Last Seen: Episode 4
Summary: Green City Kazamatsuri, is a city built on the ideal of a harmonious relationship between civilization and environment.. However, the peaceful Kazamatsuri will soon be faced with its annual commotion, the Harvest Festa at the turn of the year. Our main character, Tennouji Kotaro, is suddenly struck with the feeling that he's been wasting his life. He tries to seize his youth, by joining the Occult Club. However, the first reason he sought out the club's President, known as 'The Witch' of the school, to begin with:
A Ghost Girl with Ribbons, that he first meets in a dream of a ruined city; She then instantly murders him. The Occult Club President gives him 3 'Shikigami' to help when he first meets her, but as he later discovers, she doesn't actually believe in anything supernatural, and was actually mocking him...despite them actually working. While he concedes to the "Witch" that he's unsure about other oddities, he's oddly insistent that people with Supernatural Powers exist. What he does know, is she keeps coming back every night to bite him, and that the bite mark is definitely real, so he insists the president keep giving him charms to keep the ghost away, despite her continually mocking him as she does. He makes a bet with her that he can find proof of Supernatural Phenomena, and invites the people around him that seem alone, to join as well, thus trying to seize his youth at the same time.
First Impression: Mkay, More high school, like we don't have enough of.......okay then. I don't think 'all hell broke loose' had a faster application... and then we're back to more High School. This feels very...Visual Novel'y.
My Opinion: Like I said, it feels like a visual novel adaptation. I'm fairly confident in that assessment despite knowing nothing about this shows history. Regardless, you wouldn't guess this is a supernatural show until well into the first episodes last half. By last half, I mean last 40 minutes. Because the first episode is twice as long as the norm. Just the first episode though.
Despite that, the first episode doesn't really showcase much, except for the shows amazing ability to never settle for having just one tone. It's got slice of life elements when it's in High School mode, and it's got crazy insane fantasy nonsense going when it's in Supernatural mode. Come to think of it, that's actually a thing. It's like the show has this switch it's just waiting to flip at any moment, it can change tones and setting at the flip of a coin. I suppose it would be exceptionally jarring for most people, but I'm so used to just 'going with it', to see where things are trying to take me, it doesn't bother me. That's not a plus by the way.
Anywho, as far as the High School setting goes, it is passably worthy of note that they don't seem to be pushing any romance. Yet. Maybe that's just me, but ... it really feels weird in that respect, if for no other reason than because I'm so used to the token, trite, love and romance undertone in everything in most anime High School settings. There is always the main character, and then the potential love interest(s), and everything seems to revolve around those chosen two/few. Meanwhile, here, none of the girls in the show seem particularly interested in him, or in getting close to him, that way. Not even the Childhood Friend, which is one of the first three characters we're introduced to. Later on, a few characters start laying down foundations to move in that direction, ala Visual Novel'y pick your love interest sorts of ways, and I can just about see the multiple button prompts at key moments.
Back to that Childhood friend though. When she was introduced as such, I cringed, hard. I am so sick to death of the High School Token Childhood Friend Love Interest. FFS, we should all just marry the first kid of the opposite gender we meet as children, shouldn't we? Save a lot of trouble down the road.
The show...doesn't really seem to have that in mind though. In fact, that's one of the things (besides the off-the-walls-bonkers supernatural events), that I'm most interested in right now. She's so...out of place a lot of the time. Not so much in-world, as just...how to explain. I keep expecting her to act a certain way, or do certain things, and then she...doesn't. It keeps making me realize how stupid the things I'm expecting are, because they're the childhood friend tropes, but I keep expecting them anyway. While that makes my skin crawl that the anime industry has been successfully making me adapt to its bullshit and eat it...
It also makes me keenly interested in this particular character. I'm not sure how much of that is just me personally reading into things too much, (which I do alot), and how much is the character actually being unusual. While there are some things the show certainly seems to underline for certain, like how it's being really vague about a few things between her and Kotaro, despite vaguely foreshadowing it a couple of times.
*snaps fingers*That's what it is. Despite there being several elements of tropes, and commonly trodden ground in the High School setting, still, all of the characters feel very...human. They feel and act like actual people might act, if they were in the anime High School setting, and had the Personality quirks we're so used to seeing. So far, as of the fourth episode, we've only taken the time to flesh out just one of the bevy of characters we've had introduced rapid fire. That one however, was quite amazing. She has a personality quirk, a relatively common one, but the show takes the time to properly lay out and explain why she's like that. She also doesn't act exclusively with that one personality trait. In fact, none of the characters do. As I sit here thinking about it, I can vaguely list off the tropes that several of the characters are packing in their pockets, but they don't really let those tropes define them. They're features of those characters personalities, not the definition of them.
Anyway, if the several paragraphs of ranting weren't tell enough, I'm quite interested in this show so far. I'm enjoying it a lot.
However, I'm not going to recommend it.
Certainly, the Supernatural parts are very flashy and enjoyable,
and the High School bit is very interesting in the subtly off ways its moving things (to me at least),
but the fact that the show is trying to juggle both of these at the same time is a bit off putting I bet.
Give it a shot, see if you'll like it. I do, but I don't really feel like this is a widely appealing balancing act they have going right now.
[Aside]Also really weird: The absurdly short and simple title. Like, when was the last time we had a title that wasn't at least three words? Or else had a subtitle?
One word, No subtitle. God that's refreshing.
And also really petty of me to be liking, but whatever. Small pleasures.
[Aside end]
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