Life’s all
happy for our protagonist, Akari. Her
mom’s dead, which is a bit of a downer, but, beyond that, it’s swimming.
She’s an
amateur fortune teller, and she lives with her aunt, uncle, and cousin. However! This is not to last! *cues doomy music*
Her cousin
is jealous of her cheerful, bright demeanor and the fact that everyone likes
her. So, on the anniversary of Akari’s
mother’s death, she turns into a giant plant and tries to murder her. Huh, you’re confused? I’m not, that makes sense to me.
However, do
not fear! In an extremely confusing
manner, a tarot card appears and some stuff happens. I’m not entirely sure, as it’s shot as she
turns into a firey magical girl thing and kills it, but at the same time it
looks like a firey magical girl showed up in front of her and killed it for
her. But hey-
Doesn’t that
look FREAKIN’ AWESOME?! And no lengthy
transformation sequence in sight! If
that is her, though, how did she know how to do that? Her voiceover sounds confused, so I doubt
that she’s done this before. Was it
magic?
After
whoever-it-is stabs the monster, we cut back to Akari, and the monster’s
gone. She’s confused, thinking it was it
all a dream. And then, she sees an
unpleasant sight.
Wow, I didn’t
think that this would have blood in it.
I mean, it doesn’t bother me, but it surprised me. It does succeed in making this scene more
creepy, though.
Then, cut to
the next morning. It’s the day of the
anniversary of her mother’s death-again, but one family member is suspiciously
absent. I think that you can guess which
one, right?
*creepy
narrator voice* And no one ever mentioned
her again. Like she never even existed. As this is the fate of a-
*coughs* So,
I guess that means that magical girls have time-turner powers. And Akari doesn’t seem to remember what
happened. And everyone has apparently
forgotten about her cousin. I’m not
exactly sure what that means, but I assume (well, hope) that I’ll learn that later.
After a
fairly normal day, she returns to the fortune-telling place she works at and
finds that it’s on fire. She runs in (and
no one makes any more than a cursory attempt to prevent the teenage girl from running
into an obviously dangerous place) because she hears that there are people
still inside. When she gets inside, she
is attacked by a fire monster.
However, she
again turns into magical girl form (still no transformation sequence, yay!) and
tries to fight it. And, not to sound
like a stereotypical high school girl here, but I love her hair. Look at it, it’s animated to look like
fire! So cool…
On the topic
of stuff that looks cool: the animation in general. I mean, when stuff’s all busy being normal,
it’s not amazing, but the fight scenes… oh, the fight scenes.
Since she
seems to know what’s going on in magical girl form, I assume that it’s a
different persona? Is she a different
person when in magical girl form? Or is
it just instinct? Hm…
She also has
that ‘bangs combed over one eye’ look here.
I admit, it also looks pretty cool.
And the flame sword, too~
However, her
attacks don’t seem to be working. The
monster’s about to take her out when it is attacked by three other magical
girls.
They kill the
monster, and get her out of there.
Episode ends.
I have so
many questions… but that was awesome,
whatever it was. It seems like Akari
will be inducted into this magical girl group, and I assume the logistics of magical-girlism
and what they fight will be explained in the near future.
I definitely
will be sticking around for when that happens.
I like how this is darker than I expected, because I like dark magical
girl shows a hell of a lot more than happyfuntimes magical girls shows. The soundtrack’s actually pretty nice (pretty
orchestral pieces that build atmosphere fairly well), and, well, you know how I
feel about the animation. Actually, I
have one gripe with it.
There’s
something wrong about the eyes. I’m not
sure if it’s the placement, size, or shape, but something’s… off.
I’m not sure
what I can say about the main character yet, so far she just seems like a
typical cheery, happy girl, but most of this episode occurs before stuff really
goes down, so maybe she’ll change later?
The other
girls also haven’t really had enough time to really be fleshed out yet, either,
so I can’t pass down my holy judgment upon them yet.
And, on an
ending note, I’m not going to spend my entire time comparing this to Madoka Magica just because it’s a dark
magical girl show. Because everyone
else is, and I want to be different.
And, plus, Princess Tutu did
it first and did it better. I know it’s just
my opinion, but my opinion is right. At
least, in my opinion.
No comments:
Post a Comment