Too short with too little effort

Togainu no Chi, a great Shonen-Ai visual novel was finally to be released as an animated series. Expectations were high, especially after the promising trailer.
And then they set free this 12-episode piece of wonderment and disgrace.

It started off alright and adhered to the setting, mood and the characters mostly.
After a few episodes it got repetitive. Shots of Toshima, people walking trough Toshima, blood and violence, shots of Toshima, people talking about their emotional instability, blood and extreme violence...
It's of course following the original but it really gets a bit boring after a while. The expected fights on the contrary were so badly done that you didn't even recognize what was happening. Less attempted epic effects and more actual action would have been advisable, I'm just sayin'.
And since the series was so massively squeezed into 12 episodes, all the information was thrown in at some point with out further explanation. Leaving behind a lot of confusion and disbelief.
As the end aprroached the wanted emotional breakdown seemed more cheesy than touching to me.

The problem is probably the brevity of the Anime. Too little time to connect with the characters and understand the true meaning of the story (which is actually quite profound despite all the killing). And it seems that Aniplex somehow lost interest in the midst of their production, that's very much palpable.
Oh, and they must have forgotten that TnC was actually a BL game. There's a massive lack of Shonen-Ai. There are innuendoes but they are not strong enough.
Shonen-Ai what was a major characteristic and they just ignored that. Were they scared of airing an anime with shonen-ai AND mass murder or what?

So as for me, it was a great disappointment. Just the voice actors did give the lovely characters their likability and made the series passable.



5/10