Review of La storia della Arcana Famiglia
Watching Arcana Familga is like reading an autobiography, you know..the sort of book a person writes about his or own life and it is usually full of all sorts of boring details. In any case, Arcana Famiglia is a strange series from the start. La Storia Della Arcana Famiglia details a group of people who have made contracts with the Arcana cards to obtain special abilities in his or her own rights. On the birthday of the head of household, the Father decides to host a tournament - a series of duels known as the Arcana Duello, between Arcana-users. It is every onefor themselves because it's winner takes all.
Apparently, the series' promo depicts around a tournament but half way now through the series, what do we have?
- cat/neko chasing
- babysitting
- rivalries between two of the main characters in a boring love triangle that has little flavor
At any rate, this series is not exactly the smash of the season and shouldn't be especially with throwing in fillers at the very get go.
The series continuously avoid the major story of the series but instead throws fillers at your face like apple pies. But the story is not as tasty. It lacks flavor of an apple pie because they are all fillers from the beginning. Although later on, we do see some storyline development (chiefly flashbacks), the main story so far is avoided. Furthermore, it seems that the flashbacks are cliched and stereotyped. Honestly, who on Earth is planning on sitting through over four episodes to watch some flashbacks? We want to see some movement and drama with the main arc!
Luckily though, the character designs are cool. And of course, they need to be especially since everything up to this point has been focused on the characters of the tournament (you know, the one that hasn't yet officially begun yet). But towards the finale (yes the very last episode), the duel is finally presented. Even the duel itself has some problems though with one of the main characters actually withdrawing while other battles between our cute pigtailed girl being way too short and no flavor.
Felicità is the main heroine of the series, the holder of The Lovers arcana, which gives her the ability to read the hearts of others. She is spicy, she is cute, and she is to herself. And those little pigtails, who doesn't want to cuddle them? Beyond that though, she has some interesting interactions between two of the main characters, Libertà and Nova.
That brings to their rivalry.
It seems that Libertà and Nova often gets into fights like ying and yang. Just look at it. Every five minutes in the series, they fight out and competes sometimes over absolutely nothing. Libertà is depicted as the hot headed guy while Nova remains his cool. (most of the time) Regardless though, it gets old after watching it over 9000 times. Besides, there's already rivalries similar to this without the l for love in a certain ongoing series. Perhaps the Tail of the Fairies ring a bell?
The other characters of the series seem to be like background characters of a stage play so far despite their cool appearances. The bold headed guy who has the ace hands of a bazooka, the cool level headed guy with the eye patch, and the mysterious Jolly with his shades. I'm sure they will eventually get the opportunity to shine but so far, it's not happening. Besides maybe Jolly, everything seems so stale between the background characters. Yup, the apple pie is once again losing its flavor.
Luckily, there is some minor good flavors for this disappointing anime so far. The soundtrack, namely the opening song of the series seems to play well in this series.
Magenta Another Sky" by Hitomi Harada is well orchestrated and depicts the Arcana-users showing off some of their abilities in the sequences. The music is also catchy and as one of the first series to watch on Sundays, it's a pretty damn good way to start off the week, at least in the music department.
The art is also colorful in this series. It gives off an Italian like atmosphere and overall, demonstrated well with the cool looking characters, some backgrounds, and the mansion where the family stays at.
Overall, to enjoy this series, you'd have to be a real brave fighter, one that is very patient and ignores the fillers but instead concentrate on other aspects of the "story". The first half of the series isn't one of the best ways to start off this originally hyped series. The "story" moves like a turtle and the apple pie is losing its touch. It's not too surprising that J.C. Staff's expectations didn't live up to the hype.
With all the filler episodes going on and the "story" moving so damn slow, it's no surprise that some people have dropped it. There should be limits on how to start a potential series but in this case, Arcana wasted it. It brings up boring sequences from the get go and fails to deliver anything unique to the viewers. While the art and music/Op song does somewhat makes up for this, it so far is anything but special. J.C. Staff you disappoint. No one likes reading an autobiography and especially of a series that originally had potential.