Anime Review: Ajin Demi Human

No spoilers review:

Ajin: Demi human is a Netflix exclusive anime with two seasons (13 episodes each). It’s an action packed scifi thriller about characters who appear human in every way but are able to regenerate upon death. In addition, some of these Ajin are able to control an outer body entity referred to as a black ghost or IBM.

The very first thing that hit me about Ajin was the animation style. The creators used computer-generated cel-shading as opposed to hand painted art. I guess the CG style gave the creators more freedom to play with crazy camera angles, ambitious action scenes and add a more contemporary gaming style of visual flair. But I didn’t really warm to it and in some scenes, the pacing seemed really weird and the characters too stiff. The people's faces were also often over-exposed so you barely saw any facial features like noses or mouths.

Speaking of characters, it was refreshing that all the people were depicted realistically Japanese looking – which makes sense of course being based in Japan (apart from the American characters). A lot of anime I have seen (even if they are based in Japan featuring Japanese people) seem to make their character design less ethnically obvious. With Ajin, you could very easily imagine how a live action actor would look based on their anime counterpart. I just thought it was a nice touch of realism.

Despite the very CG style of animation I must say I ended up really enjoying the series. The main characters are perhaps a little OTT (eg the evil guys are really hammy in their nastiness) and they're all drawn with one facial expression...very serious frown.

But the story is fascinating and compelling enough to keep on seeing how the plot develops. It also plays heavily on the morality of humans who are merciless in hunting down non-humans - a similar trope in other anime perhaps most notably seen in Tokyo Ghoul. Actually, if you enjoyed Tokyo Ghoul, then you’ll probably really like Ajin Demihuman too. Ajin even inserts moments of laugh out loud humour which took me by surprise.

I watched this series in dub. I’m no purist so I don’t really care whether I watch dub or sub, but since I watch these late at night when I’m very tired, the dub is less hard to follow. One problem, however, is the sometimes crude attempt to insert a sentence to fit the mouthparts and when that happens it loses the flow of normal dialogue. Again it’s just something I got used to.

Overall, a very entertaining high action series. 7.5/10