While this adaption isn’t quite staying true to the source, it’s still managing to present a compelling tale. In that regard I am glad as I would like to see this tale be given the treatment it deserves. Presentation remains great and I rather like how events in the past are show in a widescreen format with black bars on the top and bottom. It gives a feeling like Satoru is likely experiencing, that we are seeing these events but we aren’t quite there. We are like the opening shows, a person in a cinema, a observer. Though considering that Satoru has control over his previous self it might be more accurate to consider him a person with a game controller. But there are points when he and his younger self sync together as shown by certain lines which his older and younger voice actors say simultaneously. This episode mainly dealt with Satoru getting closer to a troubled girl with a abusive mother as she seems to be the next victim to be targeted by the serial killer who will eventually kill his mother. Things are moving slow for now but I like the small details such as Satoru attempting to recall the details of the past. What’s more is that one of Satoru’s clever friends seems to know something’s up and looks to be trying to off offhandedly help Satoru in his goal. The big question to consider is that someone in this flashback is the killer Satoru is searching for so who can it be. Our killer in the future has red eyes, glasses and is male so if someone in the past is responsible it would likely be an adult.
If there was something that I truly have a problem with, it would be the soundtrack. It doesn’t take long to notice that our music composer here is Yuki Kajura and my issues with her remain. If you haven’t read anything I wrote about her before then let me give you the cliffs notes. I believe Yuki is a very talented music composer that unfortunately chains herself by sticking to one style and one style alone. When putting her on a anime soundtrack the question becomes whether the anime can adapt to Yuki’s style as opposed to Yuki adapting to the style best for the anime. That’s just not a good way to go about making soundtracks. There are people who claim all of Yuki’s music sounds the same and there is some small weight to that claim. I wouldn’t blame anyone for getting huge reminders of Fate/Zero’s soundtrack with the final minutes of the episode. In fact I even suspect that Yuki has lifted melody lines from that soundtrack for this, and this wouldn’t be the first time she’s done that. At the moment I feel she’s doing an adequate job but if she starts shoving dramatic choirs into this then I don’t think the glove will fit. Regardless I hope they continue to make this work as well as it’s going and hopefully don’t run into pacing issues.
I’m glad I’m not the only one who thinks that way about Yuki Kajura. I had hoped she would branch out a bit with this OST, but so far at least it suits it well enough.
I fear Hiroyuki Sawano may be falling into the same trap. He’s not quite on the level of Yuki but his latest soundtracks are sounding similar to his Kill la Kill soundtrack. But he has more variety than Yuki at least.
Yuki’s music seems to carry the Noir soundtrack wherever it goes. That one was great, but every succeeding work seems like a continuation of it. The Madlax soundtrack, which followed Noir, sounds almost exactly like its predecessor.
Her stuff is good, though, and has inspired others – I’d swear Jack Wall and Sam Hulick lifted her stuff wholesale for the Mass Effect soundtrack.
I like her music, she’ll just never come across as another Yoko Kanno.