Loveless (TV) Hot

As a fan of the manga, I was excited to see this had been turned into anime: I'd thought several times while reading it-- "This will translate beautifully to the screen."

It does and it doesn't. The creators have put together a visually gorgeous product, and the music surrounding the episodes is lovely; bittersweet and ethereal as it should be. The voice acting is good, and in the initial stages, it sticks fairly tightly to the plot.

Then things... change. Little differences start to appear and initially they're understandable due to time constraints and all the rest of it. The problem I found with it is that Loveless is an incredibly complex, multilayered manga: it's not just about spellcasting battles, it's not just about the awkwardness of adolescence, it's not just about loss and grief and abuse and dysfunction, it's not just about strange intimacy and closeness or about piecing together lives once the unthinkable has shattered them; it's about all of these things. Sadly, I don't think the anime manages to capture all this: instead of seeing the richness and having those gasp-out-loud moments in the manga, we get a hurried, watered-down version with the anime which doesn't pack the same brutal emotional punch.


This isn't to say that Loveless isn't enjoyable; its aesthetic appeal is huge. But it does make it incredibly confusing for those unfamiliar with the series (I watched with my partner who was very much in the land of "this would make more sense if I'd dropped some acid before watching this") and jarring for those who know it. I kept waiting for pivotal moments from the manga to happen, and when they didn't, I felt oddly cheated.

The last episode annoyed me; it felt like premature closure, as though the studio had quite abruptly decided to pull the plug on the project and told the animators to just throw an ending together. Given the amount of stuff going on in the series, this would have been no easy task, and the ending the audience is provided with feels not only premature, but as though it rendered the entire series utterly pointless. There's an attempt to tie up a few loose ends but not others; there's a dream sequence, of all things, and it's all very vague and unsatisfying.


My advice is that if you've seen this and not read the manga, you're probably doing it the right way around-- I likely would have been able to just enjoy it for what it was without anticipating things which didn't happen and then feeling irritated that other things did. If you are ready to judge the manga based on the series, do so by the following only: its strengths. The artwork is beautiful, the characters are interesting and engaging, and the themes touched upon are compelling. (Understandably, too, though, if the fighting subplot and the I-can't-believe-it's-not-shota bothers you, they're probably not going to appeal to you any more in the manga.)


In short: it had the potential to be amazing, and it wasn't.

The plot is okay but it is how it's written that irks me a lot. Fighter—sacrifice, competition.. that just doesn't work for me. It does have a potential, but it became convoluted. In fact, I didn't even bother finishing it.

Next the characters. I have nothing against couples with a big age gap, but what disturb me most is the way Soubi treats Ritsuka. It's like, borderline shota. I don't like Soubi. He is such a hypocrite. At first, he says he is not a pervert, but the way he treats Ritsuka says it all. I don't like how perfect he is. Nobody's perfect. I like Ritsuka at first, but when Soubi comes in, he becomes weak and I don't like characters without a backbone.

The art is nice. I like the dark atmosphere, only that the plot and characters doesn't have it.

I was looking forward to it, but it felt like I just got rick rolled.
Oh well.. if you like something to past time with BL and cute stuff, this is pretty good for you.

For me, the best word to describe this anime is simply "beautiful"... If you truly want to understand it you have to take a closer look and be able to see beyond the "shounen-ai" or "shotacon". I can't truly say it's about a homosexual love, because it goes way beyond that, at a more spiritual level, but rather to pairs by names. In this anime, love becomes a great source of power. The fighter/sacrifice couples simply HAVE to create a great bond between them in order to become powerful. But honestly, this would make one of the greatest animes ever created in my opinion. Soubi and Ritsuka all the way!

Even though it's not real yaoi, the story behind it makes up for it.

I've read the manga and it's really interesting and so are the characters. It's more of a "cute" relationship between the main characters but I would recommand it to others.

The anime was ok including the plot, the characters, but the art is good: kind of cute...in a way. The story was very slow and not very interesting well not at all. I mean I kind of get the story but it could've been much better because it's concentrating too much on the fighting and not on the characters' relationship, a lot of loose ends, you can never get a hold of what is all about. Some charaters I just don't get the purpose of them being in there and just shallow.

Overall, it was ok, I wouldn't recommanded it, but you can try. But good luck.

All I really have to say is, the anime stops at about volume 4 of the manga.....the plot of the manga begins in volume 5. The music is beatiful, and the animation was good, but other than that....just go read the manga and save your self the "wtf?" moments.

As for the manga, it's a wonderful, wonderful series and I highly recommend it.

Loveless is a shonen-ai that's very expressive. It includes abuse, pain, love and also a young kid's struggle with life. It was a beautiful story, had cool touches to it too. Especially in the fighting scenes. Never seen this kind of "teams". And it has such an important message: Only you, decide what your future will be!

More shounen-ai than yaoi, but still an absolutely beautiful story, with absolutely beautiful animation. Unlike many shows, just watching the art is a joy in itself. Loveless is actually one of the few series I own on DVD. I would definitely recommend this to anyone and everyone.

for me too it was the first Yaoi anime i saw and i must confessed, if it wasn't for Loveless, i would have easily missed the fantastic world of Yaoi :)

for me Loveless is far more than "the best anime ever created" or "the best anime i've ever seen". Loveless became some kind of phylosophical system that guides me even now, after almost an year. i saw it in just one night (i stayed up untill 5 o'clock in the morning to get to episode 11) and i left the final episode for the next day, which i remember clearly, because i've never felt something like that for any movie i had seen untill then. that night was followed by many many hours of thinking and talking about Loveless, of analyzing every aspect or detail in the plot. and i must say i still discover new things about it. then came the manga and some of the questions were answered, but only to bring up other instead of the resolved ones.

Loveless' art is pretty much dominated by beautiful shades of purple and blue and it holds this strange and calm light, even in the dramatic moments from the spell fights. Soubi is an extraordinary character, as someone else said in another review, it makes you want to run away from home and start searching for your one perfect Soubi, Ristuka is just perfect, a child much more mature than others of the same age that tries hard to cope with his far too difficult problems (his mother doesn't recognize him as her son, she beats him during every crisis she has after Ritsuka's brother, Seimei, died; Seimei, his only support in life, died and he found himself all alone; he never really had friends, so he is a very lonely kid; he doesn't know anything about his brother death and he doesn't understand why did it happen). and after he meets Soubi, he finds himself involved in a strange world of Fighters and Sacrifices, where he has to play his brother's former role, being Soubi's Sacrifice, and everything gets a little too crazy for him. but luckily, Soubi is there beside him and does everything he can to protect his little Ritsuka.

talking about the ending, i find it perfect for the whole idea of the anime. when you see Soubi and Ritsuka walking together, hand in hand, you can't do anything but smile. it makes you think that as long as you have HIM or HER by your side, everything will be just fine and every bad thing that can happen is nothing, compared to your strength when you're together. you just look at them, with that fantastic song in the background, and you just tell yourself "They're going to be fine, no matter what is going to happen from now on." Just because they have found each other. Nothing else matters from that point on...and if you keep that in mind, you'll find yourself smiling even when you don't have any reason to do it, just because Loveless made you believe that you have a Soubi somewhere around there. or a Ritsuka, for that matter.

Conclusion says that Loveless is beyond any words that could describe it. if you can mix "fantastic", "impossible to forget", "what really matters is everlasting", "perfect", "colourful", "life", "calm", "words are nothing more than spells", "bond" and maybe a bit of "mistery", there you have it, you might as well call it "Loveless".

but i must say this, Loveless is not for anyone. it's made for dreamers, for people who can read way between the lines, for those of you who appreciate emotions more that anything else in the world. also, if you like Loveless, you should definitely see "Earthian", an earlier work of Yun Kouga. graphics are of course different than those of Loveless (Earthian was released in 1989, i think), but you can find there some of the ideas that Yun Kouga also used in Loveless. for me, Yun Kouga is just...a genius. pure, white, simple genius.

ok, very long review. i always get carried away when i talk about Loveless, sorry.

I have to say this is one of the best anime I have ever seen. It has a wonderful heart filled story. Beautiful character design and art work. Not to mention it has lovely music that compliments the story so well. It is a MUST see for all Yaoi fans out there. It has some yaoi content and the story does revolve around a Yaoi couple.

The ending leaves you a bit hanging. But you can always pick up the manage were it left off. Lets hope they come out with a season 2!