Occasionally, there are series which seem to have elements that are Relevant To My Interests, and it looks like I'll be following them quite closely… except, of course, for something in the show, be it some hints in the opening, or perhaps a careless line by a minor character, which makes me suspect, planting the seed of doubt in my mind, that possibly things are not what they seem.
You know how it goes. For the first few episodes, everything is all light and happy and moe, and you can see the clear plains of predictability stretching away across the horizon… just before the show suddenly undergoes a major Genre Shift into Dark and Serious and possibly Bloody and definitely Angsty. Now, sometimes the genre shift still goes to directions which I don't mind, and perhaps indeed like: Mahou Shoujo Lyrical Nanoha undergoes a change from Standard Magical Girl to something a great deal more action-oriented when Fate is introduced, and is still enjoyable, albeit not for the Magical Girl portions, but more for the Great Big Explosions portions.
I suppose what I'd rather not see are cases where the characters get emotionally scarred from a formerly pristine state. This may be a result of the whole concept of moe: the innocence and the purity of the character results in the urge to protect them, and having that innocence broken would imply a failure of that protection.
And so I am struck with indecision: should I continue with the series and enjoy what I can before the inevitable fall of the Hammer of Angst, or should I give up now and keep that one image of fleeting innocence forever in my memories? I never have a real answer for this sort of question.
On a completely unrelated note, I signed up for AnimeSeen, currently in beta. I'm not really sure how much I'll really be using it, since it implies my going through every single entry on some listing of Every Anime Ever and noting down every single one I've ever seen even a single episode of. So far I've listed down Card Captor Sakura, and then I lost all motivation to list anything else.
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So… what series are we talking about, here?
Hrm. It feels like a betrayal to you in that respect?
Sudden changes of mood are hit and miss, I think in terms of the impact you want to get. I think a show does a good job when its viewers realize how much they've gotten sucked into the show. One of my favorite anime shows consisted of about wacky hijinks about 2/3rds into the show, and then when stuff started going down, I was surprised at how much I actually cared for the characters, especially considering what they were going through. If you don't like what happens, I think the show did a good job then. :P
@GreyDuck: The anime which prompted this rambling was Kamichama Karin, which has a decidedly dark opening animation compared to the rest of the episode. Now, I admit that I may be overreacting and assuming too much, but after My HiME, I'm never so sure.
@TheBigN: Not really a "betrayal", as such. I accept that getting me to care so much for the characters would probably count as a "good job", but in the end, it's still not the sort of show I wanted to watch.
So I think I died form moe overload just from that picture lol. I haven't touched this series yet. I don't think I will for awhile.
"Now, I admit that I may be overreacting and assuming too much, but after My HiME, I’m never so sure."
Mai-HiME was the show I was actually talking about there. :P