Originally a secret project by Studio BONES, this series made its debut on the US Playstation Network. Akiyuki is a boy who suddenly has a strange power take over his body.

Episode Summary

Akiyuki, already late for school, is still expected by his mother to bring his father’s lunch to him before catching the bus. His parents are separated and he’s one of the thin threads holding things together. He manages a few shortcuts and gets to his father’s place, where the man is still asleep with a hangover. He says that he’ll be back to help with laundry after school, and then heads on his way.

He makes it to the bus stop just in time, and gets in the back of the line behind a mysterious white-haired girl. They need to show arm bands to get on, and she doesn’t have one, so through trickery Akiyuki loans her his. While they’re getting off, the white-haired girl blows up the bus and sends everyone flying. A strange orb of light comes out of the wreckage and enters Akiyuki’s arm. Against everyone else’s better judgment, he returns to the wreckage and finds the white-haired girl, named Nazuma, dripping with green blood. She tells hims that he’ll be fine and she causes a transformation of his body to occur. Almost immediately, he’s shot by a member of the armed forces, and his friend Haru hears his voice in her head.

Thoughts

A friend tipped me off to the fact that this show, meant to be a Spring season release by Studio BONES, was foiled by the inability of the producers to reserve their timeslot on time. Lucky for us, it means that we Americans get the rare treat of seeing this show before the Japanese do. This show is provided as a rental from the Playstation Network. While the price is a bit steep (we rented the 1080p version which cost five dollars and which only lasted 24 hours from the time of the first viewing), the chance to see the show in full HD glory is almost worth the price of admission. Short version: this show is darned beautiful. I don’t usually like to talk about animation quality as the focus of a review, because I feel that its something that can compliment an already good story, but good grief this show is pretty. So pretty that I almost feel I may have been distracted from the story a bit by the visuals, though not a whole lot actually happened in this episode.

The setting in this show is also very unusual. Imagine taking a high-school show, adding in a cupful of Last Exile and a sprinkling of Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind and you begin to get a feel for the unusual future-past setting. I’m not quite sure if they were trying to go with an alternate future or some sort of alternate universe setting for the show, but it definitely drew me in enough to want to see more. Everything looks a little bit steampunk and a little bit JRPG, an aesthetic that comes off feeling enough like fantasy to whisk one away to this different world but enough grounded in reality that it seems like it won’t go flying off into some silly direction.

I don’t know if the story will be good yet, and like any really pretty show it runs the risk of spending too many resources on the pretty and not enough on character development or story, but for now I think I really just need to go see some more of this.

Pros

• Oh so pretty
• Neat setting

Cons

• The Playstation Network download is really expensive

By Jessi – 08/31/08