Oh my god… I’m amazed by this small OVA called Hitsuji no Uta. After watching 3x3 Eyes and reading the premise, I expected this to be another one of those action-flicks. “Boy lives random normal life, but then meets his sister and discovers he’s a vampire and together they bust up crime with lots of action”, or something similar. Heh, I couldn’t have been more wrong. The only “action” for Hitsuji no Uta takes place in the character’s minds.

It’s easy to hate this OVA, though. The animation ranges from mediocre to downright abysmal. There’s a huge amount of reused cells, and at times the animators just get too lazy to even move the characters’ lips when they’re talking. There’s one particularly ugly shot of the main character in the first episode that’ll have every cynic press the x-button as soon as it gets repeated for the third time. But seriously, the scriptwriting more than makes up for this.

First of all, this “vampire”-ability is nothing more than a disease. None of the characters have any superpowers. This is just a story about two siblings with an incurable mental disease: they freak out with a lust for blood. Hitsuji no Uta is how not only the brother and sister deal with their disease, but it’s also about the people around them. The few that wish to involve themselves to try and take care of the siblings.

The animators may have been just a bunch of monkeys, but the writers of Hitsuji no Uta are brilliant. They make sure that every single character is fleshed out and developed. They make sure that the dialogue is smart, that the characters feel more than just a bunch of idiots. The two main characters may have a mental disease, but that doesn’t prevent them from rational thinking. Even though they’ve been living apart for more than ten years, they feel drawn to each other because of their similar fate and blood-relation. And the writers did an excellent job in conveying this to the audience.

One thing I absolutely love about checking out these random series, movies and OVAs is that you never know when you hit an unknown gem. Hitsuji no Uta is one of these gems, when it provides an engaging realistic character-study about a curse-struck family. While it’s easy to label it as an emo-fest, those who look beyond it will be rewarded with two hours of excellent drama.

So since nearly every series is going to take a break for the Christmas Holidays, I decided that it would be a good time to watch a lot of movies and OVAs. 3x3 Eyes is an action-OVA that got released around fifteen years ago. It consists out of two parts: one four-episode release, and the continuation, consisting of three episodes. Unfortunately, both parts have their problems.

In the first part, the storytelling is all over the place. Especially the first and third episodes are a mess of random Deus ex Machina and convenient plot-twists that don’t make any sense. The main character is also one of those teenaged boys that meats a beautiful and special girl for a very weak reason. Still, despite all this the first part has one big advantage: it’s fun to watch.

Then the second part comes, which was released about three years after the first part stopped. It indeed does fix the storytelling-issues, and the story flows much nicer. But in exchange, it ends up taking itself way too seriously, not to mention that every single character that made the first part so fun to watch either just disappears, or in the main characters’ case develops into rather dull stereotype. The main female lead was fresh, strong and likable in the first part, but the second part turned her just into a boring damsel in distress. There is a lot of angst and sadness, but when the characters fail to connect it only ends up working against this OVA.

Still, 3x3 remains incredibly stylistic, and the first part offers a pretty nice blend of comedy, action, drama and romance. It also isn’t afraid to show the darker parts of action, and the villains don’t hesitate to use the most dirty tricks to overcome their enemies, with the best being episode two. The second part is also well-crafted and built-up. It’s just a shame that the characters don’t work when they take themselves too seriously.