blanda.daisha - 2015-08-12 13:52:51

http://quanreviews.blogspot.com/2015/07/in-500-words-brynhildr-in-darkness.html

ehermann - 2015-07-09 07:32:53

The past cannot be changed or forgotten. That's why to hold on the past always creates suffering, although once it was really wonderful.

Brynhildr in the Darkness is an anime based on a manga by Lynn Okamoto known for his infamous work - Elfen Lied. First impression on Elfen Lied? The one that full with bloody and messy gore scene that even go as far to introduce pedophilia, cruelty, sexuality and nudity. To be honest, it was quite shocking when this anime came out. I nearly think it's as a new version of Elfen lied when it comes to the gore scene. Still, there are quite gore scenes you can't evade. You can't escape from gore if you're going to watch this anime series. Better think carefully. Nevertheless this anime is definitely not a new Elfen Lied version or something like that. Don't compare them! It's wrong! Both anime have its owns greatness. But this anime is so full with new comedy, new concept of story and a good character development involving past and present. 

Side note, I already watch and complete this anime when all of the episodes are already out. Regretfully, I just think to write a review about it just now. Yet, I'm still can feel the enthusiasm about this anime. Let's get back to the story shall we?

Story 
Romance. I'll tell it's directly that this anime have a really good romance inside. Watch this if you a romance genre fans. You will love it! Back to the story. The story of anime itself is pretty amazing. It's slowly build up and the effort has been paid up after the ending of the series. I think it's the fresh one after so many cliché anime I've watched. The theme of memory loss and choosing dark tones is the one of the fact that brings out this anime potential far better. The story tells us about Ryouta, a boy who remembers the promise he had with his childhood friend’s Kuroneko. Nightmare happened when Kuroneko died while saving Ryouta. Full of regrets after the incident that occurs. Ryouta chooses not to forget it and keeps the promise. Yes, to find the real alien. Ryouta keeps up his promise up until his life as a high school student. But, one day, fates change everything when he meets a new transfer student name Kuroha Neko. The past will unfold with the destiny Ryouta never expect. Better take a seat mate. You will love this story. A really good performances by all the character. A big applause please.

Art 
You will like it. The art of this series play an important role to show you. It has been shown a great one as darker feeling in it. Animation inside will startled you. Why not see this for yourself? You can ensure it better this way.

Sound
Honestly, I love the Ops. It's so great while those songs bring this uneasy feeling with darker theme yet fantastic. On the opposite, the ending is quite catchy and might catch your attention before you even realize it. But the ops, I can say it's really fabulous. How fabulous? It’s like Bitch please, I'm fabulous. That one is a quote.

Character 
I also love the character. Kuroneko is so cute! The expressions she makes is simple marvelous. I will keeps saying it's marvelous and marvelous until you get bored of it. The others girl also cute but I think I pick kuroneko! Ehehe. Just thinking it back made me sound a creepy laugh and grin to ear. If I show this face at public. No doubt I will get arrested by police in no time. 

Enjoyment and Overall
Sadly, I want to give this anime a masterpiece but I can't. Since in the last episode I feel like it was way too rushed. You know the feeling when you still eating food at cafeteria but the ring of your school's bell is already ringing. Yea, bullshit man. Other than that, this anime is really a fine piece. While I do feel the shame for comparing both the Elfen Lied (EL) and Gokukoku no brynhildr (GnB) series at first, I had absolutely no idea how excellent it is these two series excel with their different aspects. In conclusion, everyone can find at least one series that they truly can enjoy as it’s worth a season's worth of anime. As for me, clearly this is the one. Gokukoku series also has its own flaws but the demerit doesn’t stop this show from being a personal favorite of mine.

monty96 - 2015-06-04 01:30:51

Story 

premise is decent, but mother of god the plot holes. Like, number one, photographic memory DOESN'T FUCKING EXIST. Nearly everyone stores memory the EXACT SAME FUCKING WAY. If your memories got wiped, you having some non-existent condition won't do SHIT. The closest thing to photographic memory is eidetic memory, and that fades before adolescence. Also, the quality seems kind of shoddy and spacey at best, sometimes you're on the edge of your seat, and other times you just want to kill yourself from the shit that they throw at your eyes and call "anime". 3/10

Animation

Nothing really wrong or good here, had a decent budget, I couldn't really see anything wrong, but it wasn't outstanding. 7/10

Sound

First OP was good, second was absolute shit, and I have garbage taste in music. OST really rustled my jimmies when it needed to. 6/10

Characters

Since Murakami is the only original character we're just going to talk about him. He's a shitlord. Anyone that disagrees can attempt to convince me on my profile. Go ahead, I dare you. 2/10

Enjoyment

my enjoyment wasn't static the entire viewing, with fluctuated heavily between "this is kinda good" and "god this is shit". 5/10

Overall

This is shit, if you like Elfen Lied, watch this, you'll probably like it. If you like this, god knows why, watch Elfen Lied.

jevon92 - 2015-02-24 17:46:37

Began very entertaining I will give it that but ended all in various unbelievable turns. All too fast.

altenwerth.frances - 2014-12-08 05:52:19

Ryouta Murakami was an ordinary boy who believes in aliens and accidentally killed his childhood friend. Things start to get crazy when she seemingly comes back from the dead to save his life, with magic. Lynn Okamoto brings us another masterpiece in the form of Gokukoku no Brynhildr.

Story 3/10
The story is the worst part of the show, and it's pretty hard to look past. Unlike Elfen Lied, which started off ridiculous, Brynhildr had a solid first couple of episodes. Kuroha Neko and her witch friends escape an evil laboratory, and have to use their powers to survive being hunted down. Murakami shelters them in his club's observatory, and tries to help the poor girls live normal lives and be happy. This is all well and good, although the show turns harem pretty fast. It's almost preferable when you know the alternative is horrible suffering. Unfortunately for me, Okamoto loves suffering and delivers in the end. Brynhildr goes from monster of the week harem antics to awful ridiculousness in the last couple episodes, and loses its redeemable qualities in the process. The ending did wrap the main story up decently, but by that point I wasn't invested anymore.

Animation 7/10
The action scenes were fluid when necessary, the character designs were solid, and the cgi looked good when used. Hands down the most memorable use of animation was in the openings and endings, which looked fantastic. My biggest complaint is with the melting of witches. I know there's no way to make that look good, but it really could have been better.

Sound 8/10

If Brynhildr will be remembered at all in 5 years time, it will be for the music. The soundtrack is heavily electronic with some piano, and it all sounds great. The themes are original and really set the mood of the show. It's Nao Tokisawa's first full-length soundtrack and I hope to hear him again soon.

Characters 5/10
Oh boy. Murakami's harem may seem to be full of tropes but damn Okamoto made me care about them. Most characters in the show have a backstory and a motive, so that's good. The villains aren't evil and some of them even become our hero's friends. The main group of girls can be extremely stupid, but in an almost endearing way. One of the main problems I have is Murakami himself, who is smart and admirable most of the time but never breaks out of his shell as the harem protagonist. The other problem is the small group of characters who just appear and disappear when needed. The Germans, Murakami's uncle, and the Clandestine Research Institute all played a huge role in the world but were never fleshed out enough. There are more questions raised than answered in that regard.

Enjoyment 5/10
At first I was pleasantly surprised by Brynhildr, expecting another Elfen Lied but getting more. It was less gory, had less shock factor, and sacrificed ambition for the sake of being a solid, enjoyable show. I grew to like Murakami and even fell in love with the sexually frustrated Kazumi. But the suffering that did eventually come was too much for me, I'm afraid. In the last couple of episodes there was an increase of unnecessary shock factor which angered and saddened me. The story fell apart too, which didn't help. In the end I guess I enjoyed Brynhildr, but it could have been so much better.

Overall 4/10
If you liked Elfen Lied this is a must watch. For anyone else, be cautious. Brynhildr isn't that great, but it is different than the norm.

edyth49 - 2014-07-09 06:37:26

I'll go on record and say I haven't enjoyed watching a show this much since Inferno Coppu and Jojo's Bizarre Adventure. Yes, shows like Kill la Kill are great, but can't compare to the enjoyment I had while watching this utter piece of shit unfold in front of me. 

The Story 3/10 

Let me start by listing all the positives about the story, it'll be a lot quicker that way. The mysteries in the show are actually half decent, and at many points the show went off in unexpected directions, and it had a good ending where there is still more to be told if need be, but also fine as a stand alone ending. That's about all the positives that could be said about the story (and, come to think of it, this show as a whole). Besides that though, pretty much everything about the writing of this show is terrible. For starters, while the mysteries and plot twists are cool, there is absolutely no foreshadowing or any of that good stuff in here, that's for more "advanced" writers, not the kind of stuff you should expect from the guy who wrote Elfen Lied. Outside of the lack of forshadowing, the show is littered with terrible writing all together, with an unhealthy amount of gore mixed in with slice of life moments and a crap load of terrible fanservice. And did I mention the utterly shit pacing? Yeah, that too (I'd go into detail, but spoilers). Needless to say, if you're watching this it's masterful writing, you're probably one of those guys who comments on the crunchyroll videos. Don't be one of those guys. 

Characters 1/10 

Seriously, this is probably the most disappointing thing about this show, literally every character is either cliche or just plain stupid (or both, which by the end of the show includes most of the cast). I'm writing this at 1am in the morining, and by the time I wake up later, I expect to have forgotten most of the characters names, besides Murakami because the female cast said his name at least 2 dozen times an episodes. Speaking of Murakami, he's an utterly shit protagonist (totally unexpected) with little personality and one special "trait" that defines him (if you can call it a trait, it feels more like a plot convenience half the time). A perfect example of a vanilla protagonist. I mean, I guess he's a pretty nice guy and all, and when it comes down to it he'smuch more capable than most highschool protagonists, but still, that's not enough to redeem him, and it's certainly not enough to redeem the rest of this joke of a cast. You got the bitch with amnesia, the bitch who is horny as fuck, the bitch with a huge rack and no brains, and that one bitch who can't move. This was about as much thought as the creator put into these girls. By the end of the show, you'll probably be confused by the amount of people related to each other, all of which are random plot twists done for SHOCK FACTOR because what else can an author with no talent do? 

Animation and Sound 10/20 

Neither the animation nor the sound are anything to write home about, but they don't suck either. they are kind of just there, they don't add much to the story at all. I gave the sound an extra point for having interesting choices for it's 2 openings, but animation lost a point for having terrible opening animation (at one point in the OP our fantastic MC is just standing in front of the camera crying for no actual reason, like WTF?). 

Enjoyment 10/10 

Okay, here is where it gets interesting. Most shows this bad don't usually keep my attention, as they are usually too busy being boring or predictable, so I kind of just toss the to the wayside after a few episodes. But not Brynhildr, this show had me hooked from the first episode. Since the start of that episode I knew this was gonna be a gem of a comedy, even if it wasn't supposed to actually be funny. There is no way you can't laugh at how bad the writing is, or how terrible the pacing is, or how edgy it feels all the time. You simply can't. And if you can, you probably don't have a sense of humor like me and probably dropped the show after a few episodes. But my God, every episode was filled with comedy gold, if you like watching bad shows that is. But why is Brynhildr so enjoyable while the rest aren't? Strangely enough, it comes from the only two positive aspects of the show, the mysteries and plot twists. The show managed to never get too predictable or too cliche (even though the characters are the textbook definition of it), and it was far from boring, which is how it kept my attention for most of the show. Still, this show wasn't intentionally funny and I'm pretty sure the author wasn't trying to make a bad show (if he was, he's been trolling us since Elfen Lied), which is why it doesn't get any points for it's comedy in the writing and story section. 

Overall I have to give this show a (very generous) 4/10, for keeping me utterly entertained from start to finish, even if it was through the sheer stupidity of the story. Still, even with the score I gave it and it's flaws, I'll easily recommend it to anyone who enjoys watching the lowest quality of shows and laughing at how stupid they are. If you're anything like me, give Brynhildr a shot, you'll probably enjoy it (but still hate it). 

bertha56 - 2014-06-30 04:37:05

When it's good, it's pretty good. When it's bad, you want to facepalm. But in the end, I think it's worth a watch.

Yes, from the same guy who brought us Elfen Lied is another story about terrible things happening to innocent young girls. 

The story can either suspenseful and intriguing or dull and pointless depending on what part you're talking about. When the show focuses on the drama and mystery of its main plot involving girls being experimented on with alien technology, it's riveting stuff.

But then it keeps slowing down to generic slice-of-life moments and fanservice. I understand what they're trying to do here, they're trying to create a juxtaposition between the light-hearted happy scenes and the scenes where everything is going shit. Sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn't.

Done right, it could've enhanced the show, but the way its handled is usually kind of sloppy. Not helped by the fact that half the cast is uninteresting. The other half is decent, and to be fair, those ones are the ones who get the focus most of the time.

I've never seen a show that can go from being genuinely clever to being badly written back and forth so many times. There's a lot of writer's conveniences, cheap ways of maintaining the status quo and some ludicrous plot devices that break my suspense of disbelief. When it's good, it is pretty good, but sometimes it's just bad.

The animation falters a bit in some areas but overall is nice. It's consistent but nothing too special. The music is pretty awesome, with great electronic background tracks that heat up in intense moments and somber along mysteriously in other moments. Both OPs (yeah a 1-cour show has two OPs for whatever reason) are great and very different from the norm.

The first is what sounds like an epic Newgrounds dubstep track and the second is screamo-electronica of all things. If nothing else, it helps Brynhildr stand out a bit more.

The ending felt satisfying enough on its own not to be a "go read the manga you fucking idiot" ending but still leaves room to expand, which is nice.

There isn't a lot more I can say in detail because this is a spoiler a minute kind of show. Ultimately, it's a mixed bag that will frustrate some viewers and please others. It has both good and bad writing, it has both good and bad characters, for everything it does right, it does something else wrong. 

But for me atleast, the pros outweighed the cons. It's an enticing ride that's unfortunately filled with annoying speedbumps. If you liked Elfen Lied, you'll probably like this too. If you didn't like that, stay the fuck away.

Now excuse me, I'm off to go read the manga. See if that's any good.

Alternative Recommendations: Elfen Lied|Deadman Wonderland

Rewatch Value: Maybe (Based on a Yes/Maybe/No scale)

jaquelin.bosco - 2014-06-29 20:02:16

Gokukoku no Brynhildr or Brynhildr in the darkness is the anime adaptation of a manga created by the same mangaka who did the famous Elfen Lied.
The show talks about an "ordinary boy" who comes in contact with girls called witches. Witches have some kind of power, every witch has it's own. So basically this guy meets a witch that looks like his lost childhood friend tries to help her and gets a harem. 

Storry: The story is basically just like elfen lied only the girls have different powers, there is not much originality and much things are not clearly explained. The guy who first looks like an ordinary boy turns out to have photographic memory and stuff. The pacing is off and the switches between "tragic" moments and harem/comedy moments were too random and ruined the mood (that was not great to begin with). Latter on the story just becomes inconsistent, things come out of fuc*** nowhere just for the "shock factor" but at that point the whole thing is already so stupid you don't care anymore. 

1/10

Animation and sound : The only thing in the show I have no complains about. I mean it was not something great but it was not bad either.

The sound was ok I guess, nothing memorable. The first OP was good the second one was pure trash, the OP was even used as part of the soundtrack. I forgot every single OST 30 min after completing the show, that shows how good it was. 

6/10

Characters : Ordinary teenager with photographic memory which makes him immune to memory erasing? He suddenly comes up with amazing strategies that makes him look smart or some shit. He was the classic alpha male who gets bitches by acting as a hero. The girls were classic stereotypes , not much personality, the only thing I will remember of them is their naked bodies . 

2/10

Enjoyment: Probably the worst anime I have ever seen and I have seen about 800 at the time  am writing the review. This was worse then Mars Of Destruction and I am not kidding, this show is pure trash that should never be watched. 

1/10

Overall : Really bad show with stupid asspulls annoying characters and a story that does not make sense 70% of the time( the other 30% is the fanservice/harem moments) 

1/10 - Don't touch this piece of poo. 

maeve96 - 2014-05-30 22:28:24

Plot

The plot and story line of Brynhildr was mediocre, average at best. The story line was definitely something very similiar to Elfen Lied, as it was written by the same guy who made Elfen Lied and this. The story is about young teen Ryouta Murakami who one day meets a witch who is strikingly similiar to his childhood friend Kuroneko. The story later progresses through him meeting more witches with different powers as he tries to find a way to keep them alive. The primary goal for the first of many episodes is to find death suppressant pills, which prevents the witches from dying and then later they also have to avoid death from multiple organizations, which ends the series after the action from the final scene.

Characters

The characters for myself were a hit or miss. At times it feels that some characters do things that don't go with the personality they've been given. The characters started out quite nicely with a typical sense of who they were and what they do, but as the series progressed towards the last 4-5 episodes characters lost development, which is something that bothered me quite a bit because of the amount of characters they have. The show has about 6 protagonists and after losing the development at the end you feel like characters are incomplete and don't mesh as well in your mind. With 6 incomplete characters the show has taken more of a bad turn.

Action

The action of the show was shown through drama and fights. The action wasn't necessarily bad as the fight scenes were often very dramatic and had a lot of suspense to them, but there were some things a bit off. The drama however is the downfall of the action, I didn't hate the drama, but sometimes they were focused on too much in the show especially in the romantic tensions that are always held by Ryouta. The simple love triangles in the show were elaborated on too much and takes away from solid material that the anime could be focusing on more. I do see why they focused on the romance so much in this because it would make things more dramatic when a character dies, but after losing the character development it was more of a failed attempt.

Animations and sounds

The animations were average nothing really standing out nothing too bad. 

The music however was something that really could be debated on. Let's start with the first opening for Brynhildr

The first opening was an absolute stunner in my opinion. A lyric-less dubstep with an amazing feel and sound that really made you want to listen to it one more time. Something that was different to the average anime and was a good choice for the show because of the well timed scenes that were airing while the music was playing.

The second Opening was something else on a whole other level and something that is still debated on today on weather or not it was good.

This song features a heavy metal type music, which may have created a bit of an over dramatic, thick mood to the show. It wasn't half bad, I did enjoy the first opening more, but this is still a good song that was well played.

In the end I don't think this anime was very deserving of these two great openings, which could have been used for something a bit better.

Personal Enjoyment

In the beginning when the show first aired I was quite happy with what I was getting, but as the anime progressed the action and characters didn't. So, it led me feeling very happy for the first few episodes, to ok to no why? I guess this was one of those anime that had a good start, but gets worst the more the show goes on.

More editing to this review will be done

hane.loy - 2014-04-15 02:02:08

Suspenseful and intriguing as it sounds, this anime is actually pretty dull.

Despite having potentials of developing great tension, the anime fails to introduce any sort of entertaining moments at all.

Started off badly, with even a bad episode 2 to begin with.

Kuroha Neko seems to having some characterization problems that she switches from cute to cold almost too instantly, which isn't even the case of 'tsundere'ism.

Hopefully the story can quicken its pace, and get into action quickly before I drop this anime.