Rating summary

Movie		3.0
Video		3.5
Audio		4.0
Extras		1.0
Overall		3.0

Chaos;Head: The Complete Series Blu-ray Movie Review

Where's Neo when you really need him?

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman November 25, 2011

“Immersion” is one of those buzzwords that are bandied about with fair regularity in reviews with regard to active surround sound mixes. But if you really want to see (as oppose to hear) immersion, take a look at any adolescent or teen boy involved in a videogame. Take my 15 year old son (please, as Henny Youngman might say), for example: when he’s wrapped up in one of his Xbox360 or online games, he’s literally in a world of his own (or at the least of his own with several of his buddies joining in). Cut off from “reality” with headphones and oblivious to anyone else in our media room if either the widescreen television or his computer monitor is very active, I swear the house could burn down around him and he wouldn’t notice as long as his little corner of the universe escaped unscathed. This same idea of disappearing into a virtual world is front and center in the often intriguing Chaos;Head (what is up with these weird typographic idiosyncrasies in so many anime titles?), a series based on a graphic novel series which follows the exploits of Takumi, a young man after my own eldest son’s heart, as he is completely in love not only with his computer and various games, but also perhaps neurotically obsessed with his favorite character from an anime series (I’m hoping my son isn’t quite that far gone, yet, though he does have a slight Dragonball Z fixation). Takumi is a loner, a kid who lives in a storage container and is able to disappear, mentally at least, into his alternate realities until he finds himself inadvertently swept up into a huge murder conspiracy known as the New Generation events. Takumi seems stuck in a limbo of sorts as he seemingly wafts between “reality” and illusion (or delusion, as the case may be), as he finds events unfolding that he had previously seen on a computer screen, and then is further confounded when he discovers his memory seems to have been altered and he’s not really sure of his own history. What exactly is going on? That central mystery provides the narrative impetus for much of Chaos;Head, with a gaggle of supporting players revolving around Takumi and his efforts to get to the bottom not just of what’s been happening, but perhaps the depths of his own psyche as well.

One can’t help but think of properties like the Matrix films, or even lesser remembered cult tv items like VR5 and even Coronet Blue, when watching Chaos;Head, for it traffics in the same sort of paranoia fueled ambience where neither the main character nor the audience is exactly sure what’s going on. Chaos;Head gets off to a fairly compelling start as Takumi tries to figure out if he’s being played by a mysterious internet messager known as Shogun, one who seems to have access to photos of murders that haven’t yet taken place. That’s just the very tip of what becomes an incredibly convoluted iceberg throughout the rest of Chaos;Head’s twelve episodes, and that points up both the positives and the negatives of this series. In terms of positives, it’s really rather ambitious in its complexity and how it attempts to keep the viewer repeatedly off kilter as to what and what isn’t “reality.” In terms of negatives, that very complexity repeatedly gets in the way of coherent storytelling throughout the series, and my hunch is there are going to be a lot of viewers scratching their collective heads at any number of plot points along the way, not the least of which is the hyperbolic denouement.

Something also working against the internal consistency of Chaos;Head is that it posits Takumi as a typical otaku, an obsessive kid who can’t pry himself away from his anime and videogames and who repeatedly speaks of his preference of 2D (read imaginary) girls over the real thing. But playing out against this portrayal is the rather odd decision to cast the show as a quasi-harem outing, where a gaggle of giggling girls can’t keep their collective hands off of Takumi. While some of this is ultimately explained as one of the many “delusions” Takumi suffers from, and is therefore at least relatively more understandable, it gives the show a weird bifurcated feeling that never quite settles comfortably into something coherent feeling.

Chaos;Head is a series that starts off incredibly strongly, with an impressive and intriguing premise, and a central mystery that is absolutely confounding, but which then tends to squander its energy in too many subplots and way too many characters, most of them of the giggling girl type. Takumi’s conundrum is fascinating and the series would have done better to concentrate on that rather than disperse its energy in half hearted comedy or some frankly shock-horror clichés that never really pan out. The central dichotomy of Takumi and Shogun is really the central focus of the show, and once that relationship becomes clearly defined (or at least as clearly defined as anything in Chaos;Head is), the series once again picks up some narrative steam for its ending couple of episodes, where a number of supposedly loose plot threads are tied up in a fairly artful fashion.

For those sick of the same old, same old in anime or other genres, Chaos;Head at least provides the promise of something unusual, even if at least some of that promise remains unfulfilled by the series’ end. This is actually a show that probably could have been better served by at least a few more episodes, so that the full ramifications of who Takumi actually turns out to be could have been explored, and the dilemma facing both Takumi and Shogun could have perhaps been exploited for more poignancy and emotional impact.

Chaos;Head: The Complete Series Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Chaos;Head is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of FUNimation Entertainment with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.78:1. One of the most surprising things about this anime is that is comes from Madhouse, certainly one of the most visually innovative production houses out there, and yet this series is just plain boring a lot of the time. While there's certainly nothing wrong per se with the transfer, very little of Madhouse's usual carnival like approach percolates to the surface of this series, and so we have fairly staid character design, impressionistic backgrounds and a really surprising lack of bold color. Line detail is suitably sharp for most of the series, but there is occasional fuzziness on display. The best looking elements of the series are the delusions Takumi undergoes, as well as some well integrated CGI elements, as with a gigantic serpent Takumi conjures in the final episode which is surrounded by a very cool looking sort of electromagnetic sparking field.

Chaos;Head: The Complete Series Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Chaos;Head's original Japanese language track is provided via a nice lossless Dolby TrueHD 2.0 mix, while a very good English dub is presented via a Dolby TrueHD 5.1 surround mix. The Japanese track is surprisingly narrow most of the time, with little if any really amazing stereo separation, and the series' score sounds rather one dimensional quite a bit of the time. The English dub on the other hand, while it offers yet another example of the FUNimation tendency toward high, squeaky and "sing-songy" voices, is robust and features some nicely detailed channelization, especially with regard to some of the sound effects, like the sound of the little ankh like blades which Takumi and some others in the series come across. The score has noticeably more depth in the 5.1 mix. The 5.1 mix also boasts some nice low end, if not exactly a wealth of overwhelming LFE, and it also offers very good fidelity and dynamic range.

Chaos;Head: The Complete Series Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Textless Opening Song – F.D.D. (HD; 1:32)
• Textless Closing Song – Super Special (HD; 1:31)
• Trailers for other FUNimaton Releases

Chaos;Head: The Complete Series Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Chaos;Head has developed a fairly rabid fan base through its many iterations, but even those fan have some issues with this anime adaptation, which perhaps errs too far on the quasi-harem side of things while not completely exploiting the paranoid ambience that really should be at the heart of Takumi's quest to figure out who he is and what exactly is going on. That said, the series is certainly out of the ordinary, at least in its opening and closing episodes. It's the middle third or so of the series which seems oddly misshapen and unfocused and which ultimately makes this series less effective than it might have been. Fans of the show should be pleased if not blown away by the image quality here, and the 5.1 English dub sounds great, though supplements are pretty meager.