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Review: Ayashi no Ceres/Ceres: Celestial Legend
Updated: 1/18/04

Anime/Manga/Merchandise/Music/Fandom

Reviewed by: Orange Skirt (contributor)

Title rating: PG-13/R for the anime, R for the manga. Contains violence, mature dialogue, adult situations, and the manga's fulla sex.

-24 episode anime series (2000), complete
-14 manga volumes (1996-2000), complete
-1 gaiden/side story (2000), complete
-1 artbook
-6 novels (2000-?), complete
-4 CDs, 1 CD drama

Many do, and will continue to, classify this series as strictly shoujo and thus label it as much as possible. Yes, it was created by Yuu Watase (known also for Fushigi Yuugi). Yes, it is centered on a teenage girl and her many love interests and yes, the girl does have magical powers. But don't be so quick to judge. If told you the plot was one of the most interesting on the market, and if I guarantee you the main character isn't the priestess of anything, will you give it a shot? Or how about if I tied you to a chair for your own good of learning more about shoujo, eh, Judgy McJudgejudge?

Ceres's story is based on an actual Japanese legend, and is far darker than your average tale of girl-meets-boy-girl-gets-boy-girl-dumps-boy-for-hotter-meaner-upperclassman. On their 16th birthday, twins Aya and Aki Mikage learn that their family has a dirty little secret: a powerful tennyo (celestial maiden) named Ceres has been reincarnated into women of the Mikage bloodline for hundreds of years. An ancestor of the family stole her hagoromo (feather cloak) generations ago to keep her from returning to the heavens, so now Ceres tries to emerge through descendants to find the hagoromo and seek revenge. When it's discovered that Ceres resides within Aya, her own family turns against her and she is left to try and find the hagoromo for the raging goddess within her. Chaos ensues.

This series is jam-packed with plot; pretty much every minute of the 24-episode series and a good 75% of the manga is essential for understanding the story and characters. So if you hate filler episodes…welcome home.

Anime

Ayashi no Ceres follows Aya dealing with a possession-happy tennyo while running from her cruel family and into the arms of another. The Aogiri family--made up of traditional dancer Suzumi and her 16-year-old brother-in-law Yuuhi, the young chef who actually incorporates chopsticks into his martial arts--come to Aya's rescue and take it upon themselves to protect her (spurred by the Aogiri's own tennyo connections). Yuuhi, much to his chagrin, is appointed as Aya's bodyguard, but it's not like he's complaining for long; after all, how long can a high school boy resist his charge when she's right in the next room? Rhetorical question, of course.

Since this is shoujo, Aya has also hastily fallen in love with Tooya, one of the Mikage's hired guns. His intentions are mysterious and his looks ridiculously beautiful, but instead of following orders he's helping Aya out. Enough reason to throw yourself at a murderous man you hardly know? This is shoujo, so that's a stupid question. Throw in the fact that Aki, Aya's twin brother, is still captive in the hands of the Mikage family and seems to have a strange power of his own, and you have the beginnings of the circle of angst. The plot gets far more complicated and far more bloody than that, but I'd rather you watched it in all its red-splattered glory so we'll stop here.


Crap.

The greatest aspect of the Ceres story is that it's constantly progressing. Take it from someone who knows, you need to buy the anime and manga in order whenever possible. Not only does the plot take unexpected (and quite entertaining) twists, introduced secondary characters are sometimes more interesting than the main cast…but unfortunately for us and for them, they get killed off rather quickly, often right after they reveal a crucial tidbit of information. The dense nature of the plot forced the animation staff to stick closely to the chapters in the comic, so in some cases scenes are actually direct copies of pictures from the manga. When plot elements did need to be trimmed down (you can only fit so much into a 24-episode series), more often that not it was the violence and suggestive kissing. Not that there isn't still plenty of it left, mind you.

The need for plot pushed a lot of the focus on the characters aside, which isn't a terrible thing considering the weak cast; the manga deals more with the characters, so see my manga section for more details. The animation for the series, produced by Studio Pierrot (who also managed Fushigi Yuugi), is pretty much on par with shows of the time. I found the character designs weak, and I'm particularly irked by the facial expressions, but it's still not too bad to look at. One notable thing to consider is that since the series isn't aimed at young girls, we get more realistic color selections--as in characters with brown and black hair outnumber the punks with blue, which is refreshing in a way. VIZ picked this title up in July 2001 and all the episodes are accounted for here in North America, although their Region 1 DVD's had their covers changed from the beautiful original manga art of the Region 2's into generic manga art. Ah well.

Manga

This title, drawn and written by Yuu Watase, ran biweekly in Shogakukan's phonebook manga Shoujo Comics (or "Shokomi"). It was also picked up by VIZ in June 2001, and English language volumes are being released slowly. Oddly enough, the covers are switched around from the original Japanese (why VIZ felt volume 9's cover belongs on volume 4 the world will never know), but the translations are accurate so there's no real need to worry.

Although Watase successfully manages to whack her readers with intriguing plot around every corner, making personalities for the characters is not her strong point. Aya is the typical "normal" high school girl who wants her old life back; she has bleached hair, floppy socks, teenage angst, the whole nine yards. But that's still nothing compared to main love interest Tooya, whose personality is flatter than cardboard. True to form, he won the title for Least Personality in Sleep is for the Weak's 2002 Anime/Manga Awards. In fact, counting all 14 tankoubon volumes (with an average of 200 pages per volume), he only smiles 54 times. And yes, I counted.


You know your chopsticks are high-quality when they can cause bodily harm.

Even so, the pasts of Aya and her friends are explored in more detail here than in the anime, and character development in general is better in the manga, so there's some good to the extra people-focus. The extra time spent with Aki, and Shuro, and dare I even say Tooya is put to good use; these three, particularly Shuro, are far rounder and more likable than they are in the anime. And, too, Watase's "villains" of the Mikage family are surprisingly interesting, and their place in the plot is one of the reasons the story is so intriguing. I can honestly say this is one of the few cases where I feel more emotion for the villains than I do for the main cast (ed note: Weiss Kreuz's lame heroes but cool-as-hell baddies also fall into this).
The art is definitely intended for a mature audience that isn't easily offended. Although Watase's work is aesthetically beautiful, gory deaths, shocking tragedy, and all sorts of sex push this manga into the not-for-the-impressionable level. Every single volume also contains some degree of nudity, mostly on Aya's part, and these kinds of scenes get more frequent to the point of ludicrousness in later volumes. Oh, and you'll see nearly every inch of Tooya.

The only real objective "beef" I have with Watase's art is that some of her characters look too similar to ones she's done in the past. I dare you to tell me that Tooya isn't just Tamahome with straight hair. I dare you!

Merchandise

Because the shocking premise and execution of Ayashi no Ceres deems it harder to market (and label) than its shoujo contemporaries, there's not a whole lot of merchandising to be done. There isn't a cute mascot or animal, death is a main focus of the storyline, Aya and Tooya's bodies have already been fully revealed in the comic, etc. The beauty of the manga art launched a number of posters, pencil boards, and the like, but other than that there's pretty much just the trading card series "Sora Tamare Zoshi." The 81 cards are based on the anime, and usually charge quite a hefty price for only 10 cards per pack, so it's best that only hardcore fans invests in these.

Music

There are 5 CDs made for the anime series: OST 1: Celestial, OST 2: Destined, OST 3: Eternal, a drama CD, and a special sampler CD given out by Shokomi. With the plot already explained, it goes without saying that these soundtracks aren't filled with J-Pop and character singles; mostly composed of background pieces, the range of music required for the fluctuating and involved plot is hard to tack a genre to. There are pieces with drums, acoustic guitar, piano, bells, and sometimes all of the above, but nothing really stands out.

The opening theme, Scarlet, is sung by Ceres's seiyuu (voice actor) Junko Iwao. It's a pretty little piano piece and I couldn't think of anything to set the mood better. The first ending theme, ONE ~ kono yo ga hatetemo hanarenai, sung by an up-and-coming group called DAY BREAK, is also quite addictive (I listened to it for 3 days straight when I bought OST 1). Being more similar to J-Rock, this is one of the only songs that would justify buying the soundtracks. Otherwise, the music's not really worth your time.

Fandom

Saying there are only a few sites for this series would make me a dirty liar, but most of the pages, unfortunately, are unfinished. Information on the hagoromo legend and the odd manga image gallery aren't too hard to find, but if you're looking for stuff about the anime, God forbid screenshots, you're out of luck. This site is one of the best for that purpose, but it only features two characters, and this site is where I got the scans for this review (thank you!). Ayashi.net, the go-to site for this series, had ginormous screenshot galleries that unfortunately have been taken offline due to bandwidth problems. The site is still amazing for other information and its many manga translations, so you should all go visit anyway. For general features, this site is wonderful, and has novel summaries and scans--this aspect is a gem, due to the fact that the novels are hard to get even living in Japan. The Ceres corner of FF.net is growing little by little; I've yet to see a truly standout piece, but we are talking about FF.net (no offense, mostly). The most prevalent theme seems to be sequels after the series left off. Even though the novels gave the story a proper ending, the novels are rare and widely unknown this is no surprise.

Overview

For a quote-unquote shoujo series that has elements of all sorts of things in it, Ceres is a winner simply because of its story line. Watch the anime if you're an appropriate age, and if you're even older, read the manga; there's hardly a time when it's not entertaining. I stand by my decision to give it 4 stars out of 5. My only major gripes are the anime's lack of Shuro and my contempt for Tooya…but of course, he's too pretty for anyone to stay mad at for long.

Orange Skirt is a coherent forum regular who regularly kicks ass with the power of Grammar. Her objective taste in shoujo is refreshing, and counting Tooya's smiles through 2800 pages of manga earned her the esteemed title of Contributor Who Cares.


4 stars make Tooya smile. No more, no less.

Lianne: Although it's very difficult to pull off a series with the selling point "Great plot, crappy characters," I consider Ceres one of the very few success stories in such a doomed technique--and good God, as a shoujo that's saying a lot. Aya and Tooya are more tolerable in the anime, though superbly-created Shuro is almost exclusive to the disturbingly-sexual manga, so both versions have their ups and downs (though Yuuhi effectively thinks with the wrong head in both). Worth at least a shot if you're of the appropriate age and you can handle a very dark tale. 3.75 stars.

Text copyright © Orange Skirt, January 2004. Pictures are copyright © their respective owners and are used without permission for this nonprofit review.