is a tough act to follow when it comes to hatred of women. The female characters mostly do healing or nothing, even if they can fight. They are mostly defined by patience or faith, despite having abilities which should allow them to be more meaningful to the fate of anything.

Art: The art designs in this show are really good, in my opinion. Kazuma has a legendary character design, but other characters in the series have equally great designs. The fight scenes just look incredible most of the time.

Sound: Very solid. I like the ending theme more than the opening, but the soundtrack in the show itself really works, if I recall correctly.

Character: Like I said, female characters are terrible. Kazuma is a great character with deep manliness whereas his "sidekick" (I want to call her that) is boring and usually so one-dimensional that she can be characterized by calling out "Kasu-kun". She shows glimpses of a great character, but was never pushed far enough to make her seem like anything but a child archetype. Mimori is a character who seems like she could mean something, but is downright empty. Scheris' "Eternal Devote" is a phrase that has remained in my memory forever. I wish she was a good character, but she is also mostly empty and fails at everything despite being the most involved female character. None of Kazuma's real opponents are female.

Enjoyment: My enjoyment was low. Although the show was great, it was hard for me to really feel involved with it because the female characters were the ones I was invested in, but they never went anywhere meaningful for me.

Overall: 6 Fair. The show is really great if you are capable of ignoring its flaws. If I could, I would easily give it a score from 8-10.

If you're seeking for the typical shonen with the typical main characters that just want to fight, well, this is the right choice. But, if you think this is going to be deep and tragic... turn around and run away!

Firstly: I think s.CRY.ed should've been LONGER. If you want to develop the right relationships, the right motivations and add another layer of complexity into your characters (protagonists or not), you should take your time to do that! You can't include so many things in just 26 chapters (or 25, because the last chapter was a total DISASTER with no ending or whatsoever). Ridiculous.

I can't say ... I didn't like the anime, because it was fun to see with an off-brain. Nothing less, nothing more: fun. Fight, fight, fight! A little cry, and later fight, fight and more fight! Just that. Oh, and the classical "women can do nothing except waiting for her man to come back". Well, that was a LOT to digest. That was insufferable. By far, the thing I hate the most. The only women that can put a bit of fight just appeared in 2 CHAPTERS.

"This isn't for women". Oh, boy...

Don't try to convince me that in 2001 people were still in a stupid mentality like that, for the love of God. Even Macross did it better in the 80s' (taking into account that was also insufferable in the same exact problems with gender-roles mentality).

Even though, I still found my way to like s.CRY.ed. Could've been better, and could've been worse. But hey, that was fun and, at the end, I didn't drop it (I tend to drop A LOT of things).