In retrospect I ought to have dropped this, really, but I ploughed on with it in the hope that it would get better later on; Seemed Like A Good Idea At The Time and all that. In fairness Chaos;Head did actually improve towards the end as the full scope of the story was revealed but it begs the question: when I’m behind on a couple of other shows and have yet to even start Toradora! why sit through nine or so episodes of mediocrity for the sake of three decent ones?

“Hey Beavis, I just figured something out…”: I’m referring to the last paragraph there by the way

The fact of the matter is, I loved the premise of the series and was only disappointed with the execution (which coincidentally is also the reason why I gritted my teeth and plunged into the Allison to Lillia Plot Holes for twenty-six episodes). Y’see, conceptually Chaos;Head isn’t bad – it has a perception vs. reality debacle that’s reminiscent of a Satoshi Kon production, it makes use of technology and arcane jargon, it has a cowardly and pathetic protagonist who makes Welcome to the NHK!‘s central character look positively average and the final episodes had a faint aroma of the latter portion of Serial Experiments: Lain. All in all the ingredients held a special appeal to me but there was this aftertaste of…well, not much of an aftertaste at all. I will acknowledge the things that the series got right though, promise.

My first serious criticism is the lacklustre presentation. Maybe Madhouse blew their budget on Kurozuka, or perhaps the upcoming Summer Wars feature film (either would be a justifiable reason that I’m comfortable with) but whatever the reason it was just…meh. Maybe the real reason why I was so wrapped up in the themes and ideas was because the aesthetics were utterly undeserving of note.

The music was pretty good in terms of heightening the atmosphere of tension and unease, although I’m not sure what was going on with the bouncy end theme; it was such a non sequitur that I’m not sure what pitch the creators were aiming for. Some op and end themes are in keeping with what’s in the middle while others are deliberately off-the-wall for ironic or comedic effect (Re: Paranoia Agent) but in this case…I honestly don’t know what they were thinking. The op was decent but the end theme…what in heaven’s name is the viewer supposed to make of it?

This uncomfortable rift in tone extends to the two constituents of dark, edgy psychological thriller and high school hijinks of the geeky ass who the story revolves around. Needless to say I was on board for the former and accepted the latter as par for the course; the moe issue is deserving of an article of its own (but won’t be covered on this blog any time soon…seriously) but I got the feeling that two very different types of series were somehow cobbled together, almost as if the creators were afraid of discouraging the fanboys by leaving out the fan-pandering tropes. It felt like dropping a dollop of ketchup on a fillet steak.

My aesthetic criticisms overlap a bit here because the beef I had with the characters is partly attributed to the character designer apparently showing zero imagination. Most are generic while Ayase is such a Rei Ayanami clone that I wouldn’t blame Yoshiyuki Sadamoto for suing. I know, I know, the real reason for a loser receiving a disproportionately large amount of female attention is explained and explained well and it’s my fault, not the writers’, for mistaking it as a harem show early on. Even so the fact remains that the supporting cast are clichéd, which was quite offputting.

In fairness to the series I did find it refreshing to have a protagonist like Takumi. Not only is his personality and attitude topical as a jab at the otaku and hikikomori issues (could this be social commentary or am I giving the series too much credit?), it’s a great choice when the story hinges on the reliability of the central character in terms of explaining what’s going on. A tale of delusions and hallucinations really benefits stylistically from a paranoid, reclusive individual whose grasp of reality is limited at best and a complete mindfuck at worst. That part was great.

The idea that rides on the back of Takumi’s unreliability as the lens you view the story through, that of questioning perception against reality, was handled quite well, or at least better than I expected. On the downside it’s been done before in Lain and the Matrix movies too of course but when you’re not really investing your full attention or guessing ahead the true identity of Shogun was a pleasant surprise and really quite clever. Trying to keep up with what’s real what’s delusion, or indeed whether the difference between the two matters at all in Takumi’s universe, was one of the more enjoyable aspects of the series and stopped me thinking of it as mindless.

An interesting last-minute conclusion

EDIT: during my (unproductive) searches for suitable screencaps I stumbled on the Wiki page for the visual novel, which outlines the very interesting gameplay system. At this point I realised the real reason why the anime took the approach it did, and why it didn’t work.: Unlike the TV show, playing the game gives the player frequent choices between what sort of delusions Takumi experiences: positive, negative or letting the game decide for them. This allows the player to decide whether they want a fluffy story or a gory one in addition to the option of the narrative’s default route. Given how I found the mix of fluffy and gory to be grating and would have loved to have altered the mix to suit my personal tastes, I think this is an example of how certain things work better in their original media format.