Night Head Genesis

Information of Anime

It's said that 70% of the human brain is unused.  When a human manages to use this unused portion, he/she is said to gain incredible powers.  This 70% unused brain portion is known as "Night Head".  The Kirihara brothers, Naoya & Naoto, makes use of this 70% brain power & obtain psychic powers.  At a young age, they were taken away from their parents & lived most of their lives in a laboratory forest surrounded by a magical barrier.  Years have passed & the barrier is now broken.  As young adults, the Kirihara brothers escape from the forest.

Storyline (CONTAINS SPOILERS)

Below is a summary of the storyline I've seen.  This section does contain some spoilers.  If you haven't seen the series yet & don't want to be spoiled, skip this section.  If you want to know the story & want to see how I viewed it, read on.

After locked up for so long, the Kirihara brothers escape from the forest & into the city.  Because they aren't familiar with the outside world, they aren't too secure about it.  Because of their powers, they are viewed as monsters to others.  While in the laboratory, they were trained to control their Minus Energy that causes their uncontrollable powers.  However, the Minus Energy in the world is now increasing & a wave of "Upheaval" is about to appear.  This "Revolution" has involved & interested the brothers as they come across some situations where we see people going psycho & going around killing people.  Using their psychic powers of controlling objects & foreseeing the future, the brothers try to solve this mysterious "Upheaval".  Throughout the course of the show, we have flashbacks of the Kirihara brother's childhood past of when they were taken away from their home & trained in the laboratory as well.

Things pick up when the Kirihara brothers learn about the Ark & how they are consider dangerous with their negative consciousness energy flowing around.  They are the key that could destroy the  human race.  Plus, their powers have currently created a tear in time & space; explaining why their house is gone.  As they learn more about the "Upheaval" & Ark, they realize their involvement in this situation is quite tensse  Things get more stable when the brothers discover that Ark is a cooperation that orchestrated all the killings from the past encounters the brothers have with the other psychic people.  To stop them, the brothers fight & ruin their plans in using a psychic from destroying the future.  When the CEO or Ark finally meets the brothers, her vision changes & believes that their will prevent the future from chaos.  This leaves two episodes left.

In the final two episodes when a year & a half passes, the Kirahara brothers learn from a young five year old psychic of a huge minus energy that will take out most of Japan in a form of an earthquake.  Fortunately, the two brothers manage to lessen the damage.  This ends the show.

My Personal Review

Night Head Genesis is quite a dark & confusing show.  It has a number of interesting terms involving psychic powers & it's quite hard to follow at times.  The show is mysterious & quite disturbing in terms of graphical violence & abusing situations.  Also, it's not recommended for a young audience due to the amount of adult situations.  This show is recommended for a mature audience.

Animation

The character designs are pretty close to manga designs.  Also, the males are something that would attract a lot female audience.  The long heads, small to medium eyes, wild hair, & long pointy noses.  It's the type of design that girls would love.  I originally thought this show is targeted towards a female audience until I saw how much adult & killing content it had. For the ladies, they are almost close to the male designs.  You can almost say they look like males.  However, some are pretty attractive in their own way.

The backgrounds are pretty good, but don't have too much details.  It's only the ending credits that they look good.  It looks like more work is put on the characters instead, which isn't a bad thing really.  But it would have been nice if more effort was put into the backgrounds as most of the intense scenes occur during the dark areas & night.

The colours are fairly bold & bright.  The characters really stand out more than the background.  Personally, I'm not sure how to comment on this.  It kind of wrecks the mood of the anime since the dark scenes are the best parts of the story.  But, the bright colours really give it that new anime look feel & gives the characters that "hot looking" appearance.  So, it's not easy to comment about this part really.  If I had to give an answer, I would like the colours to be flat instead.

The animation movements are pretty realistic.  However, there are a lot of superhuman movements when psychic powers come into play.  Overall though, it's pretty smooth & the speed is seem natural.

Sound

The sound effect are pretty average.  It's not bad, but it's not the best.  The show uses a lot of realistic sounds & some "psychic" ones.  Because I don't know what psychic powers sound like, it's kind of hard for me to adapt.  Reason is the sound quality also.  It tends to be fuzzy at times for the louder ones.

The seiyuus for this show are pretty average.  They perform their characters well since the image that portray them fits their voices.  It's got the right feeling & character.  However, I find Naota to be a bit annoying.  It's not really the seiyuu's fault, it's more of the character since Naota is very weak.

The music isn't too bad & not great.  It's a mixture of rock & soft techno.  They have this eerie effect to set the mood of the show.  However, it didn't help much for me.  It didn't get the mood much for me as I found it to be a bit soft & mellow.

Story

Aside from learning about "Revolution", the Kirihara brothers left the lab in order to go back home really.  Along the way, they help others a bit by stopping people from hurting or killing others.  Whether it's present or the past, it's all there.  Most of the time, I find the show to focus a lot on the childhood side of the brothers.  A reason that I can think of is basically because the show wants to expand more on the brothers' hatred & pain.  Plus, the development of their psychic powers.  But that's been there since their birth from what I'm seeing.  I think the show spends too much time with the flashbacks as the first episode seems to explain very clear on the past.  But watching the past, it seems the brothers haven't developed well.  Naota is still weak & afraid & Naoya is still angry.  Although they spend most of their life in the lab, it would have been nicer to see their characters developed from that long of a time frame.  It's hard to imagine that after ten years or so, they are still acting like that.  Although they improve when they learn about the importance of the Ark.

The story picks up when the brothers discover what Ark is.  It gets interesting along the way as we see the brothers being able to control their powers.  However, it costs them by creating negative consciousness.  So, the world is out of balance.  However, the way the story is told is kind of awkward.  The people giving clues & hints to the brothers seem to take too much time & sort of made me inpatient a bit.  What's worse is how the main plot, which I believe is Arc, ends at 22 episodes.  The final two episodes are more like fillers to fit the 24 episodes mark.  I was very disappointed about this.  What's worse is how a year & a half has passed & the brothers don't seem to change much in terms of their mental personal character strength.  They manage to control their powers well, but their overall character hasn't changed much.

Overall Conclusion

Night Head Genesis is a dark anime show that looks like it's targeted towards a female audience with the hot Kirihara brothers, but it isn't.  The show has a lot of adult situations & graphical violence leading to a lot of bloodshed.  It's more for a male audience, the show is gear towards a mature audience & it's not for everyone.  If you are looking for something with dark mysteries & psychic powers, watch this.

Night Head Genesis gets a six out of ten from me.  The show takes too much time in the first half going through the brothers' past until it finally reaches the main plot a little after the midway point.  The story really gets interesting as the show progresses, but the pace seems to be very slow when the brothers get information from people that like to take their sweet time.  You will very disappointed on how the show ends & how the Arc saga should be done properly instead of filling the last two episodes as fillers.

Last updated on January 14, 2008