Summary: After failing his college entrance exams, 18 year-old Tsukasa Mizugaki is offered a position at the renowned SAI Corporation due to his father’s connections. SAI Corporation is known for its production and management of androids that possess human emotions, called Giftia. Tsukasa’s position is in the Terminal Service Department, where the main job is to recover Giftias that are close to their expiration, a graveyard department in every sense.
First Impression: Soul Sucker.
My Opinion: Are you uncomfortable with your heart being tucked in all snug and lonely inside your chest? Well, step right up to this show here! Where it will tenderly wrap warm embracing hands around your heart...and then dig in its claws and rip it out.
Yeah. Welcome to a genre I haven't seen in a good long while. I call it the Soul Sucker. Standard name is probably Tragedy, but this show feels like it will fall into my special sub-division of tragedy: Soul Sucker. These shows are marked by my brains distinct refusal to retain them despite their amazing quality, until such time as something reminds me of them, and then it tries its best to give me an emotional break down with the full plots return all at once. Because, my brain, and plots, and the retaining. Sometimes not such a useful and pleasant skill.
This show is the kind of thing you get from probing the Human Experience without calm intellectualism or tense/exhilarating drama. When you just dive deep, and...then it takes you away without any supports or fall-backs.
Anywho, this show lays the story on thick in the first episode. They get that heart string tugger of theirs pulling on your heart strings full tilt just a few minutes in. They don't even stop to have an opening, just a brief few seconds of Title. Of course, they do stop to try and fish a hook of Romance into you with the first few seconds, but I somehow doubt that's going to be the core of this show. Just a feeling. A bad one.
...
It's starting to become a recurring theme in my life that I try to 'spot the hook', so to speak, in the first minute of the show. I understand the first impression can be everything...I just question a lot of the anime I've seen the Hook in...and their choice of hook. Like, this is clearly a Tragedy based anime...and they choose love interest as their hook? That just seems ridiculous to me. There is literally no other element of that in the rest of the first episode.
[Aside]
I just want to take a moment aside here to think aloud about a certain part of culture. Particularly, the almost bipolar nature of Television. One second, you could be watching the news and it's about Genocide somewhere in the world, and the next it's "Isn't that horrible? Yes, just. Now back to you, insert name, with the weather." Or the flitting completely random non-sequitur nature of commercials and product bombardment. I watched a fair bit of TV as a kid, but the older I got, the more of a gamer I became, and the less TV I cared about, till finally I just completely removed it from my life sometime before/during High School. It still remains an interest of mine, what kind of effects this particular cultural element can render on people. I mention all this, because the show has...not quite a grinding gear shift between tones I wouldn't say, but it is glaring. Mostly because you can just feel them trying to, almost, apologize for ripping your heart out with some light comedy. Like, "oh? Did we do that again? So sorry, here let us just...put that back in your chest. Sorry...we...might do it again. Sorry."
It just kind of makes me wonder if we'd be so receptive to this kind of thing in Anime if there wasn't a widespread cultural foundation for it born from the Golden Years of TV. Just idle thoughts.
[Aside end]
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