It feels like forever since I did an anime review and I'll admit that I say something along the lines of "it has been awhile" or "I don't remember the last time I did an anime review." Blah blah blah... get to the damn anime!
I'm just going to be lazy and copy and paste the gist of the plot from my last post, "Bittersweet." Akuma no Riddle is a story of twelve assassins and one target. The plot is that the twelve assassins are to quickly kill the target before the others do. The assassin is to give the target a notice before they can actually kill the target. They then have forty-eight hours (according to the translators) to kill the target. If they do, they are rewarded with whatever they want; money, information, protection, or anything else that is within reason. It would be a rather short anime if it weren't for the fact that one of the assassins decides that she is going to protect the target rather than kill her. All thirteen are girls by the way.
I would like to go through and give a description of each of the characters and their backgrounds... but the anime is too short for some of the characters to even get enough screen time to develop the slightest. I mean Shiena barely has twenty minutes total of screen time. That being said, almost all of the other characters have an episode devoted to them or have so much screen time throughout the entire anime that they don't need an episode devoted to them. Even then, some of the characters don't seem to have enough screen time for the viewer to relate or get a liking for. Though a few of the characters they have just enough screen time to make people cry or at least get on the verge of tears.
I guess I'll give my thoughts on the anime. As I mention in both "Bittersweet" and the paragraph above, the anime is too short. This rushes things and ruins what could have been a rather decent anime. The OST for the anime itself (not the endings and opening) is fairly good. Though I have to admit that the very good piano and violin score that they used in episode six for Hitsugi's and Chitaru's death scene is used a bit more than what it should be used. I feel like it should have only been used for that scene alone given how powerful it was visually, audibly, and emotionally. I admit that they the OST got a bit shafted since the anime looks very well done and the endings that they gave the viewers. The opening credits is nice to listen to but the thing that makes this anime stand out from the rest of them is that for each episode, the ending credits is different both visually and audibly. That is to say that they have a different song for each episode. This and the visuals for the entire show probably ate up a lot of the budget. There was only one time that I noticed that they screwed up visually. That was the last episode when Nio was taking out a flower to throw out to the ground below. Almost the entire anime she is wearing something that is covering her up from her toes to her shoulders and down her arms. What they screwed up on was they forgot the tights or panty hoes that she wears with her school uniform. That was the only mess up I noticed. Something that I think they will fix for the Blu-rays... I hope...
I would like to say that I enjoyed the last episode... but I didn't really. They, much like the anime, rushed it and thus left out a lot of important details that are needed for explaining what the fuck happened. Some of them make sense and I'm alright with... but not where it matters most. While I thought about it logically and have come up with a conclusion that makes sense... I still would have liked for the anime to have explained a lot more than what it did.
Overall Akuma no Riddle is still a decent anime, interesting plot, great visuals, decent OST, and those endings! Those wonderful endings that they made for all of the characters (except Shiena.) Would I recommend this to someone else? It really depends on the person. I would probably just have them watch episode six and be done with it... after I give them the gist of the plot, of course.
I await the day that some translating/publishing company picks up Akuma no Riddle the manga. I have the first two volumes of it in Japanese but as far as I know there are already four of them out and there are going to be like ten of them.