Aragne: Sign of Vermillion.- A Good Old Fashioned Ranty Review.

Okay, normally you'll see me segment my review into highlights rather than just a straight write-up, but this whole thing is going to devolve into a bit of a rant. My normal way of formatting these reviews is going to feel a bit pointless because of this.

Let's start with what this show is, and that is a horror anime. The premise is a girl moves into a new apartment complex that turns out to have some creepy stuff going on. She begins to see insects bursting out of people and other things that no one else seems to notice. Solid enough premise, but then things start to get weird.

There is a fine line you are walking when dealing with the mysterious and supernatural, and that is just how much of it you should explain to your audience. In Aragne you get exactly the right amount of explanation to where you are going to start asking 'Well, how does this make any sense then?” but not enough to understand what is going on, and that is a bad thing. You shouldn't be thinking things don't make any sense about what's going on, while still leaving you in the dark. It just feels like there are no real rules governing what's happening.

What ends up being worse, however, is how many seemingly unrelated factors are going on at once. There is an aspect of the character's past that is unrelated to the mystics that show up, who are unrelated to the military experiments that are revealed to have happened here, which are in turn unrelated to the main character's past. There are so many unexplained and seemingly unrelated elements to the story you just start to lose track of what you are even supposed to be focusing on or care about.

And half the time the animation feels stilted and off. Sometimes it looks fantastic, but most of the time it's just too awkward to invoke the intended horror of the show.

I can't explain in detail, because I don't want to spoil it, but the show is just a bit of a mess. Some good and interesting ideas feel badly shoved together. They miss the mark on balancing answering the audience and maintaining some mystery, and worse of all it just doesn't feel at all unnerving despite being a horror.