As soon as the intro for the opening song chimed in, my heart skipped a beat and proceeded to scream, “L’arc~En~Ciel! Laruku! Laruku!” I immediately realized that it was Blurry Eyes that was playing, a song that effectively illustrated how old an anime DNA2 actually is. Why, Blurry Eyes was popularized in those days when Hyde still looked like the epitome of ultimate femininity and Laruku’s drummer was still the drool-worthy Sakura. Think: 10 years ago, when Laruku gave the impression that they dove into a tank full of estrogen.

DNA2’s age makes the art and animation forgivable. Digital animation wasn’t the coolest thing then so the rough lines and less than perfect form isn’t supposed to be so much of an issue.

As for the story, well, it actually has a lot of potential. In fact, after watching the first 8 episodes, I found myself getting restless in the office out of sheer desire to go home and plop the next tape into the player. Junta, the main character, has a dilemma that makes one want to sit down and find out how he deals with it. He suffers from multiple personality syndrome brought about by an agent from the future who messes with his DNA make-up. So the loser, who is actually allergic to girls, suddenly finds himself in a bind when girls who never would’ve noticed him suddenly vie for his attention. Unfortunately, lack of continuity shot the potential down and threw every bit of this anime’s fighting chance into the garbage bin. The series was short but nobody seemed to take the time to draft a passable ending or at least a proper build up for a satisfying climax. Far be it for me to supply spoilers, let’s just say that after a much-hyped entrance, the exit was…bleh! They just crammed in a 2-episode conflict, solved it, and then bye bye, sayonara, paalam! One wonders if the short-lived “serious problem” was just a ploy to put a semblance of action into a feature that would have been totally plotless and repetitive.

Well, at least there’s the excellent music that made DNA2 one of the few anime that had me watching the opening sequences for every episode.

Individual Rating: Art/Animation 7; Story 6; Characters 6; Sounds 9

This entry was posted on Saturday, July 27th, 2002 at 4:14 pm and is filed under DNA², Anime. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.