CHÄOS;HEAD

DESCRIPTION

CAST

ANIME HorrorChäoS;Child
MANGA HorrorChäoS;HEAd
ONA Mahou ShoujoMahou Shoujo Sonico★Magica
ANIME DramaSteins;Gate
ANIME DramaRobotics;Notes
ANIME MysteryOccultic;Nine

REVIEWS

• 

  biogundam

  51/100
  chaotic review about a chaotic series

  Warning this review may contain spoilers.

  First impressions, so we got a super natural marrder mystery going down with harem elements going in the background. Sounds interesting enough.

  Story,5/10

  So the premise and setup of choas head is pretty simple for the most part because in one way or another it's has been done before a lot of time.
  You know Like we have the main character living his Madame life. There are some mysterious murders that have been going down in his local area. He doesn't pay attention to these things and then out of nowhere he is then quickly dragged into the middle of it.
  with him now trying to figure out what has been going on and finding out that things are more than they appear and him also finding out that he's got got super natural powers that give him the ability to make his imagination real and along the way finding out that there some girls who also have the same power as him.

  Which now in retrospect this kind of thing has been kind of done before and some times better in the choas head case.
  Now I am not saying that choas head is bad in any way. Because I thought it was quite interesting for what it was because it tackles some interesting concepts, like how realty can change so quickly or how you shouldn't trust everything you see and how do you describe the concept of something that as real for not.
  Which is really something you don't see that very often.

  But the problem I have with chaos head as a whole is that it's presentation was very disappointing in quite a few areas. I am pretty sure and don't quote me on this I am pretty
  sure that the presentation in the visnel novel that this was based off was a lot better. But problems I have for one is that the pacing is very fast.

  From a nartive stand point it feels like to me that it's hip hoping to every major plot point in about 12 episodes.
  Which kind of kills all build up and because of the small amount of episodes the show never had time for cool down moments or side story's to help flesh out the setting.

  One of the things that the anime did get right when it came to presentation was the creepy atmosphere because this a story about mystery and murder.

  Now another problem I had as the ending because it was very wft and it is one of those open endings where you don't know what really happens next.

  Characters, 6/10

  The main character taku was some what interesting.
  Like his personality wasn't that special because he was a shut-in otaku who really doesn't have much of a personality. But what made him interesting was his mental problems which his ability kind of made it more fun because you don't really know if any off the things that he is seeing are real or something that he is thinking off.

  The side characters.
  Where also kind of interesting in way as well.
  Because they all had something interesting about them.

  like for example one of the characters mostly speaks in cryptic word play.
  A different character who was also interesting as a girl who only speaks using ner mind.

  Even though there personallys are genetic as hell.

  One problem I found was the character relationships.

  Because of the pacing and ep count we never these characters come together naturally.

  Now You could say that to some extent that they became closer together because they shared a common enemy that was a huge threat and because of that they became closer.
  But doesn't really justify the fact that some of where some what close to him even though thay had only know him for a short time.

  Art, 6/10

  Now animation for choas head for the most part looks very nice for the most part.

  It has some very nice backgrounds.

  It also has a nice colors as well.

  Sound, 6/10

  The quite liked the op and ending themes
  They where quite nice to listen to.
  But they not really worth looking for.

  The ost well kind of lacking for the part on its own.
  But it did bring the right atmosphere to every scene that showed up in the anime.

  Enjoyment, 6/10

  Well on of the things I quite liked was the idea behind it.
  Because on Paper this would have been a really good idea if it was presented better.
  I liked it's idea of realty being contently put in a state of Mind fuck.

  I also quite enjoyed the creep atmosphere.

  But pacing and ep count did put a major dampening of how I enjoyed is show. Because
  While watching this show it really did feel that it was missing something more to it.

  Overall, 5/10

  If your into v.n anime adaptation then you will probably like it even though it feels a like fan service for v.n players.

  But if you not into gennic story's in general and you do t like gore or maid fuck then stay a way.
  But you like the idea of choas head.
  Your probably better off playing the game.

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• 

  MozillaMudkip

  40/100
  ChäoS;HEAd - Please Let This be a Delusion

  While It's been a while since I’ve watched this, ChäoS;HEAd is an anime that I passionately dislike enough that I sometimes find myself thinking about it even now. I’m a big fan of the Science Adventure series, the collection of visual novels created by Mages, Nitroplus, and Chiyomaru Studio that consists of the Chaos;Head/Child duo, Steins;Gate and its sequel, Robotics;Notes and its sequel and most recently Anonymous;Code. Like many, I was first exposed to the series through the Steins;Gate anime (which is still my absolute favorite of all time) and later on played through most of the visual novels and to my surprise, my favorite of the series was not Steins;Gate, but its predecessor Chaos;Head Noah. Shortly after finishing my play through of the visual novel, I really wanted to see more and I decided to watch this 2008 anime adaptation based on said visual novel. I was shocked by how unimaginably mediocre it was.

  

  To start, a brief summary. ChäoS;HEAd is a 2008 anime from studio Madhouse that takes place in 2009 Shibuya district in Tokyo that follows a shut-in named Takumi Nichijou. Nichijou spends the majority of his days locked inside a converted shipping container that he lives in, playing MMOs, watching anime and indulging in personal fantasies of his own imagination. In his efforts to distance himself from society, he only goes to school the minimum amount of days required for graduation. Around the time the story starts, a strange series of bizarre deaths in Shibuya have sprung up dubbed the New Gen Killings. One night Nichijou is playing his MMO when he is sent a bizarre depiction of a grizzly murder in a chatroom from an anonymous person. The following day, on his way home from school, Nichijou finds himself discovering the scene of this very murder as it is in progress. While Nichijou is able to escape, Nichijou’s fragile mental state begins to dissolve as he fears the killer coming after him and psychological antics ensue. Atleast, that's the story that's beautifully told in the visual novel. Here, not so much.

  The Bad
  The biggest problem with ChäoS;HEAd is that it is simply unable to clearly illustrate and explain its own plot elements that creates a cycle of the viewer being more and more confused as deeper concepts are introduced the further into the series it goes. I believe that for ChäoS;HEAd, the anime medium is simply inadequate to properly tell this story compared to how it’s shown in the visual novel. In the visual novel, throughout the story, Nichijou will have moments where he will be overcome with a delusion from his unstable mind. In the visual novel, you’re able to choose the nature of this delusion which will then alter the way Nichijou perceives events around him. I found this an absolutely fascinating story telling method that really boosted the experience. This anime adaptation on the other hand is unable to do this unsurprisingly and goes for a much more linear and neutral viewing experience. Because of this, I feel like a lot of the psychological elements that made the visual novel as good as it is instead make this anime adaptation feel that much more confused and disconnected than it should be. Another strange issue I found with this adaptation is that they don't clearly explain what is delusion and what is reality. The visual novel also does this but more sparingly later into the story. It first plays a visual and audio queue whenever Nichijou is having a delusion only to later have moments where they don't, creating times where it's hard to tell whether what is happening is all in Nichijou’s head or if it is reality. The ChäoS;HEAd anime is unable to do this properly and it makes for many down right confusing moments throughout. An excellent example of this is Seira, a pink-haired anime character Nichijou is obsessed with who he occasionally imagines in his room and conversing with him. The fact that she is not real is very clear in the visual novel. This adaptation makes it very hard for someone unaware of the visual novel to tell if she is real or not as they make very little of an effort to show that she is a delusion. She kinda just shows up from time to time. I watched this on a website with a comment section and nearly every episode had a thread where someone is asking if she is real or not filled with replies saying IDK. It becomes even worse later as the main heroine of the series, Rimi Sakihata, who also happens to have pink hair and looks similar to Seira at a glance, becomes more prevalent. People were thinking that they were the same person even. It was that bad!

  

  The second more prevalent issue I had with ChäoS;HEAd was the production. The animation is simply extremely generic and lazy. Characters will have very odd proportions from time to time and background shots will look extremely bare bones and flat. The fact that something of this quality came from Madhouse is kinda a shock with how good of a track record Madhouse usually had.The soundtrack is very basic but overall it's just fine. Not nearly as good as the visual novel but at least it's not bad. The OP itself is nice, Kanako Itou and the Science Adventure series are always a great match, but the visuals actually blatantly spoil some stuff which I hated. I also found the ED to be extremely bizarre and not really fitting for most of the episodes it played after. The most glaring issue I had with production though is that they had moments where they would alter the source material. In general, I would describe the visual novel as being extremely information dense. There's very little fluff in the story, and most everything that's shown is there for a purpose. People are introduced when they are for a purpose. Things happen when they do for a purpose. This anime adaptation on the other hand handles its time very strangely. I think 12 episodes was not nearly enough time for this entire story. Steins;Gate, which is double this length, spends a large chunk of its first half being much more relaxed and sets the mood as such, only for it to shatter this feeling with its intense second half, all while following the base story to a T. ChäoS;HEAd on the other hand, around the halfway point, begins to lose the original plot by adding a few anime original elements that I felt greatly took away from the story. There's a specific episode and a half stretch I can remember where it brings a part from the very end of the game to this point for very little reason that kills a great deal of the hype from the final fight. This same scene also has a bunch of extremely weird anime original parts that only made me more confused for very little payoff. It is bizarre choices like that that makes the production that much more of an issue. As another small side note, I'd like to mention that the source material gets quite extreme and has a fair amount of gore and crazy moments that this adaptation unsurprisingly leaves out. I totally understand that many people aren't interested in that stuff and I think it's fine that they left that stuff out, I do think that they boost the visual novel that much more. 

  The Good
  With all this being said, I would like to take a moment to praise ChäoS;HEAd’s characters. I think, while the plot of ChäoS;HEAd is way worse than its source material, I feel like this adaptation does a fairly good job of preserving its characters. For the most part, the characters are nearly as enjoyable as they are in the visual novel, especially the heroines of the story. With this, I want to talk about the main character Takumi Nichijou himself. One of the biggest complaints I see with this adaptation is how terrible the main character is, but I simply don't agree. While this applies more to the visual novel, I think it applies to this adaptation too. Nichijou isn't a good person. He isn't supposed to be. He makes a lot of stupid decisions and he treats people terribly. With that being said, I think Nichijou is an extremely interesting main character to experience the story through. I hope most of us cannot relate to him and seeing all the events of this story through his warped view of society offers an extremely interesting scope of storytelling. In the end, while Nichijou still isn't exactly a good person, I do feel like he grows a lot as a person and improves. Again, I feel like this is emphasized a lot more in the visual novel, but this anime adaption does a decent job of showing this too, and I feel like it's an aspect most overlook.

  

  Final Thoughts
  In conclusion, ChäoS;HEAd is a textbook example of a bad visual novel adaptation. Aside from its characters, it completely fails to tell the story of its source material and will only succeed in confusing you. I tried to keep the finer details vague as I really do love this visual novel and hey, maybe if what I did describe interests you, maybe give the visual novel a try? It really is extremely interesting and I would highly recommend it. The only solace I can find with this adaptation is that, hey, maybe they learned from this when they made Steins;Gate. I think that Steins;Gate succeeds in basically every aspect that ChäoS;HEAd fails at so, who knows, maybe it's possible? It's a shame though that this adaptation has to be the way it is… As much as I wish that I could say that this adaptation was all in my head, I'm not quite as lucky as our main character.

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