Gainax surprises everyone again by doing something completely different than what is typically expected of a Gainax title. And I'm liking what I'm seeing.
When I first heard about this show, it was in the simplest form of the premise: a guy inherits his grandfather's mansion and finds a beautiful girl in the basement. It sounded like the average Gainax fanservice-fest, but I enjoy their works regardless so it stayed on my radar even though I didn't expect much from it. But as more promotional material came out, I realized that it was possible that Gainax was about to surprise everyone again and completely rethought my first impressions. Now that I've seen the first episode, I'm pretty sure that this show will be one of my favorites from this summer season. The animation is gorgeous, with hair and clothes looking extremely lifelike and pictures used as backdrops for an added layer of realism. The plot, which revolves around the two main characters hunting down cursed books, doesn't use anything particularly new in theme, but its execution more than makes up for it. I was gripped by this episode from beginning to end.
The comparisons to Gosick are easy to make, since they both take place within the same time period and the female leads are initially very similar in terms of personality. They also both suffer from their character wardrobes being about ten years out of date; Hugh mentions that he was a WWI pilot, yet the outfits that he and Dalian wear are from before that period. This problem particularly bothered me in Gosick, since in that show WWII also came ten years too early and their wardrobes were ten years too late. Since this show has a supernatural spin on it, I'm more willing to accept the inaccuracy unless it starts playing with actual historical events like Gosick did. Also much different from Gosick is the male lead, who actually thinks things through instead of wandering stupidly into dangerous situations like the male lead in Gosick. I cannot tell you how happy I was when I saw that Hugh's first instinct was to use a gun against the fantastical creatures they were facing. I am really tired of wimpy, idiotic male leads so this is extremely refreshing. I've yet to make an opinion on Dalian, however, since her character type so far is nothing new; the anime world has plenty of short, tsundere girls and something different is going to have to happen in her character development if she wants to stand up to Victorique, who had excellent character development.
Overall though, this first episode left a great first impression. I think that this show has a lot of potential and if it continues to build on what it has established in this first episode, then there will be another great Gainax title on the books.
Images from NicoNico.com.
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