3 Episode Taste Test: 11eyes

How many eyes? 11eyes. Cer­tainly more than 3×3 Eyes and The Girl with the Blue Eye, numer­ic­ally at least. A fas­cin­a­tion with eyes and in par­tic­u­lar eye­patches (see also Rental Magica, Ten­jou Tenge et. al.), this series has the stand­ard out­fit­ting of an enig­matic past and hid­den powers con­nec­ted with said eye as well as a natty patch to keep it all under wraps. Even though it exists as a blatant amal­gam of many other ideas and series that have gone before it, 11eyes: Tsumi to Batsu to Aganai no Shoujo (Sin, Dam­na­tion and the Atone­ment Girl) cracks the bar­rier of dense nomen­clature and proves mod­er­ately watchable.

“it wouldn’t be sur­pris­ing to see a frivol­ous and incon­sequen­tial beach or hot spring storyline in suc­ceed­ing episodes”

A lot of this is down to its refusal to wholly mol­ly­coddle the viewer. By the middle of the second epis­ode the cyc­lop­tic prot­ag­on­ist has already worked out it is him that draws those around him into the monster-infested “Red Night” and by the end of the third epis­ode the most recently intro­duced cast mem­ber is given a ser­vice­able raison dêtre. The slow reveal of new party mem­bers is still present, again robbed of any interest by the rev­el­at­ory open­ing, and the typ­ical standby of the desire to grow stronger and pro­tect those close is bolted to the lead male. By keep the most inter­est­ing mys­ter­ies close and trivi­al­ising the more mundane aspects, the series’ intro­duct­ory epis­odes main­tain interest but demand little fur­ther thought.

Draw­ing upon a panoply of sources, with hints of Shak­ugan no Shana, Chaos;Head, Rental Magica, Night Wiz­ard and Per­sona all mixed in — there are even some traces of RahXephon in the incid­ental mon­ster designs and Ber­serk in the primary ant­ag­on­ists; the res­ult man­ages to refrain from pil­fer­ing too much from one source but is sig­ni­fic­antly weaker than the sum of its parts. Its deriv­at­ive nature mag­ni­fies the under­ly­ing sense of famili­ar­ity: like an old blanket thrown on for no reason other than habit, the char­ac­ters, plot and set­ting all go through all the expec­ted motions but sub­sequently fail to engage or make the slight­est impact. The script does noth­ing to help mat­ters, the lead female’s rep­er­toire con­sists of squeak­ing the protagonist’s name repeatedly until she is mer­ci­fully rendered uncon­scious provid­ing time for the lead male to grunt that he wants to pro­tect her.

Going a respect­able sev­en­teen minutes before any obvi­ous fanser­vice is crow­barred in, the first three epis­odes are for the most part bliss­fully bereft of any­thing too crass and incid­ental female under­wear shots are peppered about and only accen­tu­ated by a con­spicu­ous tear in the girl’s cloth­ing. Later, a char­ac­ter who resembles a blonde ver­sion of Aoi Oribe from Myself; Your­self — all spunk and pep — effects some breast grop­ing, lower­ing the tone some­what; suf­fice to say it wouldn’t be sur­pris­ing to see a frivol­ous and  incon­sequen­tial beach or hot spring storyline in suc­ceed­ing episodes.

There is no one out­stand­ing ele­ment which either saves or damns the first three epis­odes of 11eyes, everything from the anim­a­tion to the voice act­ing is unas­sum­ing and lack­ing in osten­ta­tious­ness. It walks a fine line between mediocrity and amuse­ment and whether the remainder of the series will expand upon the strongest story ele­ments such as the prin­cess imprisoned in crys­tal or the exiled shrine maiden-cum-swordmaster will define its even­tual worth. Pleas­ant enough to waste time with but fun­da­ment­ally lack­ing any­thing to call its own. ¶