You know what’s worse about my job? The fact we’re 3 receptionists at the fewest and nearly no clients. The best is that it gives me more time to write some posts.
Anyway, Arata Kangatari, Arata: The Legend in its English version, is about a guy, well several guys, named Arata who’re suddenly transported into another world. Unfortunately, the fantasy world where one of the Aratas is transported is facing a huge crisis and he gets mixed up into it.
The plot seemed interesting enough for me to want to watch when it started airing. I really like fantasy anime because I think there are too few good fantasy anime. However, one of the problems that this one faced is that it was a bit too short. Getting into the world, understanding the explanations about their system, the Princess, the Twelve Shinshou, the Hayagami and everything else was surprisingly easy. It was a lot of information given to us very fast, but when I think about it, it was not that complicated. The world is pretty simple: the Princess’ ministers tried to kill her, those ministers wield Hayagami, gods that take the form of a sword, and then Arata arrives. Pretty simple.
What really disappointed me was the end because seriously, I have absolutely no idea where they wanted to go with this anime. Why so many episodes, so many adventures, so many “OMG Arata is so awesome he is going to wield the great Hayagami of Origins and save us all”, to end with a kind of “to be continued” ending. Seriously, why? For some reason, this kind of ending happens a lot in fantasy anime (Denyuden anyone?) and it always annoys me so much. We were into the universe, we were interested, we wanted the good guys to win but nothing is ever resolved and you’re stuck reading the manga. Every time it has the opposite effect on me, I have no will to read the manga and get disappointed.
Either way, the ending was a real disappointment.
As for the characters, what should I say? Well, Arata the hero version (the other Arata is in our world and is pretty amazing, he did not get much character development but I guess that was to be expected) was annoying. I do not want to see typical shounen heroes anymore. I kind of see the point of taking a rather bland character and make him grow through the series, but why do these heroes need to be so annoying and whiny? Kotoha was a typical girl as well, did not get much character development except that she fell for Arata.
On the other hand I got pretty interested by Kannagi. I never really got why he changed opinions so quickly but whatever. I was pretty curious of his actual intentions. Kadowaki too was a bit more interesting. It was a bit hard to believe he started hating Arata over just what we were shown and as such, decreased a bit of the interest I had toward him.
In short, characters are not Arata Kangatari’s forte, the plot is disappointing because it feels too unfinished. If you are interested I think you’d be better off reading the manga. (Not even the greatness of Ryohei Kimuraas Kadowaki can save this anime.)
