If you follow me on various social media websites, you know that I make it no secret that I spend a lot of time on Tumblr, which I have a bit of a love/hate relationship with. The community there is as creative and enthusiastic as it is completely baffling at times, but I’ve discovered several more series that I’ve grown to love thanks to that website. DRAMAtical Murder has been making the rounds on my dash for a while now, and I thought I had a decent handle on what the game was about, and decided to check out the anime based on that. As it turns out, I knew far less than I thought.
DRAMAtical Murder spends its first episode setting up its unique world, where ridiculous puffy coats are things people want to steal and robot dogs have deep voices. That makes it sound like I’m poking fun at the show, but in all seriousness, the weirdness of the world was what kept me interested. It’s established that the city has a number of rival gangs who take their affiliation very seriously, kind of similar to the color gangs from Durarara. A virtual reality fighting game called “Rhyme” has been making the rounds as well, along with rumors of people disappearing. However, our main character Aoba doesn’t care about either gangs or Rhyme, preferring his normal life working at a junk shop and living with his grandmother. However, it’s made clear that Aoba has untapped potential, or maybe even some repressed memories.
This is definitely not what I was expecting as the introduction to a BL series, but I’m interested all the same. A lot of the establishing information is revealed through organic dialogue and not “as you know” conversations, while still leaving plenty of questions open to cover as the plot gets underway. I’ll admit that I’m more than a little confused by some of the things that happened in this episode, but in a good way. It didn’t feel like the show was deliberately withholding information; rather, it felt like a broad overview of something a little more complex. That’s not to say that I think that this will be a “deep” show, but it’s nice to see that the world and story have been thought through a bit. If you like cyberpunk and don’t mind BL, you should give this episode a try.
Images from Crunchyroll.com.
