Anaglyph’s Anime Appraisals

Red Garden’s jazzy opening song is really quite catchy, and the visuals are fairly striking too; the combination has something of a seventies vibe. Normally I’ll skip an anime’s credits without a second thought but there are a few exceptions and this is one of them, though the rap-metal ED is another matter; nice riff, shame about the rap - just not my cup of tea. Anyway…

After last episode’s events the black-suited cleaners are called in for a bit of bodily fluids removal - no sign of Harvey Keitel though. Kate has a brief exchange with Lula. She wants to know how long they’re going to be fighting like this and what their ultimate goal is. Lula’s reply is the same old kill or be killed stuff. This is getting repetitive and it’s about time the girls’ dialogue with Lula moved beyond it.

Next morning Rachel starts to go seriously off the rails, obsessed with the idea that the stink of the monster still clings to her. After smashing the mirror of her dressing table and scattering her bottles of fancy perfume she ends up cowering under the bed sheets in a foetal ball, shaking and weeping. It’s a fairly disturbing scene that has shades of a rape victim who feels she can’t wash away the defilement of her body. The direction is good, with extreme close-ups of her expressions of anguish and overhead shots of her slumped in her night clothes that highlight her pathetic state; in contrast her dishevelled lush of a mother sits in another room drinking brandy, oblivious of the torment her daughter is going through.

Meanwhile at school the other three decide to investigate the mansion that Claire located. Rose, however, is too frightened to go with them, much to Claire’s disgust. Claire is pretty harsh about Rose, who is after all younger than her, but it becomes clear later that it’s really her own fear that she’s angry about. The mansion seems long-since abandoned but Kate notices that the water in the pool is clean, once again demonstrating that she’s the most level-headed of the group.

Rachel, having recovered somewhat from the morning’s breakdown, meets her socialite friends, but their superficial chatter about parties and guys serves only to emphasise the gulf between what her life used to be and what it has become, and she abandons them in dramatic fashion. The episode closes with her slumped on the sidewalk in distress as Creepy Man looks on and she’s overcome by a paranoid feeling that all the pedestrians walking by have glowing eyes like the dog-men the girls have to fight.

Before I start complaining I want to make it clear that this is a good show and I’m enjoying it. There is a problem though; namely, lack of plot. The character development has been good plausible stuff but by the end of this episode it feels as if the story hasn’t really moved beyond where it was in episode two, as exemplified by Lula stating yet again that the girls must fight or die. The series is set for a twenty-four episode run and I suspect there just isn’t enough story to satisfactorarily fill all those episodes while maintaining the mystery angle, making it necessary to delay developments for as long as possible. It’s great that so much attention is paid to the characters (Claire’s anger at Rose prompted by her own fears is a nice example) but without the plot moving forward the story is starting to feel stretched pretty thin; like butter spread over too much bread, one might say.

Ah well - hopefully the plot will start moving soon.

Complaints out of the way, it’s worth noting the acting. I have to admit that I find it hard to judge the acting of non-English speakers as so much information, such as subtleties of intonation, is lost; add to that the lack of facial expressions and body language and it becomes even more difficult to judge. With that in mind, the voice acting seems top-notch and very believable to me. Good work from the seiyuu.

One final thing.

Sorry Claire, but even if you haven’t been shanghaied by a dog-man hunting organisiation, that’s life.