That was different.
In one word: potential. This could really shape up to be something, since the first episode feels like the tip of the iceberg. A lot of time was dedicated to subtle world building, starting out in what looks like our time period and then jumping forward a thousand years to a place that seems to be inhabited by psychics. This was basically a "daily school life" episode, yet the contrast between what was happening and what your run-of-the-mill school life episode would be like says a lot about what we're in for. There's clearly been a backslide in technology, and the kids' schooling is focused around learning how to control their powers and stories about mythical creatures rather than math and literature. Also, there's a huge amount of suspense surrounding deaths and disappearances that the adults seem to know more about than the kids.
The episode seemed to be mostly concerned with establishing a mood, and I think it succeeded. The rest of the show will probably hang on whether it'll be able to out a compelling story out of that, because I'm not really sure what direction it will take. I'm really liking the mystery part of it and finding out more about how this world works. The animation is pretty solid, although you can't really see it for most of the time since the characters spend the majority of the episode in shadow. The most interesting part visually was the watercolor story/lesson, and I thought it worked really well. Is that going to be the standard for flashbacks in the show? Anyway, the first episode did its job getting me interested. Now let's see what they do with it.
Images from Crunchyroll.com.
Read the rest of this entry Entry meta
Read the rest of this entry Entry meta