Subculture Anime Blog

OP: “JUST TUNE” by savage genius – Man, I love savage genius. The OP is win. Period.

Summary:

In the city of Sakurashin, where both humans and yokai exist, a girl named Hime meets her acquaintance Kyousuke on the way to see the team of yokai correction members that she will be joining. In other places, a certain man threatens a young girl with a gun. When she faints from fear, however, he moves on out of boredom. Inside the yokai correction office, two girls named Ao and Kotoha meet their president Akina as usual. Shortly after, Akina is introduced to Hime who enters the office. While Kotoha and Ao take care of work in other places, as well as meeting with their friend Touka, Akina discusses a job with Hime and Kyousuke. This deals with the gun wielding man from earlier, who is confirmed to be a yokai that had previously broken out of his prison cell with supernatural powers. While Ao preforms her usual announcements for the city that night, Kyousuke expresses his worry to Hime about the potential team before them. However, Hime replies with her belief that power is needed to protect the yokai filled city.

Hime later meets Akina at a restaurant, and they express their familiarity with the location shortly afterwards. This is interrupted by a call from Kyousuke, announcing that they have found their culprit. Hime rushes out to face the yokai, but when she is finally able to confront him, he escapes by disappearing before her. On the other hand, Akina is luckily able to save the hostage that he was holding. Hime realizes that a normal yokai would not have been able to escaped her so easily, wondering if the man was associated with “engine”. Hime reports to her superiors later, then expressing her disappointment and wish to obtain power sooner. The rest of the team is alerted of the yokai they are after appearing on the news, so they gather to face him. The yokai escapes when Hime appears to fight him again, but Ao uses her abilities to quickly find his location.

The yokai is shocked when Hime finds him so quickly, and he is soon surrounded by the rest of the group. Kotoha uses her own abilities to conjure ice around the villain, and further subdues him with her own generation of guns. Though the yokai is seemingly defeated, the young girl from earlier appears to defend him with a pistol. She reveals that she had not actually received her wound from this man, but from humans. The yokai had promised to get revenge for her if she cooperated. Though the girl does shoot at the group with the yokai’s intervention, Akina’s power easily negates this while taking out the yokai in the process. Realizing that Hime is a yokai herself, the girl wonders why she is with humans. Hime explains that she is one that wishes to protect the city, again describing what is needed to do so. Though Akina offers his help to the girl afterwards, she can only deny in tears because of her true hatred of humans. Watching from above, a certain man expresses his interest in this group of individuals.

ED: “Nagareboshi (ナガレボシ; Shooting Star)” by ROUND TABLE featuring Nino – As much as I liked the OP, I like the ED a lot more. I’m a huge fan of ROUND TABLE, and there’s nothing keeping me from loving this song. The animation was kind of standard, but I also liked it a bit more than the OP’s.

Preview: There was actually a silly little skit dealing with different versions of Hime before the preview. Next week seems to focus more on the girl from this episode and the other characters who made short appearances today.

Impression:

Okay, as much as was looking forward to this show, I will have to say I am just a little disappointed. The direction just seems a bit off to me, with so much happening before we can really even absorb it, and the visuals weren’t as good as I was expecting them to be. I do mean that I am a little disappointed though, because these were honestly pretty minor problems. I probably just set the bar too high, and I’m sure the pacing will change once the plot gets started up anyways. There is pretty good casting all around for the series too, with Misato Fukuen (Hime) and Miyuki Sawashiro (Kotoha) being the most appealing to me. The plot itself seems pretty simple so far (Heck, it was set up right in the beginning of the episode), but I’m sure there will be things that keep it interesting. This can’t really just be a fighting anime about people fighting yokai, can it?

I’ve already started to like some of the characters; Hime and Akina in particular. It helps that I am interested in the past that they seem to have shared, which was hinted in this episode. Hime’s panic about her cup ramen was such a classic trait to play on, and I loved it. I’m not sure if I liked the random baddie in this episode, so I’m hoping he was just a throw away tool to get some introduction of abilities and the such out of the way. Surely more interesting villains will be showing up soon. It’s been awhile since I’ve watched an anime with this kind of atmosphere, with the upbeat soundtrack that plays during fights and eye catches. Even if they may not have much to do with this show, Air Gear and Burst Angel came to mind during parts of this episode (That can be good or bad). The premises might remind a lot of people of Darker than Black or the American television show Heroes as well, with all the abilities everyone seems to have. I also laughed at the resemblance Akina’s energy ball and changing hair had with DBZ.

Anyways, although I’ll most likely be watching this, I’ll leave coverage from here on to Aroduc. He’s typically more on top of this kind of stuff. The only reason I even wrote about this episode was so that I could write a few sentences about how much I like the OP/ED…