Ceres: Celestial Legend

This is my favorite show/anime/anything ever.. I love the manga and the anime and everything Yuu Watase does. The depth in this and the classic beauty meshed with drama and action is something I have not seen in shoujo anime for a while now.

And Lia.. this isn't just about nudity and hot guys. Also, if a woman character cries that does not make her weak. If everything happened to me that happened to Aya, hell, I'd do a lot more than just cry.

An old legend tells of how a fisherman stole the wings of an angel, so that she could not return to heaven. Instead she stayed on the earth became the fisherman's wife. Ayashi no Ceres is based upon this legend. The souls of the angel (or tennyo "heavenly maid") and the fisherman have been reborn in the bodies of the twins Aya and Aki. Aya carries the Tennyo named Ceres, who seeks her wings so that she can return to heaven, and Aki carries the evil soul of the fisherman, who stole Ceres' wings and forced her to become his wife. Aya flees from the people who wish to kill her and Ceres, and she flees from her brother Aki, who now carries a darkness inside him. She meets Touya, a mysterious amnesia-stuck hitman sent to observe her, and slowly they fall in love.

I got lost in the plot a couple of times, since the anime covers a very large manga series in relatively few eps, but it was still a wonderful show with movie quality animation. As could be expected coming from the crew behind Fushigi Yuugi, there was a lot of romance, but it seemed more true and more beautiful than anything shown in Fushigi Yuugi, mainly because the heroine, Aya, is much more sympathetic than that annyoing brat Miaka with the ugly Princess Leia-style hairdo. We get to follow Aya from the first attempt on her life, through a great adventure of love, sadness, laughter, tears, life and death. There is a love triangle, very skillfully handled, and many subplots that brings a great depth.

This show is NOT for children! It is very realistic in its style, and includes some really nasty scenes where people get hurt in very cruel ways. It's also confusing, as it tries to tell a very long story with very few episodes, but overall it's beautiful and amazing with an almost surreal fairy-tale color.

Highly recommended!

I watched this anime recently and was pleasantly surprised. First thing noticed was the animation quality itself, which was a LOT better than in some of the animes I've seen (10/10). The music was also really nice (especially the opening theme, "Scarlet")-- well, maybe except "Cross My Heart" (8/10).

The characters were mostly well developed - from lonely Toya to ruthless Kagami to compassionate Yuhi. The only slightly annoying thing was Aya's tendency to go over-emotional... Overall I'd give character design a 9/10.

But the best thing was, of course, the storyline itself, which was impressively well developed. Although tragic and cruel, it shows how important it is to love and be loved, to feel compassion and to have a family. Perhaps the only drawback to it was that in the first few series, Toya and Aya's relationship got sort of rushed. Although after watching the anime "X", which pretty much had no storyline at all to it, I feel obliged to rate the story of "Ayashi no Ceres" as 10/10.

Beware! "Ayashi no Ceres" contains many very cruel and nasty scenes which are NOT suitable for children.

The series, by Ms. Yuu Watase, is a rather gory and romantic tale about a celestial being (an angel for you slow ones) whose robe (hagaromo) was stolen. This robe allowed her back into heaven. The man who stole her robe, then lied he didn't know where it was, 'forced her to be his wife' (as Ceres, the angel, put it) and the main storyline follows the fate of her decendents.

In modern day Tokyo (I'm guessing, they never really do say), we have Aya and Aki Mikage on the eve of their 16th birthday. Aya decides to go get her fortune told, and doesn't realize how real and true it is. The next day, she and Aki go to their grandfather's only to be shown a mummified hand, which does have a great signifigance in the story. Well, much blood, kisses, and floating occurs, and we meet the Aogiri's, who also have some of the celestial blood in them. This goes to that, and it ends up being a very good series. Along the lines of being a very good celestial followup to Ms. Watase's first major series, Fushigi Yuugi.

I admit the plot caught my attention, and it started off well, but as the story goes on the series seems to drag at an incredibly slow speed. The images are very graphic and gory. Knowing it is an occult series, I'm still surprised at the vulgarity displayed.