The Twelve Kingdoms

I have a few bones to pick with this anime. I was bored so I watched it, but I found it lacking. A lot.

The story was simple enough, but the whole thing felt flat. There were no jokes, no sarcasm, nothing remotely interesting happened. It failed to be funny, it failed to be entertaining and it failed to be creepy as well. It also failed to be scary... but it didn't fail to be depressing and booooooooooring!

So... It was a fantasy one. A girl gets spirited away to a fantasy land to be a ruler. Major mishaps happen, girl meets a lot of bad people until someone finally tells her what's going on. After a load of trouble she gets to be a ruler, and from then on we see other stories about the other kingdoms. All these stories are separate and the thing is just tedious. I didn't stay up late to watch more and more of it.

My problems:

• The idea was good, but there was a crapload of technical terms, and I couldn't remember what meant what, didn't feel like taking notes for any anime I watch for enjoyment (where's the enjoyment?!) so I was continuously puzzled and lost.
  
  
• One original idea was that in the fantasy world where everything took place kids grew on trees in fruits... which was all nice, but then what need was there for males and female? I mean why did women have breasts, when that part only happened to develop thanks to evolution to lure in males and to feed babies... so what's the point? It was an inconsistent and badly done part. Not to mention there were still marriages, but there was never a same-sex couple, women were mostly maids, I didn't see one female scholar even in the most flourishing country and there was only one female warrior... the female protagonist. Pathetic.
  
  
• Even though sex did not exist in the fantasy world, hookers did. The first "nice" person the protagonist and her friends met sold them to a brothel. What, pray tell, do the hookers do over there? Because sex ain't one of those things. I'm still flabbergasted at this huge mess up.
  
  
• Nobody ever cracks a joke. Well, there was one time. That joke died right there. It wasn't really a joke, just an attempt. There was nothing funny or entertaining in there.
  
  
• Everything was predictable. I mean you knew who the bad guy was and that he was gonna die in a few episodes' time.
  
  
• Good people almost always died a painful and horrid death. If one of the main heroes met someone nice, friendly and pretty much harmless you were sure they were either gonna part ways the next episode or end up skewered, eaten by some monster or in some other gruesomely gory fashion.
  
  
• The artwork was... decent. Not pretty exactly. Clothes were mostly bulky. Some were frilly, but those only happened to the girls with the gravity-defying hairdos who took care of the kirins and who were also having err... it was suggested they were having sex with men who came whenever a new kirin was presented to the world. I'm floored, I am.
  

This is all I can think of now. The story could have been better, new terms could have been less or more memorable... No, I vote for less. This isn't a frikkin classroom, learn to entertain! Sadly, with the children born from a tree all the sexual jokes and innuendos were gone, so... it was boring. No jokes at all were mentioned and somehow the whole thing sucked.

Why did I still watch it? I need something in the background while I crochet or bead. I multi-task often. But this wasn't really what I wished for.

My advice: avoid. Plot is predictable and pretty boring, artwork is decent, but can be a turn-off a lot of times, not funny, only slightly entertaining and you get lost in the terms for almost everything in the fantasy world. The only good thing is the soundtrack, all 2-3 of those songs.

I give a 3 out of 10 for this series, and I was generous because of the nice soundtrack.