Ayashi no Ceres
[Episodes 1-24 Reviewed]
[Reviewed by Bethany]

First of all, note the absence of the Intelligence and Coherency categories. This is due to my viewing most of the series on a very, very badly translated Chinese DVD. Can I still review it? Yes. But if I start referring to Ceres as Louise or Toya as Ten Nights, try to bear with me.

For those of you familiar with Yuu Watase's other freakishly popular series, Fushigi Yuugi, Ayashi no Ceres will probably come as a great surprise. It's darker, deeper, and its heroine has at least half a brain — hell, she's even likable. And while that may strike you as a near impossibility, I charge you to watch before you scoff. Ceres may not be Miaka and the Seven Bishounen, but it's something a whole lot better.

Story
Not sure what to say about the story without totally ruining something major. Then again, that something major occurs in the first episode — and odds are you already know about it if you're planning to watch. But suffice it to say, the life of the main character Aya is about to get turned upside down. Torn inside out. Ripped apart. Shredded. And left in little pieces. ...Aw, screw it, spoiling be damned. Aya shares her body with a celestial being named Ceres, a woman filled with rage and power bent on destroying the Mikage family ... who in turn plan to destroy her — and, as such, Aya. Betrayed by her family, alone, frightened, and confused, Aya must struggle to understand what is happening to her and what it means, or lose the only thing she has left — herself.

Blood, Death, Destruction
Unholy god, there is a lot of blood in this series, particularly for shoujo. (X discounted.) But what is more horrific than the sheer amounts of painful death is the emotional and mental blender Aya is repeatedly put through. She starts out as airheaded and naive as any shoujo heroine — but she is forced to grow up — quickly — and face a world where nothing makes sense, where everything she was means nothing and the question of whether or not she and her loved ones will be alive tomorrow takes precedence over any other trifling concerns. ...But enough praising of Aya — she's only a part of the story. The other characters who make up the Ceres world are just as well-drawn and complex, both shaped by and shaping circumstances. ('Cept maybe Wei. I just didn't like him.) AnC has a real sense of tragedy to it, because so much of it is misunderstanding — in a way — and so much of it is also cruel fate created by human hands. Its ending is more than just a little bittersweet: they've come to the only conclusion they could have, the danger is over, the evil (if you could call it that) vanquished... but nothing will ever be the same. There is more than just the physical death that runs rampant — gone also are the people the characters once were, replaced by older, (wiser?) versions of themselves. Aya's family couldn't kill her, but they changed her ... and in many ways, it's almost the same thing.

Line Me Up in Single File With All Your Grievances
I admit, there were many things I had problems with. Most of them having to do with Kagami and the injustice of ... certain things. And that line of Toya's near the end I really, really could have done without. But until I see a decent translation of the later episodes, I'm not going to say anything about the... weirdness of the whole C Project. I have few issues with the series. I just wanted to use that Tori line as a caption, tehee.

Did I mention the music? The music is gorgeous. And melancholy ... but that sort of goes along with the series. And I have an incredible respect for Aya and Yuuhi's seiyuus — they've got screaming grief down pat. And, of course, there are enough prettyboys in the series to keep any fangirl happy — and none of this half-assed I-love-you-but-don't-touch-me stuff we so often get. AnC actually manages to make its characters very, very real — which is remarkable even without the very unreal circumstances they interact in. (I absolutely love that Yuu Watase had the balls to make Aya uncertain about her desires, even if the ultimate outcome was what we had expected. That, to me, seemed very true to life, and made Aya far more likable.) Toya, for all his adorableness, is still pretty much a study of the perfect (if fucked up and made of 'the love') male ... but many of the others scream of sincerity. (Note that I'm not dissing Toya. I love the guy. Really.) ...And did I mention about the music??

The Bottom Line
Ayashi no Ceres is not light-hearted. It's shoujo [almost] at its darkest, but it does it obscenely well. Something tells me it will never be as popular as its Watase predecessor, but that is sinful and sad. All in all, Ayashi no Ceres is pretty much wonderful.