Night Head Genesis is an excellent arc-based mystery-series. It focuses on paranormally gifted people, with as main characters to seemingly special ones: Naoto and Naoya. When they were children, they were been locked up inside a research laboratory. The researchers may have had good intentions, it still doesn’t feel good to be locked up, especially as a child, so Naoto and Naoya came to hate that place. So then, fifteen years later, they finally get a chance to escape. After that, they get involved with numerous psychic incidents.
This anime has some great points, but at the same time, it gets held back by a few potentially bad points, but first, let me say that it’s got an awesome soundtrack. Night Head Genesis comes accompanied by a highly atmospheric OST, which really contributes to the overall mood. Ranging from the OP to a couple of very sad but simple tunes, the background music is totally amazing.
Now that that’s out of the way, in order to be able to watch and enjoy Night Head Genesis, you must be aware that Naoto and Naoya are quite close as siblings. Especially the first half is filled with “Naoto!” “Naoya!” “Naoto?” “Naoya”. While it’s not necessarily a bad thing (I didn’t mind this myself), I’ve seen a lot of people who became too annoyed with this to continue the series. It’s a shame, as it turns bloody awesome in the end.
Well then, this anime is divided into three parts. The first part takes up the first 12 episodes, Naoto and Naoya get involved with a few rather heavily subjected cases, with themes such as suicide and child abuse. This part starts out amazing, though it gets a bit worse with each episode progressing, and especially the last few episodes in this part aren’t really that enjoyable to see. Then the second part starts, and the good stuff really begins when the cases start to involve both Naoto and Naoya’s history and background, and they start to reference back to previously dealt with cases.
But the really good part starts with the third part, which starts at around episode 18. In there, the show works towards its final goal, which gets accompanied by some amazing scenes. A few annoying moments here and there, a few unexplained moments there, but overall, these episodes were greatly developed and very enjoyable. This also is one of the few series with an actual good and interesting ending.
Overall, Night Head Genesis has been an amazing series, though be aware that it has quite a few moments which can and will get on your nerves. If you can sit through that, you’ll be rewarded with a great mystery-series.]]>
Night Head Genesis Review – 86/100
in the end, the whole series pissed me off like none before, and i only stayed until the end because i was curious about how your review mentioned that a whole new arc in the last two episodes heightened the stakes and gave it a good ending. hmm… each to his own.
but yeah, the OST was excellent! and no wonder, considering it was composed by none other than shigeru umebayashi, composer for ‘house of flying daggers’, ‘in the mood for love’, and loads more amazing OSTs. keep up the excellent blogging!
To each his own, indeed. You could say that I’m just a fan of endings that actually try to be different than the countless of other anime endings, who somehow always try to be as dramatic as possible, and always look way too much like each other.
So, I loved the second arc better… but, the whole serie has something that keep your attention all the time (it was irresistible to me).
I have watched this almost 1 or 2 years ago and, even now, I still having that strange urge to watch it again…
Anyway, I have found your blog really interesting.
I just rewatched the series, cus oddly enough I liked it overall. I like the fact it gets you really thinking about things and those some aspects are indeed annoying, if you focus on the main premise of the story, it’s really quite entertaining. I keeps people guessing cus you cant anticipate what is going to happen in this series like you can with most animes out there. I’ve seen more than my fair share of anime out there too, so I can plainly say I know what I’m talking about. And the OST is indeed excellent. I’m working on getting it hopefully sometime soon. Bah, importing can sometimes be such a pain…
I find this anime series rather dark and creepy. But at the same time it really kept my attention. I really enjoyed it and most of all I’m a big fan of brotherly shounen-ai. However the last two episodes I find were pretty much pointless. It really had no importance or ties to the original storyline. Even though it did show a bit of an aftermath.
Been looking for a “dark” anime with mature/serious characters for a long time, and this totally delivered
Im blown away, its one of those animes where I constantly thought “What??? The episode is over already?”, it was a joy to watch really… Makes me sad that its only 24 episodes, I could watch the brothers saving the world another 5 times or so haha
Now off to find something as good as this…
I think it´s so sad that they didn´t do a season 2 :´( Do you have another animie serie, that is about two brothers? 😀