Review of La storia della Arcana Famiglia

First episode in, and we are immediately introduced to a mafia-esque organization with cool men in tuxedos, an ultimate duello that rewards the winner with our extraordinarily attractive female main - Felicita, a glimpse of well choreographed fights ranging from sword fights to close quarters combat, and a hint of romance tacked with a little bit of humor. Did I mention that the songs for both the opening and ending - as well as the animation, were pretty good? Going into this anime, I felt that there was already a lot of potential - decent plot, decent production values, decent room for character development. Thisall falls a bit short though, when the anime is only scheduled to run for 12 episodes. The immediate problem that comes to us is that there just isn't enough time to go through the in and outs of the main cast. Character development is focused mainly on the three - Felicita, Nova, and Liberta. We still get to learn a lot more about the other characters, but the information often comes in snippets and tidbits that really only make a moderate amount of sense.

This problem is existent even when exploring the background of Nova, and Liberta - the picture is just too small for us to care in any major way. Other problems with the plot include unexplained purposes of certain actions and unexplained reasons to having certain characters. Romance does make its way around the series, but most of this is limited and sees no real decisive conclusion.

Moving on to the shonen aspect of Arcana Famiglia, the first episode does a great job in packing us with some decent action. The series itself though, lacks any major combat from there onwards - making it somewhat of a rare occasion. This part of the anime suffers similarly to the plot and character development, where many things are still left unexplained/ partially explained.

There is also a minor issue with budget allocation, as viewers may see a deterioration in quality towards the end of this series. In general, the themes of action and romance that were promised in the very beginning of this anime fails to follow-up on the strong start.

Arcana Famiglia however, does a fairly good job at perhaps, being a slice-of-life anime series. Despite being unable to grant complete character development, the episodes are often entertaining and joyful to watch. The characters are capable of setting heartwarming moments at times.

This series is all in all, an average pick out of many slice-of-life anime. There is definitely potential with Arcana Famiglia, but an inadequate amount of episodes and average execution on the studio's part has left it with a fairly plain score. The pace for this anime could have worked with 25 episodes.