Hello and welcome to the G-Views, where creativity is respected and Dokuro-chan is rejected. Everyone in the world has or has had dreams. What happens when dreams begin to run rampant and are able to occur even when you’re awake? In short, chaos ensues. This is partly what you can expect from the latest review of Yumekui Merry.
Alternative title:
Dream Eater Merry
Genres: action, comedy, drama.
Themes: Dream-reality collision, school life, aspiration.
Number of episodes: 13
G-Rating: 7/10
Plot Summary: Ten years ago, Yumeji Fujiwara noticed he had a power to see multicolored auras surrounding the person’s body. Ever since then he’s been having a weird dream about a war with cats. Then one day a mysterious girl falls on top of him. The girl in question is Merry Nightmare, a dream demon who can somehow enter the real world without the need of a human vessel like other dream demons. Her mission, find a way back to her dream world. She does this by locating random dream demons, who invade the real world through daydreams and nightmares, in the hopes of one of them having a portal leading back home. Eventually Yumeji and Merry team up to accomplish said task, while battling villainous dream demons led by one Pharos Elcres.
If I could describe this show in one sentence, it’s this: Entertaining and melodramatic.
It’s an interesting concept that kind of reminds of Final Fantasy X’s, except not as confusing and filled with unnecessary plot holes and inconveniences. It’s a fun, straightforward ride filled with neat revelations along the way that will definitely have an impact on our heroes. The show also has some cool personal moments involving the characters’ motivations and ambitions for the future. The lighthearted moments are fun and will put a smile on your face. The action scenes range from awesome to “that’s it?”
My main gripe with the show is the fact that, as mentioned in my one sentence description, it gets pretty melodramatic at times. Heck even the music is over the top with drama. Sometimes the drama makes sense, other times it’s unnecessary, especially during certain boss battles or assaults. Some characters can be quite emo, which tends to cloud their judgement and annoy me at times. Still, it’s not gag-worthy. Something else worth mentioning is that sometimes the show “stands still”. Even though it’s often melodramatic, there are times when it’s not trying to be funny, nothing of interest happens at all. There are some episodes where scenes that depict emotional distress within the characters, which can be established in a short amount of time, get unnecessarily dragged, and this may turn off some viewers.
Animation: Pretty good mixture of colorful and dark at the same time. The dreamworld dimensions serve the same purposes as Madoka’s other-world dimensions/barriers. Not as awesome as the latter but still cool. The characters look cool enough, the women usually the more appealing and less generic looking while the men don’t impress. For the majority of the show’s 1st half and whenever the mood isn’t serious, the writers have this obsession with moving the camera close to Merry’s belly. I don’t know why this is since, Merry’s cute but not what I would label as sexy. Ah well it’s a minor gripe so don’t worry about it too much fair readers. Despite this obsession, the show doesn’t have excessive fanserivce at all. Even the traditional anime swimsuit episode is incredibly mild in its sexy content.
The music: Classical music for most of the anime OST and some occasional rockin’ tunes during boss fights. The OP and ED are also cool. However, as mentioned above, it gets way too melodramatic. Believe me, you will often see many scenes with a conversation is taking place while music that’s far too intense or emotionally serious, playing in the background.
Characters:
Yumeji: has the ability to perceive the aura of peoples’ dreams (Including his own) and predict whether the person will have a sweet dream or a nightmare. Most of the time he’s right. He uses this ability to help Merry locate dream demons once they officially team up. He’s your typical heroic main character with optimistic beliefs who is willing to get in harms way despite his helplessness against strong foes, in order to save the people he cares for. He’s an okay guy. Not lame, not generic, just straightforward.
Merry Nightmare
A dream demon from the dreamworld, who allegedly came into the real world 10 years ago without any memory. Unlike the other dream demons, she doesn’t need to possess a human to enter the real world, as she has her own body. Searching for a door to come back to the Dreamworld, she falls on Yumeji one day, who wants to help her to find her way back home. At first reluctant, when a daydream occurs and when she saves Yumeji’s life, she accepts his help. She is able to break the daydreams in order to get back in the real world. She can’t eat spicy food or drink carbonated soda, but she loves doughnuts above everything and likes video games a lot. Besides her badass name, she’s an adorable super heroine type of girl who starts off like a mild tsundere but quickly becomes lovable. Her love of donuts and being a gamer, despite her lack of skill, makes her pretty cool and fun to watch both in daily life and combat. Her skills are most impressive and her hidden power is not to be trifled with.
The supporting cast has their own individual charms that make most of them likeable and fun to watch. Fav character is Three Act Play. Strange name for a Dream Demon but who’s complaining. She’s a Dream Demon after all who’s equally as badass as Merry, perhaps even more and has her own soft side. Her emo moments are more understandable than others’.
The villains on the other hand, are a mixed bag. Some of them are interesting, like “Chaser John Doe” and his army of nightmare kitties, while others whom the writers tried to make look menacing and intimidating, just turned out to be cliche bullies who pick on the weak for nonsensical reasons. I honestly couldn’t take these villains seriously even though the revelation of a certain character’s dark nature was cool. These are the kind of villains who shouldn’t be given a speech about what they’re doing is wrong or go slowly on them. If you have the power to take them on, do the following:
1: Either beat them up, or my personal preference;
2: The God of War treatment. I personally would enjoy watching a certain duo get Kratos’d. That would be so entertaining and laugh out loud epic. Just Youtube Kratos vs, check out the list and you should get a good idea of what I’m talking about. They did something like that in a certain movie I reviewed last year. That was shockingly glorious.
In conclusion: This show’s an interesting, albeit melodramatic experience. It’s not as horrible as Jinki; Extend or Naruto fillers, so it does have that going for it. Other than that, the show’s definitely worth a one time look. I wouldn’t exactly call this a show worth watching more than once but that doesn’t mean it should be ignored, because it shouldn’t. Like Seiken no Blacksmith, watch it at least once if you wish.
P.S: This show’s ending suggests that a second season could be made, provided sales are satisfactory. Normally I would say that if shows like Seikon no Qwaser and Kampfer can get 2nd seasons then so can Yumekui Merry, but this sentence also makes me feel pessimistic as to the possibility of a sequel. We’ll have to wait and see.
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