Category: Yumekui Merry

I really like episodic series. Sure, they’re easy to screw up without the right execution, and their main storylines don’t become as smooth as series with a continuous story, but really: who cares? They’ve got plenty of ways to make up for that. This episode showed that even episodic characters are just awesome if they use each other to build up and flesh out the story. Seriously, this episode was amazing.

This was EXACTLY what I was hoping for when I started this series. Sure, the story started off with a number of cliches and all, but this was a really emotional episode that did just about everything right. The first half of this episode was full of wonderful slice of life that makes me take back what I said earlier about this show, in the way that the characters in this series don’t have the most interesting personalities: the way in which this episode fleshed them out was wonderfully down to earth and showed a lot of new things about them, like Isana suddenly liking a famous pop star. Or the fact that Merry has been lost and killing off other dream demons for ten years now. Yeah.

Then the second half came, and that was the point for this series to suddenly contradict a lot of what it had been building up for. Seriously, how many series this season have already done this right? Yumekui Merry gave another wonderful addition to the collection of amazing plot twists of this season: it turns out that Merry didn’t have the power to send demons back at all! In fact, there was no way to get back to the dream world in the first place.

The second half of this episode also wonderfully moved the lead characters into the gray area of morality: in this episode a character representing justice shows up. She’s very much like your average protagonist here: searching to exterminate every dream demon in order to get revenge on her sister and to stop their evil deeds.

The animation also was gorgeous and really inspired, even for this series’ standards. I mean, this just shows the amazing things you can do with generic character designs, if you’ve got the right artists and animation direction behind it.
Rating: *** (Awesome)

Interestingly, this episode showed that this show can be quite good at slice of life. A lot of this episode featured just random stuff as going to a karaoke bar, or characters randomly talking to each other. What makes these random scenes so good in this show is that they always manage to relate it back to the characters and themes, so that none of it is really pointless. It’s also good to have these kinds of scenes, as the characters of Merry were in dire need of some more variation in their personalities, and this episode gave it to them.

Another thing that I just realized that this show is very good at is keeping its random stories short but sweet. I mean, this show spends a lot of time on its main characters, considering how they also need to flesh out a random character each episode, and yet they consistently do this right so far. At the start it seems simple, and not very interesting, but during the action scenes at the last quarter of the episodes things come together quite nicely. The story in this episode had a villain who was very nicely in the gray scale between good and evil: he was simply a lost dream who didn’t know what was going on either, and for the heck of it decided to take control of the girl he came into contract with.

It’s also clever of the creators in the Karaoke scene, where Merry noted that an awful amount of songs were about hope and dreams. Now that they mention it, that is surprisingly true. ^^;

Finally, I like how the terms of this series are really vague: first we had dreams in this series that could both be the strange things that happen to you while you sleep and your hopes and goals for the future. Now this episode comes and gives multiple meanings to sending someone back. Merry just uses it an expression when she gets rid of another Numa that invaded the real world, but the Numa in this episode seemed to believe that she could actually send people back to the world in which they came from.

Still… what was up with that maid outfit?
Rating: ** (Excellent)

So this is going to be one of those series that’s going to flesh out its setting with random episodic stories during the first act of the story. It makes sense, as it looks like the dream world has a lot of different features, and this way we can get a good look at the ins and outs of the setting, at the expense that we might have to wait quite a while before the main storyline pops up.

So far, it’s been the visuals and the characterization that have made the past two episodes worth watching. Out of all the shows this season, Yumekui Merry has my favourite background art (and that is in a season that also has Fractale, Hourou Musuko and Madoka Magica), and the rest of the animation is also really well directed and very imaginative. Meanwhile, the acting is also wonderful, especially near the climaxes, and this episode was no different.

This episode also spent quite a bit of time on fleshing things out. I especially liked that Super Sentai Fortune Teller and his warning of overhead danger, and how this returned throughout the entire episode. There were a ton of other scenes which just slowly let the viewers get a grasp of who little girl in this episode, and also the side characters got a few nice scenes for themselves.

In this episode, Yumeji also gave his best performance so far. And I mean, this guy still needs some sort of backstory and all, but I liked his wit in this episode, and he worked together very nicely with Merry and the girl of this episode. I hope that he can keep this up, because there really are a ton of other characters this season that have the same role as him. It’s in any case a good thing that he’s neither a wimp or obsessively hormonal.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

In a way, Yumekui Merry is quite similar to Madoka Magica: they both deal with magical girls, and both have gorgeous action scenes in a strange kind of dream world. After two episodes, I’m definitely liking Yumekui Merry more. It’s got some of the best direction of the entire season, plus it already packs some good drama and characters after only two episodes, beyond simple introductions.

This episode introduced a bunch of different new characters, including a childhood friend and her awesome father, along with a bunch of other classmates and a girl who wants to be a nurse. I especially like the latter, as they show how many different dream creatures there can be: beyond just existing, they also can inspire people, creating “dreams” in the sense of long-term goals. Especially that scene in which her dream demon got eaten away was just beautiful to look at. This show has some of the best background art and character designs of the entire season.

It’s a shame that this show also couldn’t escape the “walking into the shower naked” cliche, but at least the creators had this “ah, it’s in the manga so let’s just get this over with and focus on what’s more important”-air about them, compared to stalling such a scene for a ridiculously long time and getting the lead character to make a fool out of himself. That male lead meanwhile… this season definitely has a ton of characters like him. He isn’t the best, because we haven’t really learned much about him beyond the fact that he has weird dreams involving talking cats, but he’s also certainly not the worst, thanks to his acting. He’s neither overly whiny or hormonic and so far is doing pretty well to carry this series.

Now, I doubt that this series will be as good as Casshern Sins, but you can really see that the two series have the same director. The camera work especially shows this, with a ton of close ups and shots that focus purposefully on the tiny details on the background, like a bunch of leaves, a can or some chalk.
Rating: ** (Excellent)