The characters saved the puzzles, and the staff saved the show!
I was originally drawn to Phi Brain because Junichi Satou, one of my all-time favorite anime directors, was directing this anime and I was curious to see how he would handle something that didn't involve magical girls and wasn't a "healing" anime. At first, what I got was absolute ridiculousness. The basic premise is that the main character Kaito is a genius who can solve any puzzle, and he eventually finds himself going up against the POG, a group dedicated to making puzzles. This setup is incredibly easy to poke fun at in the earlier episodes, especially since it feels like the show isn't taking itself seriously either. Characters spout ridiculous lines--my favorites include "Save the puzzles, Kaito" and "Puzzles killed my parents!" The puzzles themselves are mostly elaborate staged events as opposed to things like sudoku or trying to find a way out of a maze (mazes make appearances, but there is usually another gimmick involved). However, the problem with a lot of these early on is that the solutions to these puzzles are either glossed over or not shown at all. Apparently in the Japanese broadcast there was a section after the show where guests would attempt the puzzles and then the solutions would be shown, so those of us watching the simulcast were left out. What was left were the characters, and like their lines they were similarly over-the-top, acting as caricatures of their most dominant character trait. As a whole, the show was incredibly silly. But it sure was fun to watch.
However, somewhere along the line between making fun of the show on Twitter and deciding that the show fell into the "so bad it's good" category, Phi Brain got serious. The puzzles became deadly. It narrowed its focus to a single antagonist. The characters suddenly had development arcs. And I realized that I had become attached to the show and its characters and I wanted to see how it ended. Not bad for a show that I initially watched for the laughs. That's not to say that it became the perfect show; it retained its fondness for crazy leaps of logic and sometimes developed in ways that didn't make sense. For example, towards the beginning of the second half of the show, a big deal is made out of how Kaito's friends will stand by him and never abandon him, but then almost immediately afterwards they disappear for a good part of the show. If they were going to leave all along, it would've made more sense to put the focus on their lack of confidence rather than their loyalty (which wasn't in question in the first place). But these were small problems for me since week after week Phi Brain continued to be a surprisingly solid piece of entertainment. The look of the show is also very unique; when sometimes it feels like everything looks like K-ON it's always refreshing to see something that isn't afraid to have its own style. The staging of the later puzzles have a pretty epic impression to them, partially because most of them are so large, but it doesn't lose the staple shounen drama feel of one-on-one fights. So at the end of the first season, I can't really say Phi Brain is "so bad that it's good" anymore; it actually is good. I got a lot of enjoyment out of it and I reccomend it to anyone who's willing to give it a chance.
Images from TheAnimeNetwork.com and Hulu.com.
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