Title: Yumekui Merry
Genre: Action, Comedy
Rating: 6.0/10
Summary: Ten years ago Fujiwara noticed he had a power to see multicolored auras surrounding the person’s body. Ever since then he’s been having a weird dream about a war with cats. Then one day a mysterious girl falls on top of him…
Review: One of my favorite concept anime of the Winter 2010-2011 season. I’ve always been a huge fan of dream based theories and plot development. Yumekui Merry did a great job bringing me into the different worlds of the dream demons. I was taken back by the imagination of the creators and illustrators. The separate worlds were top quality, ranging from a beautiful serene scene to dark and destructive. The soundtrack pulls you further into the undiscovered realms of dreams with hard rock music or tasteful violins. Unfortunately, the anime didn’t follow through with story or character development as I had hoped. Hooking me in at the beginning and letting me get away at the end left me giving Yumekui Merry a failing score. Although I have not read an announcement for a second season, I do hope there is one for their sake.
From my first look and my little summary above it is safe to say that the art of
Yumekui Merry was solid. I loved the dream sequences because they all offered something new. There weren’t many dream demons, but the few that there were all had their own unique world. When they entangled two worlds together it felt natural and flowed nicely. The illustrator managed to perfectly combine the grassy fields of Play’s world with the dark and twisted realm of Mistletine’s. Even outside the dream worlds the art was excellent. The dark, bold lines really had the characters stand out. Having the vessels’ pupils change when the demon took over was a neat touch. Although a minor detail, having different symbols for the dream demons was well worth it. It was another area of the anime’s art that made it just that much better. Overall the art for
Yumekui Merry deserves some recognition for the Winter 2010-2011 season.
Yumekui Merry’s story was conceptually well done. I would say that most of the series did a good job planning out character and plot development. The good points of the storyline were being unique and entertaining. As I’ve said before I’m a huge fan of dream theory and having creatures in a sense represent a person’s dreams was something new. This refreshing new anime was something to look forward to every week … at first. Toward the end of the season I began to wonder where they were going to go with it. A sign of resolution seemed far off into the horizon. Sad to say that the season didn’t end as expected (or desired to be more accurate). The ending wasn’t exactly unclear, it just left the audience with a lot of questions. I don’t wish to spoil anything but there were quite a few things I found either ridiculous or corny. My biggest problem with the ending was the complete abandonment of characters. Characters like John Doe just vanished into thin air. He seemed as though he was going to play a major role in the series, but I can only recall seeing him once after the initial introduction. He seemed to actually understand what was going on and had leads on where Merry came from. It was as though all the characters went about their merry way (no pun intended) at the end. After thinking about what actually happened in the final three or so episodes, however, I found that there was really nothing to be happy about. It was as though they just shrugged off all their problems and assumed everything was going be A-okay. The only remedy to the situation would be to have a second season since the anime didn’t go fro a full twenty-four episode season. Unfortunately after knocking out big-bad-and-scary I don’t think the second season will be as entertaining. Then again we still haven’t seen Hercules in action. It may answer a few of the questions I have and be heavy on story, but many of the things that initially got me into the anime will probably be lost. The cliff drop in enjoyment and unannounced second season dropped my rating for this anime dramatically.
The soundtrack of
Yumekui Merry was very well done. The opening was a hard rock explosion of drums and guitar. The soothing yet powerful voice set to be one of the best openings of the winter season. The ending was another ear opener. It brought a different spin to the series with a bit more light hearted melody. The ending visuals were also pretty sexy if I do say so myself bringing back memories of
American Beauty with the bed of roses. The background music was another wonderful melody. The sound of violins and piano when the characters resided in Play’s world were superb. The series had music ranging from fast paced rock to slow paced classical.
Yumekui Merry is definitely one of the series that I plan to get the entire OST for. There were a lot of great songs that I remember and possibly some that I have forgotten about. I suggest that everyone check out the OST regardless of the whether or not they watched the series.
Final statements: The series wasn’t bad at all but the ending wasn’t up to par. I feel a lot of series end up hurting themselves because of their poor endings, whether it be rushed, out of funding, etc. However, I give this a barely passing grade because I have hopes for a season two. I’m not sure how excited I’ll be for another season to come out (if it ever happens) but I’m sure to watch it. Low priority watch. Come on Yumekui Merry don’t let me down.
