Anaglyph’s Anime Appraisals

What’s the “hmmm-ing” about? In a word, ambivalence. The series presents a fairly intriguing scenario but it also has some idiosyncrasies that are a little off-putting. Whether the scenario will be put to good use or not remains to be seen (for those of us not completely up-to-date, at least), but the problematic stylistic choices will have to be endured regardless, so I’m yet to be convinced that this is worth watching.

The Synopsis

(If you want to avoid extensive spoilers from both episodes punctuated by wry commentary skip this section and scroll down to “The Good” section.)

Episode 1 opens with a sequence of events that suggests two opposing factions. Faction A is represented by an ugly woman in a black suit (actually I don’t think she’s meant to be particularly unattractive, but more about that below) and Faction B by a creepy man in a white suit. Faction A is returning several unconscious girls to their various homes after events not yet known when one of their cars is ambushed by Faction B. Creepy Man turns up to smile evilly at the captured unconscious girl. I’m going to go out on a limb here and assume, based on Creepy Man’s creepiness and the creepiness of his goons, that these are the bad guys and that Ugly Woman’s bunch are the good guys, or gooder guys anyway.

Next morning the girls from the previous night get proper introductions. The first is Kate who, judging from the conversation with her sister, has no memory of what happened during the night. As the story progresses it’s revealed that none of the girls remember what happened that night. The others are Rose (the normal one), Rachel (the party animal), and Claire (the streetwise one). As they make their way to school, not counting Claire who skips school, we learn that the series is set in New York.

Another character introduced here is detective Kuroda from homicide. He arrives at the scene of a suicide. It’s stated emphatically that this is a suicide, so why’s he here? Because there have been five suspiciously similar suicides in a month. This dead girl would seem to be the one that Creepy Man intercepted, but I’m not entirely sure about that due to reasons explained below.

There’s some silliness at the school with a group of girls known as “Grace”. They’re the only ones who wear a uniform and they prowl the corridors together handing out tickets for being late and generally seeming officious. Now I’m not American, so it could be that such things really do exist in US schools, but I’ve certainly never seen any evidence of this in the many American shows we get over here in Britain. I have heard mention of Hall Monitors but if that’s what “Grace” is supposed to be then they’re Uber Hall Monitors From Hell. Does it really take five girls to hand out a ticket? On second thoughts, at my old school at least, they would probably have been wise to roam around in gangs, because they wouldn’t have lasted five minutes before someone threatened to tear their arms off. But I digress…

Grace are on the prowl

Kate, who’s actually a member of “Grace” (which I guess makes her the good one), spots Ugly Woman and lackey lurking as she arrives at the school’s checkpoint. Eh? Checkpoint? Uber Hall Monitors From Hell and checkpoints… this school sure is tough. Shortly Kuroda arrives to deliver the sad news that one of the students who has been missing, named Lisa, has been found dead in a New Jersey forest. Claire, with her streetsmarts, intuitively knows that Lisa is dead before the announcement is made; perhaps because of buried memories from the night before. The students are shocked, but Kate in particular is hit hard as Lisa was a close friend.

Now here’s something odd. If the girl that Creepy Man captured really was Lisa, then her status as a missing student would imply that she’d become embroiled in this mystery and subsequently vanished quite a while before the events of the previous night. A single day off school doesn’t elevate you to Missing Student status and Claire, who hadn’t even gone to school that day, shouldn’t have known she was missing if that were the case. Then again, perhaps it’s just an oversight. Of course, maybe I’m inattentive and missed something or leapt to the wrong conclusion about the identity of the girl taken by Creepy Man.

As the sun sets, the girls make their individual ways home, but at the strange appearance of swarms of butterflies, visible only to them, they feel themselves drawn to a certain isolated spot. I haven’t done any research on what the symbolism of butterflies might mean in Japanese theology or folklore but I’m assuming, based on this anime and Jigoku Shoujo, that they represent the passing of a soul into the afterlife. Whatever the meaning, the appearance of the butterflies was nicely done and quite eerie.

Gathered together for the first time, the girls are unnerved to learn that they all share similar experiences of the day’s oddities, the most significant of which is that none of them remember what happened the night before. Their discussion is cut short by the arrival of Ugly Woman and lackey. She announces that they are the girls’ “teachers”. If she really is supposed to be their teacher her methods are harsh to say the least, consisting of no instruction other than “See that weird guy over there with glowing eyes? Kill him with your bare hands. Okay, I’m off now. Bye.” She’s not exactly overflowing with compassion.

I should mention that before the appearance of Glowing-Eyed Man the girls have brief and frightning flashbacks to the night before in which hellish hounds play a significant part. Oh yeah, and Ugly Woman bluntly tells them that they all died. Yup, she’s one hard teacher all right. With the hell hounds seen in the flashbacks and Glowing-Eyed Man’s penchant for moving on all fours and making doggie noises it seems that the bad guys are werewolf-like: weredogs. Guess it’s something different. Whether there will be other supernatural enemies or just the weredogs remains to be seen.

And with Glowing-Eyed Man leaping at the woefully unprepared girls, the episode ends.

Episode 2 opens with the girls in a state of panic, running around like decapitated chickens as the weredog attacks, although Claire shows more guts than the rest. The fight is told in flashback sequences as the girls attend school the next day and try to come to terms with what’s happened to them.

To say that they don’t really seem to be cut out for weredog hunting would be an understatement. Claire, as might be expected, is a little less green than the others, but a well-oiled fighting unit they’re not. Presumably over the course of the next few shows we’ll see their abilities improving.

The fight was actually pretty entertaining. I’m not sure that it was intentional, but it had a black comedy feel to it. The girls are so out of their element that it’s oddly amusing watching them run hither and thither, screaming, making futile attempts to fight, grouping together during lulls in the action to bemoan their situation or become hysterical in true horror show fashion and screech about their ruined clothes (although that was a pretty annoying scene). A highlight was Kate using the strap of her handbag to strangle Dog Man.

Kate demonstrates her handbag technique

Near the end of the fight, Rachel is trying to climb a fence to escape when Dog Man catches her and clings to her back. With her instinctive and unnaturally high leap over the fence, weredog still attached, it would seem that the girls have gained supernatural powers of some kind after their deaths and resurrection. Would have been nice if Ugly Woman could have let them in on that before leaving for the sidelines to watch the fight unfold. It’s clear though that this is a trial by fire. She’s one cold, harsh teacher.

Rachel’s unlikely leap carries her and Dog Man right over the fence into the middle of a nearby road and also, incidentally, into the path of a truck. Claire drags Rachel to safety, leaving Dog Man to be squished by the convenient vehicle. Said vehicle, having done its duty, promptly vanishes. Yup, you read correctly: it simply disappears. The driver doesn’t put pedal to the metal and race off tires squealing in traditional hit and run fashion, much less stop to find out what the hell happened and whether anyone is seriously injured or dead. Next shot, the mystery truck is simply not there any more and the story can ignore any messy consequences that might take too much time and effort to explain away. Annoying and cheap.

Ugly Woman doesn’t seem particularly impressed. Okay, they only got Dog Man by accident, but damn, she really is one tough old broad. (It’s actually quite hard to judge her age with the odd-looking character design. I get the impression she’s probably supposed to be in her forties.)

The rest of the episode shows the girls trying to deal with what they’ve been through. Rose in particular is having a hard time coming to terms with being shanghaied by the weredog fighting organisation and, well, her deadness. Can’t say I blame her.

One poorly scripted scene (perhaps a lower point than the mysterious vanishing truck) has Kate having dinner at a restaurant with her sister and parents, who have returned from a trip to Convenient Plot Device To Get The Adults Out Of The Way-sville. The whole scene felt cheesy and awkwardly handled and was a clear demonstration of how difficult it is to write convincing dialogue and characters from a culture not one’s own. Quite interesting. Of course, to Japanese viewers it was probably perfectly fine, but it made me cringe, and that’s taking into account how cringe-worthy these “embarrassing parents” scenes often are.

The episode ends with a flashback to the aftermath of the fight. Hard Nosed Ugly Woman (who still hasn’t been given a name, nevermind her lackey) explains that the girls have fought only the first of many battles; that each night they’re on standby until midnight, at which point their services won’t be required; that they have no choice in the matter and that if they break the contract they’ll die; that all they can do is fight and win; that that is the only option they have. Jeez woman, give them a break!

The girls wait in their rooms for midnight to come, and when it does they weep in relief that for this night at least they’re spared.

The Good

Pretty lights and colours are niiice

The first two episodes are fairly atmospheric and have a somewhat more realistic feel than is usually found in anime except, of course, for when… but no; I’ll get to that soon. There’s also some rich use of colour and light in the backgrounds so at times it looks pretty damn nice except, of course, for… but no; I’ll get to that soon. A sombre feel underpins the whole thing and generally it comes across more like a Western animation or even a live action series. Whether that’s actually good or not is subjective but for me it feels fresh so it gets points for being different. Of course some of this stems from its American setting.

The situation in which the girls find themselves is quite interesting and a good sense of mystery has been built. Hopefully the series won’t take the easy way out and become a string of battle-of-the-week episodes interspersed with occasional allusions to a plot, although the setup does inherently lean that way. Still, Blood+, with a similar scenario, managed to remain quite interesting for its fifty-odd episode run.

The Bad

Be grateful I didn’t embed a sound file in the page

I don’t like musicals. I really don’t like musicals. I’ll only tolerate them if they star Audrey Hepburn but that’s as far as I’ll go. What prompted the decision to make this anime a musical? Hell if I know but I don’t appreciate the decision. During the song in the first episode I vainly hoped that this was a one-off aberration but no, come the second episode and the characters once again burst into song. Where’s Michael Palin when you need him? Ah well. There’s always the fast-forward button. It appears that there will only be one song per episode, so that’s a small mercy.

In case you aren’t sure you read that paragraph correctly, yes this anime is a horror musical and the characters are wont to burst into song when there’s a lull in the story.

The Ugly

What the hell?

Do us gaijin really look that ugly to the Japanese? Maybe it’s revenge for the less than flattering depictions of East-Asians in cartoons from an older, less politically-correct era. Maybe to Japanese eyes these character designs aren’t even unattractive. Whatever the case, I find the look of the characters quite distracting and it’s having an impact on my enjoyment of the show. I’m a shallow person: I want pretty girls in my anime, not these gorgons. If a character is supposed to be unattractive by all means draw them that way. But this? Okay, maybe I exaggerate. A little. Ah well, guess I’ll get used to them.

The Conclusion

For now I’m going to keep watching. If the story is interesting enough to counterbalance the songs and the distracting appearance of the characters this could be a decent anime with a fresh feel (and I have to admit that the songs and character designs do contribute to that freshness, even though I personally dislike them). If the plot and characters fail to develop in worthwhile directions though, I’ll be dropping it.