Sci-Fi Harry Review - 80/100
Don’t let the title fool you. It may be cheesy, but there’s a good reason for the show to be named like this. Sci-fi Harry is a mystery-drama, focusing at a psychic named Harry. He’s an incredible social outcast, unable to talk even normally in front of people, who discovers that he’s got huge psychic powers. Through pressure of one of his few friends, he ends up in his own tv-show, called “Sci-Fi Harry” because people are so enthusiastic about him. The thing is, however, that he doesn’t know how to control his powers, which causes quite an incident. Ever since then, different people try to obtain his powers.
First, let me say that this anime features some great moments. It isn’t afraid to show some disturbing scenes (like people with their necks all twisted around), and Harry works as a great main character, due to his constant worries and inabilities. To add to this, Sci-Fi Harry comes with a multi-layered plot, where nearly every episode reveals a bit about a huge complot which is going on. Lots of storylines happen at the same time, ranging from decent to excellent.
A huge theme in the anime is betrayal. Nearly everyone who runs into Harry tries to manipulate him. Because he’s such a weak character, this actually succeeds most of the times. In addition to that, the other members of the rich side-cast also all have one or more instances where they betray, and are betrayed themselves. Especially Mother and Chinori turned into awesome characters because of this.
I liked the fact how this anime follows so many different storylines, but there lies also the problem. Managing all these different storylines which split up and get combined frequently is extremely difficult, and in the end, the creators of Sci-Fi Harry didn’t manage to do this perfectly. Because of this, some of the storylines are more interesting than others, and it’s annoying to see the more interesting ones get interrupted by the less interesting ones. John, an interesting main character in the beginning also gets condemned to the role of a mere unimportant side-character after the first half of the anime, which was a pity, actually.
The fact also remains that this anime took a bit more on its plate than it could take. Especially the final two or three episodes lose a bit of steam when compared to their predecessors, and yet they continue to introduce more plot-elements which could have been easily omitted. Because of this, the ending left a bit too many questions unanswered, and some answers that were given weren’t really satisfying. The identity of “Accuser” just didn’t fit right, and we never know who keeps sending the text-messages through the computer. The final episode itself also was a bit disappointing. Not because it was rushed, but it lacked a decent aftermath. Something very interesting happens at the end of the episode, and I would so have loved to see how people reacted to this, but instead the anime ends and left me with a bad taste in my mouth.
Still, despite this, I really enjoyed this anime. If you like dark mystery-stories, then this is definitely an anime that you should check out. Just be aware that Harry’s art style may be a bit annoying at times, but I think that that was what the creators had in mind. He really looks like a worthless person. And Chinori looked too scary at times.