Hiiro no Kakera S2 01 – Impressions

Continuing with today’s earlier showing of traditional Japanese fantasy, we have the continuing tale of the Tamayori Princess and her bishounen collection. The series reintroduces the familiar cast without a hitch; we our treated again to a very well-performed opening song for the anime. Disappointingly, most of the remainder of the episode is a recap of last season using previous animation.  It’s a bit expected from Studio Deen; I’ve seen far worse cases in which an anime feels like their viewer forgets the story from week-to-week, so I’m glad we can move on after this. The story picks up where it left off incompletely; we’re treated to the next upcoming problem for the Tamayori Princess with rumors of spiriting away cropping up again within the village. Ending song is decent; the end of the episode fan service segments with bishounen of the week are still hilarious in their own right. It’s nice to see the cast again; I’ll be enjoying it week-to-week with the few other returning shows from last season and the other sequel series to come.

Shinsekai Yori 01 - Impressions

Cantus, Mantra, Harmony School, Sage Academy, Water Manipulation, and Force Exchange. These are just a few of the many terms thrown at the viewer within the first nine minutes of the show. A mixture of spiritualism and violence tempered by flashes of youth and school life. Not the first series I’ve seen where cute kids soften the dark edge, but I’m pleased the off-time from the horror and mystery isn’t overblown and presented at ridiculous levels like with Higurashi. Tension is very important in shows like these; it has been managed well thus far with the main character Saki’s growing unease with every passing moment. Still, other problems cropped up whenever the narrative pulled away from Saki directly.

As a first episode, it’s the kind that builds up all the starting blocks of an overarching mystery to the village; it shows with a very, very slow pace throughout. The episode introduces the rest of Saki’s friends; they are given bare bone attributes while serving to respond to the magical elements of the school and deliver further rumors about violence and the supernatural prior to attending Sage Academy. The background context is welcome; the rushed secondary character, school, and setting drop-in left me while other less important information to me took center stage. Still, from the anime community, I’ve noticed there are a fair amount of early-on defending and fan protests to give Shinsekai Yori a chance because its supposed to ramp up midway and prove amazing by its end. There tends to be at least one show per season that garners this protective niche voice; I’ve found it usually turns out to be truth when the comments are as widespread on the net. As such, I’m hoping my patience will pay off; I can easily see how it might fly under the radar of many viewers since the episode falls into the information dump trap of a lot of recent anime from the get go. From a blogging standpoint, it has a lot more potential then I got from the previews that I saw. It’ll be interesting to see if it can draw in my emotions enough and not lose sight of its way while managing the large cast.