Visual novel harem adaptations have really become a notorious genre in anime. A lot of them are simple uninspired high school romances, but like with all other genres, there’s always a series that tries to go into a completely different route. An example of this: Chaos;Head, or as it’s official title seems to be ChäoS;HEAd. In twelve episodes, it presents a tale of delusions, paranoia and mind games.
While most of these series try to appeal to the otaku by letting lots of girls fall for the same guy for often inexplicable reasons, Chaos;Head goes even a step further, by featuring an otaku and hikkikomori as a lead character. For once, the lead character isn’t your “typical loser”, but rather one of the biggest losers that you can think of. He has no social skills whatsoever, has fallen in love with a fictional character and imagines her as a real person, and he’s generally hopeless in everything he does except for playing video games. This anime attempts to show what’s going on inside his mind, and how the guy reacts to all the weird things that happen throughout the series.
That’s nice and all, but what indeed makes this series enjoyable is the huge amounts of question marks that fly past the screen. There’s a huge backstory behind everything, and especially in the beginning episodes hardly anything makes sense, and it’s a lot of fun to watch everything unfold and see the pieces of the puzzle come together.
The problem with this series lies with its characters. This series is a harem series after all, and as the series goes on, more and more females strangely gather around the male lead. Thankfully most of them have very valid reasons to do so and don’t feel out of place, with one exception: Rimi. As the show goes on, she transforms from mysterious do downright annoying, and her romance is really underdeveloped. Combine that with an underdeveloped ultimate villain, and indeed, the ending becomes way too cheesy for its own good. It basically ignores most of the building up of the rest of the series and goes with a very predictable and unrewarding conclusion that just doesn’t match the series.
So no, when it comes to confusing series about visions and the altering of reality, then this series isn’t the best. Serial Experiments Lain for example is still better than this series, but it’s a very fine attempt nonetheless.
| Storytelling: | 8/10 |
| Characters: | 7/10 |
| Production-Values: | 8/10 |
| Setting: | 8/10 |
I don’t believe u gave THIS series such approval :)) I havne’t watched last ep yet but though it’s one of the worst series in this year for me 🙂
UHHH!!! me too @_@, i am a little bit speechless that you actually like this, i watch it until the end, just to end up with a cheese ball in return but, oh well sometimes you watch/like a series in mysterious way’s O_o”.
I’m surprised you gave this such a high rateing. As a fan of the VN I R IN RAGE!! Total failour has occured here. In the real Chaos head VN it didn’t feel like a harem thing AT ALL, you were too busy worrying about mind fuck and wether or not half the girls were out to kill you (Lol 2 even try) to think about if they were falling for you or not. Well the epicness of the ending will kille, but one thing I did approve of and did like was the Rimi end! Rimi end FTW! Other then more Rimi the anime failed on all other levels T.T
Was REALLY surprised when I took a look at this. It was at a whim reading your site. Was completely different from what I was thinking it was going to be. Too bad the show reverted to the same harem crap endings we’ve already seen before. All that build up for nothing 🙁
So I’ve been watching this for a few eps now. Reminds me a lot like Welcome to the NHK, except much more freaky and a lot less realistic. It’s kinda where NHK went right, Chaos went left. Not bad, just not as good as NHK.
it has a very very deep story its ma absolute fav 100/100
and the guys hwo dont like it just didnt understand the storytelling they r retarded
its the best psychological/(sence of life) anime i have ever seen
it is a very good anime for about 6 or 7 episodes, and then it will go downhill, just like deathnote when L dies
Worst review ever. What starts off as a great show ended up as a power ranger, evangelion, overly dramatic romance mix. made me puke a bit.
45/100
will someone tell me the ending ? i dun really understand the ending where he killed the villain but lying down juz as if he got beaten up .. i really hope to know ty