When Ran enters middle school she finds that she has psychic abilities. The problem is, they appear to instigate ill fortune in others, a fact that she must learn to accept and deal with.

Episode Summary

While running track at school, Ran seems to encounter a strange voice. After track club, she meets with her childhood friend Rui and they walk home together. He’s a member of the art club and they discuss what he should draw. Again, Ran gets a telepathic message. That night, an office worker is attacked by what appears to be a possessed dog. The next morning, Ran and her brother have a laugh over their mother’s strange novel idea and their dad’s talent at making pickles, when a newscast informs them that an office worker jumped from the upper floors of a food company building the night before. As Ran heads out the door to meet up with Rui for some shopping, she’s visited by more psychic messages.

Ran tries to act normal with Rui, but he sees right through her. She tells him about the voice she’s been hearing. He reminds her that she’s heard voices in the past as well. The voice becomes more prominent, Rui feels something on his neck, and Ran finally notices another girl and follows her. While the girl is lost in the crowd, it seems that her childhood wasn’t a very friendly one. The next day at school, Ran’s homeroom teacher introduces a transfer student: the very girl Ran met on the street the previous day, whose name is Midori. Almost immediately the two get into a psychic battle, levitating pencils at each-other and arguing within their minds. The sky grows dark as the two disrupt class.

Thoughts

I wanted to like this show when I first read about it online, but alas it wasn’t to be so. It’s not a bad show, but unlike last year’s Dennou Coil which was a show aimed at children that reached well beyond your normal kids’ show in both writing and animation, this series just comes up short in the entertainment department. It’s quite bland right from the get-go, and none of the characters, least of all the heroine, are all that interesting. It’s quite possible that I’m just not the intended audience – not all shows aimed at children have to transcend that label and become something with wider appeal. I’m just after something with a little more sophistication and some better writing.

I think I was also expecting better animation. Though I’m not normally fooled by promotional stills and such, I had been led to expect smoother animation. The opening animation had a bit of style to it that I was hoping would carry over more to the main portion of the episode, but I was disappointed there as well.

I think overall this series strayed too far into slice-of-life and didn’t utilize the more exciting story elements it toyed with developing in the first episode – that of the office explosion and the conflict between Ran and Midori. It all boils down to bland pacing and boring lack of direction. Like I said, not all kids’ shows have to get me all excited because I would venture to say that most children are after something a bit more simplistic than I am. But since I assume that most of the people reading this are teenaged or older, I have to be truthful that there’s not much to be interested in here.

Pros

• Nothing to be offended about here

Cons

• Everything is a bit too bland so far
• Animation is lackluster

By Jessi – 08/30/08