Review of Ayaka: A Story of Bonds and Wounds

This show is... well... okay. I have to admit that I was interested in how all of the story plays out in the end since dropping any kind of plot that is not a complete garbage makes me anxious (and I can't call this anime a garbage, it's at least not bad). But in the same time I found myself skipping through the latest episodes just to get the glimpse of what's happening without paying attention to details. A trait of a good story is that you want to immerse yourself into it and read or watch without interruptions it for the sake of gettingall those different emotions. It's much easier to be interested just in the plot than to be interested in a story as a whole. If you'd prefer to choose reading a short synopsis with all the events over actually reading or watching the story then it's probably not worth it.

And with this anime I feel like it fails to captivate the viewer enough. It has an interesting premise and an interesting setting, the powers used by the characters are very harmonious with the setting and fit very well. But aside from that I found it a bit hard to be interested in any of the characters since all of them are basically bland. Even those who have either tragic backstories or unshakable dedication to something seem to follow the typical cliche archetypes of characters with such traits without anything unique about them.

Also the plot is not that complicated to compensate for it. It's pretty straightforward and you can often guess what will happen next. The final "plot twist" or "grand reveal" of the show is more or less obvious from the start and thus disappointing. I won't spoil it here but the show gets out of its way to help you make a connection between the main character and one plot-important concept as early as you can.

So, overall, if someone asked me to rate this show to know if it's worth watching, I'd tell them 6/10 to not discourage them. But for me personally it's closer to 4.5/10. If you are more or less new to anime or haven't watched many shows with similar premise, it'll probably be a decent way to kill time and get a non-zero amount of positive emotions from it. In other case, it probably isn't worth your time.