Souls Rhapsody’s Weblog

I know that this is clearly an overdue review for this series.  However, for some very strange reason, I had saved this series until now.  I mean, it was one of my most anticipated series of that season, yet I refused to watch it until now.  However,  I now see that it may have been the right choice: one episode a week would’ve been too little to keep me alive for the full 12 weeks.  The series was absolutely fantastic.

Let’s start talking about the seiyuu first.  One of my recent favourites, Ueda Kana-san voices Fumika.  Most roles that I’ve seen Kana-chan voice were generally really loud roles… or relatively louder roles.  They were often characters that weren’t totally serious.  Examples?  Yumi for Marimite, Honami from Rental Magica, Rin from FSN, Kazumu from Kasimasi… none of these roles were even close to Fumika.  Kana used a lower and quieter voice to play Fumika, which suited her character well and served as nice contrast to Matsuoka Yuki’s goddamn annoying voice as Kanaka (I hate Orihime from Bleach too… whom Yuki also voices).  I also managed to pick out Chiba Saeko’s voice… since the voice she used to voice Natsumi sounded pretty close to Chika from Mashimaro. 

Anyway, enough about the seiyuu… onto the actual series.  The art was nice… wasn’t fantastic, but it was nice (but that’s to be expected of J.C. Staff).  I really liked the colours of Fumika and Chiaki’s eyes… There were of course, a few inconsistencies and impractical parts to the series, but thats totally unavoidable in anime.  It bothered me that people could see Shigofumideliverers tho, I mean… wouldn’t someone wearing such a dark gloomy outfit and holding a huge staff kinda stand out in society (or be mistaken as a cosplayer)? 

Still, the series was fantastic.  I can’t recall who it was that called Shigofumi the “love child of Shinigami no Ballad and Hell Girl”, but that person was… I’d probably say… right and wrong.  It certain did have a very “Shinigami no Ballad” feel to it, but the stories were much gloomier.  In that aspect, it bore some similarities to Jigoku Shoujo, and Fumika also greatly resembled Enma Ai.  The dark, silent type character who actually goes out of their way to do their job in a more difficult way in order to help other people.  So, in such a way, the person was right that Shigofumi was similar to both Shinigami no Ballad and Jigoku Shoujo.

However, in my opinion, I think Shigofumi is superior in several ways.  It’s superior to Shinigami no Ballad in that each separate incident was more intriguing, had more depth, and much more serious.  The art was also superior (that’s a given tho, considering the fact that Shigofumi is newer).  While the individual incidents may not have been as good as the Jigoku Shoujo incidents, Shigofumi has one thing that is superior to Jigoku Shoujo: a plot.  Jigoku Shoujo was a great series, but its only flaw was its repetitive nature and failure to develop any real plot.  Shigofumi managed to somehow work with both short stories and an underlying plot: something Jigoku Shoujo had failed to do successfully (I mean, they TRIED, but it didn’t work well… maybe it’s cuz both seasons of Jigoku Shoujo were so long). 

The underlying plot of Shigofumi was interesting too; a struggle for coexistence within one body which ended up in the expulsion of one personality into a physical form.  It was interesting watching the two Fumikas ultimately break out of their shells and just start screaming the truth and their will to exist at each other. 

All in all, the series deserves almost full points.  If there was one flaw, I’d say the series was a little too short.  I think 24 eps would’ve been a better length, with a few more short stories, more development of the side characters (particularly the staves Kanaka and Matoma, maybe a bit about Natsuka and Kaname), and maybe an ep explaining the Gospel Department and Risala (the ending bit with Chiaki asking Risala for help and something about a rule to save Mika was totally unexplained…).  Otherwise, the series was phenomenal.

I apologize for the lack of pictures in this post… my DVD with the Shigofumi episodes is actually with my friend… so I can’t do any screencaps, sorry =(