Cerberus

Summary: >

Years ago, Hiiro's parents were killed in a ritual gone wrong trying to seal a dragon. Now a young man, he's sworn revenge. Fellow adventurers join in his travels, but can they defeat the dragon fortold to bring chaos and destruction to the land?

Thoughts: >

Cerberus seemed okay for the first few minutes, and that was the best this one could do. Thereafter it's a painful slog through an incredibly generic setup. At times the anime looks okay, if not attractive. However if paying attention, about 3/4 of it actually looks very bad. At no time is it ever well animated. These issues aren't so bad they wreck the anime, but with everything else so bad in this show, you have plenty of time to overanalyse the other stuff.

The characters are terrible, being a combination of obnoxious, stupid or both. This is especially true of the protagonist Hiiro. He has no fighting ability, but wants to defeat a dragon. He gets tired of all this "training", and instead declares he'll skip all that and go fight the dragon directly. Wait, what? Yeah, he's that stupid. Over and over he jumps into fights only to get his ass kicked, and quite often forgets he has no sword. Hiiro alone is reason enough to skip the show, but plenty of others are nearly as bad. Saraato is one of the few bright points of the anime, as a spaced out anime girl who talks about weird things - but she's not exactly a feature which can carry the show.

The story is combination of Hiiro seeking revenge for his parents, while a weapons merchant attempts to profit from fear of the dragon in arms stockpiles. There are side plots although none go very far. Mostly it "progresses" with "stuff" filling time, however the way it spoon feeds the plot to the audience gets tiresome. Unlikely huge leaps in deduction are used to bridge points in the story. Weirder still is how Cerberus draws on its mobile RPG game roots. The obnoxious lizard guy can draw a card, which summons a girl in a treasure chest. She can make pretty much anything happen, and this is actually used in the story. That's hardcore plot convenience if I've ever seen it.

What's a little tragic about Cerberus is how at the very end, the plot comes together well enough with the merchant and dragon, that I felt bad it wasn't better told. The resolution between for the dragon, Hiiro and Saraato was rather nice too. With much better execution (and everything else) I think I could have liked this anime.

That's almost enough to turn my opinion, but not quite. My rating came down to one question: Which episode was NOT a waste of time to watch? I couldn't answer that. At the very beginning and the very end slivers of a better show are there, but the rest is painfully generic and badly done.

Screen Caps: >