Reviews for Mythical Detective Loki Ragnarok
Back to AnimeWell, I was only expecting to watch Special A at the time, but found this instead. Since it was the weekend then, I was able to watch 4..or 5 episodes of this, from around episode 4 I believe. Initially, I expected something like Detective Conan, but of course that was wrong. MaLoki is a show that focuses on Norse mythos, the main character obviously being one of the deities. The show is good for laughs, I'll admit, but if you're looking for detective work here, the manga does a better job, though of course the manga's focus isn't on that so it's still a farcry from any mystery novels and such.
It's surprising for me to find out that the mangaka who made the series which this anime is based on is also the co-creator of another anime/manga I watched and somewhat liked, Tactics.
Honestly, I like Yamino-kun here better than Loki, though he has his moments. Mayura is a bit more loopy here than in the manga, but she has her "fushigi mystery!" moments in the manga too..just not that often.
This series, manga or otherwise, I feel needs a little more fan love and I recommend it, as it's a funny series, but also delves into mythology (if a little bit distorted from the actual Norse myths) but as usual, I would rather people go for the manga instead, although the anime does have good clean animation and the episodes are nice, they just don't have that same feel as what the manga had. But maybe that's just me, missing the murder elements in the manga...ah well.
I decided to write a review to warn people about this dreadful anime it starts off with a decent enough concept but it quickly loses interest with pointless episodes that try to be humorous but just end up getting on my nerves now there are some epic scenes that were 10 star moments but 60% of this anime is the pink haired girl saying "mystery" and doing something stupid or running into obvious danger she also has to be one of the most dense characters i have ever encountered and 30% of this anime is pointless comedic humor... now the other 10% is theACTUAL STORY and no it isnt half bad i might've not liked how it turned out but really it isnt that horrible its the only reason i continued watching...
now to be completely honest if i was 8 years younger and still have the maturity and attention span of a gerbil then i probably would've enjoyed this anime
now if you dont heed my warning and pursue to watch this regardless of what this random person on internet is saying... well then keep keyboard mouse glasses at a distance to avoid unconsciously throwing them also move yourself back 2 feet from desk to avoid slamming your head on the desk...
As a fan of many shows that are about nothing, I have to say this is the first show I have ever watched that truly had nothing going for it. Matantei Loki Ragnarok is an anime based around Loki, the Norse god of mischief, forced to live among humans in the body of a young boy for a sin he committed...... with the twist of he doesn't remember his sin. Also some how he is the key to ragnarok. That is just about all I learned threw watching this dreck. 26 episodes of pure rubbish. Pretty much Oden got mad and decided to turnsome of his underling Gods into preteens and teens is pretty much all the back round you get from watching this show. Everything else is badly done or not worth talking about. So I apologize in advance since this will now turn from a review to a complaint list.
1) The characters in this show are probably the most under developed I have ever seen. There is not 1 single memorable person from the 700 minutes of my life I wasted watching this show. The cookie cutter archetypes of idiot(Mayura/Narugami), serious introvert (Heimdall,Urd,Verdandi) love smitten pet(Loki's crew,Reiya) got old quick.
There is also the curve balls thrown in there like Skuld, who is love smitten and a serious"Im going to kill you" character. Or Freyr, a love smitten idiot who spends the whole series either buying food for half price or chasing his lost sister Freya and his "classic Japanese beauty" Mayura.
2) I have never watched 20 plus episodes of anything and not have the story convey anything to me. I don't know if I missed the 1 clip in the whole series, but I never found out why Loki was banished. I also personally don't understand why Odin seemly pulled out the ban hammer on the other 3-5 characters in the series either. Was this a love story or a story of redemption??? A comedy or an action Anime??? I can't tell you because this show did everything terribly. The mail order everything jokes where over done. Loki's aristocracy humor is dry and the stupidity of the idiot characters isn't worth a single chuckle. "What action" is about all I need to say about the fights in this anime. Because they're basically Loki summoning that moon staff of his and saying " I have the winning move".
There is very little put into the fights in this show, and I honestly can say that Loki only has about two or three attacks. Swinging his staff is just about all he does. When you would think he would be more like a wizard type fighter, it's pretty sad that the maker of show wouldn't pick up on that or find it a problem.
3) This may be petty, by why in the name of Odin is this show called "The [B]Mythical Detective[/B] Loki Ragnarok". Mythical Detective my ass, the guy doesn't even work on any real "cases" after about the 8th episode. And what "Detective" work he does in those few episodes is definitely the most laughable thing about this show. We all know he's a god, but solving cases because " I had a feeling" doesn't cut it in a world where shows like Conan, Death Note, Un-go, ect, exist!!!!
Leg work(interviewing/ interrogating) pretty much never happens in this anime. It is replaced with everyone running around usually screaming what ever person is missing name. With the conclusion of this being Loki finding the evil object or god that he is looking for and saying " I had a feeling...". Where is the logic or Mythical diagnostic tools??? In Neuro, at least that main character will pull a slug out of his ass, then explain that it test the air or tells him the content of a substance, and gather more/other evidence before he makes his accusation....... then he eats the persons secret!!!???(Wtf Lame)
He just doesn't say I know because I had a FEELING!!!
COULD YOU IMAGINE IF LAW AND ORDER WAS BASICALLY THE COPS BREAKING IN ON A MURDER AS HE WAS CHOPPING UP A BODY AND SAYING "I HAD A FEELING"!!!!!!!!!!
What an insult to anybody who enjoys a solid detective backround in a show that this show calms to be in the DAMN TITLE.
When it comes to art and music, I can't really judge by 1-10. To me things are pretty much either bad, good/average/meh, or great. This is the only reason this show isn't a 1. The art is pretty average. Even if it isn't constance in my eyes by making many characters look pretty simple or most of the specters/monsters kind of have a filter or barrier around them......... but then drawing Ecchan the pink thing that sits on Loki's head, pretty much like jiggly-puff's stool or Fenrir like a shadow with zero definition.
SideNote- A testament of how poor this show is, Loki summons Ecchan like in the 4th or 5th episode and when I was writing this guide I wanted to know what it actually was. A ghost, familiar, demon. The official description I found on here is exactly what I wrote, THE PINK THING THAT SITS ON LOKI'S HEAD! Way to go the extra mile and add in backround about your characters!!!
The Music is also fine. It's not out of place and I really dig the opening and outro songs. They really feel Mythical and what not.
Not the worst show I watched, but pretty close. Just watch the first 4-5 episodes and the last if you have to. Pretty much everything you want to know is in that small sample. It ends exactly as it starts, you wondering WTF is going on!??!
The overall story is definitely good and to a point original. The idea of a god stuck on Earth forced to collect evil souls is a good one and the anime even gives you a small amount of information on Norse Mythology (the manga tells you more but what it doesn't tell you, you can look up). I was mostly pleased with the fact that the anime didn't have the standard characters that comedy animes usually have; the lecherous pervert who somehow gets away with only a hit on the head, the klutzy girl/guy who trips over her/his own feet all the time, or theimmature adult who can't act his own age. The fact that these three highly annoying character types are NOT present in this anime is a definite bonus.
The anime does follows the manga to a point but as per usual, changes the story a little bit as needed. Some scenes in the anime are completely different than the chapters they mimic in the manga and some scenes in the anime just plain don't exist in the manga.
The only thing I didn't like about the anime is the ending. It seemed rushed and hastily thrown together. Despite the shoddy job on the ending, it doesn't leave too many questions and any it does leave can be answered by doing a little homework on Norse Mythology (hint: Ragnarok).
The anime is pretty much anything but serious but it does have it moments. The series would have been better had they stretched out some of the episodes from one to two. The actual serious points of the anime could not be brought across to the audience in half an hour and should have followed Black Butler in stretching one episode into two.
I recommend this series to anyone looking for a laugh but also something that older viewers can watch without feeling like they're five.
I came upon Loki Ragnarock on amazon prime a little while ago. I think the main reason I watched it was because,I'm a really big marvel fan and the name "loki" was in the title,at first,I did'nt expect this to actually be about the norse gods witch was kinda stupid. I do like this anime,I found it really intriguing at times.There was always this sense of mystery to the episodes,while still being funny and charming in in it's own unique way.It's definatly not for everyone, it does lose a bit of that mystery element as it goes on and drags itself out for 26 episodes,but donttake it from me.It's certanly a good series to watch just for a laugh and for quirky characters and story lines (as cheesy as they can get)
This show had a manga that was never fully released here in the USA but from what I have been able to read I am thoroughly shocked that they did not use the manga's brilliant writing to it's advantage. Instead we get a slapping together of mediocrity with little to no relation to the original material. Everything is mediocre at best, laughable and pathetic at worse. That being said I love this anime, as it is one of my firsts. It does have a certain charm to it if you can look past how lazy it is. It takes so many shortcuts and just does notseem to care, and that makes it enjoyable in an ironic sort of way.
Nicest thing I can say about Loki and most important thing to know about any anime, is that it's self contained has an ending and doesn't leave you hanging for more that will never come. The audio is the other high point here. The music is usually better than the scenes that it accompanies and the voice actors in the dub really do an incredible job of trying to breathe some life into this mess. I do recommend the dub, I watched the dub with subs running simultaneously and the English voice dialog is a cut above the English subs. And it's downhill from there. Theconcept certainly had the potential to be great. The Norse gods trying to live amongst humans, covertly fighting amongst themselves and taking on mortal jobs. Unfortunately what you get is a Norse themed not very mysterious, mystery of the week, that's solved / resolved by sheer because I say so on the part of the writers. The format just detracted far too much from any overarching story elements like the enmities between the gods, or Loki's quest to return to Asgard. It's doing none of these things well.
The characters are mostly just wrong. The Norse gods are just grating in their dissonance from their source material. The Trickster God Loki is a bit of a dunce who relies on sheer force. Thor is mild mannered. Freyr is clumsy thief. Freya well it['s a spoiler but it's a WTF AWFUL. Heimdal is clueless and incompetent, etc etc etc. The Midgard Serpent may actually be the best and most interesting of the characters. He actually seems to make the most sense and, is the most consistent. I get the feeling though that was by accident more than design. It wouldn't be so bad if they actually developed over time but it doesn't happen. They do get some backstory but nothing that pulls you into their characters. Matter if fact much of the cheap tricks they try to pull you in actually alienate you.
The art is dull. It's not home movies bad, but really you just expect so much more from any animation from the past 30 years. Very little actual animation, annoying use of colors. I'd place it on about the same level as American animation from the 70s.
Overall it's mediocre to poor.
Life is but a mystery itself and mystery shows merely cover a portion of it. MLR (Matantei Loki Ragnarok) is a example of such a work. Using Norse Mythology as it's background, it tries to mix supernatural events with mystery. The story isn't the most amazing thing you'll come across, but it's still good. Characters aren't the most amazing, the female MC is very generic, often found in many other mystery works, such as Spiral (Which i think is a little better than this). I like this a little more than most people, most likely anyways, because i love the whole premise of mythologyitself, whether it be Greek or Norse. The idea of an entire world of gods existing is very fresh and interesting to me. If you are interested in Norse mythology, watch this. You most likely won't learn too many new things but it will most likely be interesting.
The anime started off in a pretty bad way, it felt a lot like a shoujo anime, with everything happening around Mayura, with all the cases that progressed the story just happening because of her, with several handsome guys appearing around her (Yamino, Loki, Narukami-kun, Heimdall, Freyr and Kotaro), not to mention that the first few episodes were a bad introduction to characters and the narrative of the work. But as the episodes went by, the anime stopped having that tone, even more so in the second half of the anime, in which mayura sometimes didn't appear and usually the story developed because Loki had tosave someone, so the anime started to have more fights.
Most of the fights weren't exciting, but they were decent.
We also had the addition of love relationships with Loki, such as Freya, Reiya, Skuld and maybe Mayura herself, and speaking of Mayura, apart from her being the only truly human character in the work, it's a little difficult to understand why her character exists even more as a main one, she never develops a relationship with Loki, apart from someone who is close just to be able to see interesting things happening, which is difficult to sympathize with the drama of the final episode, since there would be no reason for her to be so shaken with loki leaving, and not loki for leaving and leaving mayura, it's an inconsistency in the relationship of the characters.
The other characters also have very noticeable problems:
Freyr is just the comic relief, never doing anything interesting outside of the episode where he's introduced, it didn't even make sense for the plot for him to be there.
Heimdall after the first half of the anime he is almost erased from the story just going back to doing something important and that moved the plot in the last episodes.
Kotaro, apart from being the rich kid who made some things possible in history, I didn't see any reason for him to exist.
Narukami, what I have against him is not even his importance, since he appears a lot during the anime but he is the god thor and has very little knowledge of things, he seems to be just a human with powers.
Other than that the rest of the characters are all good as far as possible, Loki, Yamino, Misao, Ecchan, Fenrir, Freya, Hel, Yayoi, Reiya, Skuld, Urd, Verdandi.
The show most of the time was kind of monotonous, it seemed like things were just happening to happen, there were some useless things that didn't favor him and in the end if he stopped to pay attention to the story as a whole it didn't make sense for odin to attack loki because he decided not to go back to the world of gods to kill odin and make ragnarok and he had no reason for the other gods to come to the human world to begin with, what were the reasons for freyr, thor and freya to come to the mortal world since none of the 3 had any motives to kill Loki and they didn't even try to do so save at least once when they were manipulated by a third party.
The soundtracks for this anime were very good, maybe I'll find the ending for my collection.
I even wanted to give this anime a higher rating, it had been in my concept as 6.5 but there's no way to give it a 7.0 rating and so I'm going to finish it with a 6/10 rating.
PT-BR
O anime começou de uma maneira bem ruim,parecia muito um anime shoujo,com tudo acontecendo em torno de Mayura,com todos os casos que progrediam a história só acontecendo por causa dela, com vários caras bonitos aparecendo em torno dela(Yamino,Loki,Narukami-kun,Heimdall,Freyr e Kotaro),sem falar que os primeiros episódios foram uma péssima introdução de personagens e da narrativa da obra.
Mas com o passar do episódios o anime foi deixando de ter esse tom, ainda mais na segunda metade do anime, em que mayura as vezes não aparecia e geralmente a historia se desenvolvia porque Loki tinha que salvar alguém,ai o anime passou a ter mais lutas.
A Maioria das lutas não eram empolgantes, mas eram decentes.
Tivemos também o acréscimo de relações amorosas para com Loki,como Freya,Reiya,Skuld e talvez a própria Mayura,e falando na Mayura,fora ela ser o único personagem verdadeiramente humano na obra,fica um pouco difícil entender o motivo do personagem dela existir ainda mais como uma principal,nunca é desenvolvido uma relação dela para com Loki,fora alguem que está perto só para poder ver coisas interessantes acontecendo,o que fica difícil simpatizar com o drama do episódio final, visto que não teria motivos para ela ficar tão abalada com loki indo embora,e nem o loki por ir embora e deixar a mayura,é um incoerência na relação dos personagens.
Os outros personagens também tem problemas muito visíveis:
Freyr é só o alivio cômico, nunca fazendo nada de interessante fora no episodio em que ele é apresentando, não fez nem um sentido para a trama ele estar ali.
Heimdall depois da primeira metade do anime ele é quase que apagado da história só voltando a fazer algo importante e que movimentasse a trama nos últimos episódios.
Kotaro,fora ser o garoto rico que possibilitou algumas coisas na historia,não vi motivo nenhum dele existir.
Narukami,o que eu tenho contra ele não é nem a sua importância, visto que ele aparece bastante durante o anime mas sim ele ser o deus thor e ter muito pouco conhecimento das coisas,ele parece ser só um humano com poderes.
Fora isso o resto dos personagens são todos bons na medida do possível,Loki,Yamino,Misao,Ecchan,Fenrir,Freya,Hel,Yayoi,Reiya,Skuld,Urd,Verdandi.
O show na maior parte do tempo era meio monótono, parecia que só estava acontecendo as coisas por acontecer, tinha algumas coisas inúteis que não o favorecia e no final se parar para prestar atenção na história como um todo não fazia sentido odin atacar o loki pois ele decidiu não voltar para o mundo dos deuses para fazer matar odin e fazer o ragnarok e não tinha nenhum motivo dos outros deuses virem para o mundo humano para começo de conversa, quais foram os motivos para Freyr,Thor e Freya virem para o mundo mortal visto que nenhum dos 3 tinham motivos para matar Loki e nem tentaram fazer salvo pelo menos uma vez quando foram manipulados por terceiros.
As trilhas sonoras desse anime eram muito boas, talvez eu cate a ending para meu acervo.
Eu até queria dar uma nota maior para esse anime ele tinha ficado no meu conceito como 6,5 mas não tem como dar nota 7,0 para ele e por isso vou finalizar ele com uma nota 6/10.
For me Matantei Loki Ragnarok was very entertaining. Sometimes I can be very picky with anime. In the beginning Mayura was part of the story,but as the story continued Mayura's time on screen was starting decrease. Later on Mayura started showing up on screen more which made it more interesting. This series was very cute but got on my nerves sometimes. Mayura would not stop saying "Mystery!" As the story was progressing you could see Mayura and Loki's relationship growing even if there was no blushing. Story-It was pretty good,but sometimes it got some what annoying.Almost every character is a god and every person was tryingto kill Loki at some point. Now you all should know how the fights ended.This wasn't something I have not seen one-million times before.
Art-The art was good for me.The movement was decent and it didn't get on my nerves.
Sound-The opening and ending was okay.It wasn't my taste so that is just my opinion.The other sounds were good enough so I would still watch the series.
Characters-The characters were good,but Mayura kept gettting on my nerves.If you can't handle hearing the word the mystery 100 times then don't watch that.
Overall-This series was okay. I was able to last through the series so you should be able to. Sometimes i wish there was more love and less of the word mystery but you can't change that. This is more of a series to watch when you have free time. If the word Mystery annoyed you in this reveiw you will not be able to handle this series.