I’ll keep this review short, since Spiral is that particularly pernicious kind of bad: the kind of bad that doesn’t distinguish itself at all. Spiral is supposed to be a mystery series. The first oh, five or so episodes have short episodic mysteries. They’re not particularly great, but they’re still mysteries nonetheless so there’s a sense of enjoyment when they’re solved. That is also apparently where the anime diverges from the manga. At this point, it just throws stuff at the wall and doesn’t try to make any sense. Not in the way that say, Lost doesn’t try to make any sense. Rather, it doesn’t even invite you to even delude yourself that any of this matters in some way, making the entire experience utterly forgetful.
uho! ii otoko!
Would I watch it even if I weren’t forced? Just watch Higurashi if you want some murder mysteries.
Spoilers herein
Actually, from what I recall, it still follows the manga pretty closely, it just gets cut off about halfway through the story and never actually gets into all the Blade Children stuff (genetic descendants of some crazed megalomaniac that was stopped by the brother), or the fact that whosit is a clone of his brother and a year or two from death and that’s why his brother was telling the Blade Children to look to him to find meaning in life as his body starts to decay.
But… yeah, none of that stuff even shows up in the adaptation and you’re left with a nonsensical half finished show that introduces a ton of stuff and resolves none of it.
@Aroduc
While I was writing that review, I went to the Wikipedia page for Spiral and was totally like “Wait, Blade Children? What?”
Like Aroduc said, it does follow the manga but things never get resolved or explained and you’re left with clusterfuck of ideas that makes you wish for your wasted time to be returned.
Higurashi also did excellent job of dropping hints, even in anime adaptation… like several arcs showing Takano walking and talking to people when she was supposed to be dead, men in grey taking actions from their surveillance van, and of course the infamous 34 files… not to mention army going exterminatus on hinamizawa.
Superior spiral.
http://www.mangaupdates.com/series.html?id=6086
I had the Spiral manga which I read in its entirety. The manga took a path for the…stupid as well (lol clones) so I ended up selling it to bookoff.
I read Spiral back in my noob years, when it had like 15 chapters. It was crappity crappity crap. I mean, I’m not into detectiv-crap anyway (sadly, about 70% of the books coming out right now are exactly that), and then you get some whiny angst (“my older brother is better then me!! I have no reason to liiiiiive!! bohoooooo” This woulda make an excellent South Park episode) and the girl character, whom I hsd some hopes for became even more, well, annoying and somewhat Narusagawa Naru-ish. So yeah, even though the pyscho loli x horse-races-addict glasses guy coupling was cute, I couldn’t take it anymore. It was like full metal panic to me – I figured I’m better off watching crap like Samantha Who and Two and a Half Men then reading a comic about a whiny teenager that needs two years therapy and psycho teenagers that need to be put down.
Also, HELP. Anyone has any idea what’s that word, that’s like saying “reminds me of something” (or something along those line), that starts with remi- (or not >_< there's "re", but I'm not sure about anything else).
Oh! Oh! Never mind, I found it! Yay for free dictionary’s nearby-words search!
Well, that’s a relief. So am I the only one that found braids-girl reminisce (ha! *smugness* wait a minute, don’t I have to conjugate [got this from a dictionary, sorry if its the wrong word for it] the word? Ah, well, I’m sure you get the picture) *cough* reminisce, like I’ve said, of Narusegawa Naru/any other “I think I’m so cool despite overwhelming countering evidences” character?
I enjoyed Spiral even though it became rather nonsensical after a dozen or so episodes. I stuck with it hoping things would become clearer in the end. Unfortunately this series didn’t actually get an ending.
Oh well, I’ll give the manga a try at some point.