Arcana Famiglia

Ok, I just finished it. This anime is one of those trashy anime guilty pleasures. The concepts presented in the story are cool. However, there are two main problems with the story: timing and characterization. First, let me talk about timing. In the description, it talks about guys battling out for the hand of the daughter of a mafia type group. Great description, but that isn't really the main focus of the story. This story takes place two months before the fight and then leads up to it. You don't get the actual fight until the last episode. Which is weird but if you shift your perspective for what the show is actually about there brings up some interesting things and you get to know the characters. The other thing I want to talk about is the characterization. Now... how to describe this? Basically, the story will describe a character as one way or give a certain character a specific backstory and the character in question won't act at all like they are described. I don't think I can say much more about it without spoilers. Alright enough about the negatives some positives I have about this anime: -kick-butt lady who isn't used for "plot" and wears practical-ish clothing. -backstories are given in full detail for such a short anime -The adults in this anime (you'll understand if you watch it) -cute fluffy cat -characters who have drastically opposing personalities and the dynamics they form with each other >It's not the best reverse harem/action/??? I've seen but that's okay.<

Anime based on Dating simulators I never really expect much of, I'll just tell you that right now, we've had some pretty...ehh ones...*cough* *cough* Amnesia.. When I rate anime, I rate it on the normal things like Story, Art, Sound, Characters, Enjoyment.. But another thing that makes a huge difference when I rate it is Execution, especially with the genres they are supposed to be, there are the normal genres, Action, Romance, Comedy, and when I watch an anime with one or all these genres, then, IT BETTER BLOW ME AWAY WITH ITS ACTION, IT BETTER MAKE ME CRY FROM THE LOVE! AND IT BETTER MAKE ME LAUGH MY ASS OFF! (in other words good execution) But there are many other sub-genres I like to classify anime in, one present in Arcana Famiglia is a sub-genre I like to call, The Tournament Genre, At the first episode, it is announced that they would have the Arcana Duello, the battle that will decide the new leader of the Arcana Famiglia, and our main character's future husband, So, what I expected was that you would have the characters train and grow together and develop their powers and maybe even find the mystery of them, and finally ending with epic showdowns that will decide the new leader and the canon ship, But what we got? The characters did train and grow together, for about 1-3 episodes. Their powers were barely explored upon, and it ended with the most pathetic tournament fights I have seen to this day. Be warned I'm going to go into my anime preaching mode, but THERE IS A DIFFERENCE BETWEEN DEVELOPMENT AND FILLERS. This anime wasted SO much time it drives me nuts! NO POTENTIAL FILLED AT ALL! And for a first time, TOO MUCH DEVELOPMENT, AND NOT THE GOOD KIND! Sure its fine if there is a filler episode or two in an anime as long as its enjoyable and gives inside development on characters, but when an anime is 89% fillers? Yeah that's another story. They could have done much better ways of developing them that didn't waste our time. But anyway, animation was smooth with the few fight scenes that were in, and I liked the opening, the ending was...meh. But overall, you don't even get riled up for the final showdown because you really only see 3 of the many characters actually train. Overall, if you just want to see a bunch of characters just sort of...waste their time, go ahead and watch, but if you're looking for what I said beforehand, turn around now. Thanks for reading!

The story is pretty good, the art is great, the sound is great, characters are fair, and I found myself somewhat enjoying this series. But it gets very slow. It's hard to enjoy this anime because it bounces back and forth a bit, and even though I loved every single character design in this anime, I didn't feel like there was much to take away from these characters. If anything, after a second look, they all seemed... stale. Still, overall I got a bit of enjoyment out of it. It's a creative story idea, I LOVED the first few episodes, but they try to cram waaay too much in. It's best to go into this anime not with high hopes. Overall, I give this a 7. It's good, but not award winning good. Which is sad, because it could've been if there story telling wasn't so jumpy and stuffed full of information.

First I'd like to say that I thought this show had a great premise. I thought that over all it was decent. The plot was great and the character development was awesome but the story felt rushed. The whole point of the story was to help felicita to win the arcana duello so she could be free of the burden of having to marry the winner. My problem is the fact that they made a huge deal out of the arcana duello so I thought it would span at least 2 episodes. Instead they crammed it in to just one, and to me that just seemed a little to rushed after all the hype they put into it. It just seemed like a big let down.

Do not be fooled by the word tournament! If you go in to this series thinking its going to be 12 episodes of a tournament and seeing a bunch of fighting you will be disappointed. But! If you go in to this series with an open mind and knowing that's its less about the tournament and more about the building of a friendship between a trio of main characters, Liberta, Nova and Felicita then you might enjoy it. I unfortunately didn't enjoy it that much but I didn't hate it either. I watched the show because of the Italian language (the title caught my eye) being mixed in with the Japanese in the show, it wasn't much but there are some words here and there and all the titles are in Italian aswell as the card names. and I read alot of the bad reviews or comments on the episodes were a about how it was nothing like expected no action all character talking terrible waste of time etc.. I have to admit that seeing all those cool characters and slowly revealing the past of each one and there arcana powers it was like a big tease because they all had these cool powers but they weren't really used much, and it seemed like the development was for nothing when you reach the end which really bothered me. But at least everyone can have there favorite. Pace is the best cause hes the real italian with the passion of food! Anyways I liked the series it wasnt an amazing story and I know it wasn't what I expected but halfway through I stopped thinking of what I thought it would be and tried to enjoy it for what it was, a cast of cool characters with humor on the side surrounding the main three characters who grow to learn about themselves and eachother. that helped me get through it. If your looking for all action this is not for you. but I was still very disappointed at the way this show was made because there was so much potential it could have been great but it ends up being just mediocre. If your going to make a 12 episode show all about character development you CANNOT do it with 10 characters. Overall I gave it a six cause it was cool to see all the different characters and their unique respective powers and it was a fun concept for a show but it the end it was poorly executed.

SOMEWHAT SPOILER!! ENDING. Alright, lets start out with the background. The anime is based off of a family that uses powers given to them basically from Taro cards. Each card gives the person a different power with a price, each card chooses the person basically, and each cards power is based on the users emotions. I didn't really like this anime very much, it was hard for me to really tell who the central character was because it jumps around a lot without giving much character development. The fight scenes themselves were good in a technical sense but they reused the same scene each time the camera flipped back to the fight like the moves were on loop. Also it seemed a lot more that they only used the fighting scenes to be able to let their characters say a lot in one period of time rather than the person just standing there talking. The storyline is also terrible, because the beginning of the show is exactly the same as the end of the show with, in my opinion, nothing really gained or lost. The shows subtitles also use some Italian words, like the Italian word for Lemonade, Japanese, and Taro, because it was basically like they were speaking Japanese but would throw in an Italian word every once in a while so that was odd. Honestly I wouldn't recommend this one, but that's just me. Some people may like it more, but I found that there wasn't very much explanation to anything really and they were just trying to get the show done rather than have a very good show.

With a different sounding title, apparently Italian, I was expecting a dark and action-packed anime. What I got was slow, cheesy, unfocused, and overly dramatic storytelling. Powers involving the cards from a Tarot deck seemed promising; A duel to decide who will rule the whole clan was intriguing. I felt cheated after watching the whole thing. The best parts of the anime might just be the 1st and last episodes. To give it credit, the Art was very good since everything was well-drawn. OP, ED and BGM are just okay. Characters - now I wanted to love the characters but with all the unnecessary stuff going on, I just cannot bring myself to do so. Felicita was a very disappointing female lead. The other characters were likeable at best (I'm sorry, Debito). I scored it lower than what I initially placed, and would not really be recommending this to others. It might even be in my 'try to avoid as much as possible' list.

This is what happens when you decide to watch an anime because of the good visuals. I honestly had no hopes of this being good plotwise, when I decided to watch it, and the first episode itself proved why. Whole thing is a mess. A LOT of characters are introduced and most of them look similar to each other, so you end up confused (for a while) and annoyed because you don't know who these people are and they are running around acting "cool". The plot itself is moronic and the special abilities are even worse with the writer thinking he's too smart by copying random words from different places. 2/10, don't waste your time.

The idea of the story was interesting and I really did enjoy the show. I loved the music and the art was absolutely adorable. I did find the story a little lacking though. The arcana duel that was mentioned in the beginning and feature at the end of the show was barely an issue throughout most of the serie. The characters did think about it and wanted to become stronger, but mostly, the episodes revolved around some adventures they had on their own. For a moment, I forgot about the arcana duel altogether and suddenly, it's happening. It just seemed to me that the plot was rushed toward the end, as if they suddenly realized they needed to get back on topic and wrap up the show. The characters were interesting. They each had a unique personality that made them attractive in their own way and there isn't a single character that I would want gone from the show. I would have wanted to see a bit more of some of their past, but nonetheless, I still liked how the characters were presented in the show. The ending wasn't quite satisfying enough, but that may just be my fangirl personality being too demanding. If I put that part of me aside, I can say that the ending was quite fitting and good.

Eh. I don't want to make this review a whole speech so here's the pros cons. Pros: -Interesting Story having a family(mafia-like) with individual powers -Hot female with knives -(for girls) hot guys in suits -fair animation -fair music and intro Cons: -Poor finale -Things went nowhere fast -Climax was a bust Good anime to watch if you like gentle story lines without heavy action.

This anime had potential but they kind of ruined it at the end because they built up the story line quite a bit but when it came to the actual ending fight scene it started and then it ended just as quick as that which was disappointing. Most of the characters were pretty decent, they all had different and unique personalities. I saw other people's reviews saying that Felicità's personality was a bit flat at times and then overly emotional other times and I have to agree at times it was. Honestly, my favourite thing about this anime was the opening theme (that's just my opinion though) All in all this anime wasn't terrible but it could definitely be improved. Also I am by no means an anime expert and I watched this anime a while ago so I recommend reading other people's reviews too.