Category: Night Head Genesis

Awesomeness. Night Head Genesis proves that it’s capable of providing some highly disturbing, but at the same time very touching scenes. I’m loving this series more and more. Finally we have another show who’s trying to show the worst side of humans. That’s always good for a few juicy scenes, and Night Head Genesis is no exception for this.

Naoto (ugh… it was Naoto after all, not Naota) and Naoya have been heading back to the home in which they grew up. Now that they’ve arrived in their old neighbourhood, they have some flashbacks of the time in which they were young. They discuss two major cases, among a few smaller ones. It’s great to see their younger versions return. They work awesome.

Case 1: Naoto when he was just a baby. He’s playing with a tiny fire truck toy. It’s when his parents first discover his powers when somehow, the truck moves without any batteries being in it. He also gives his father a nosebleed when he tries to take away this truck. It’s interesting that he already had these powers at that age, and was using them to hurt others, unconsciously. Naoto also reveals that at that time, he thought that anyone was able to move things without their hands. Indeed, how do you make a baby like that clear that it’s not okay to hurt others like that?

Case 2: Naoto is six and Naoya has just been born. About a year later, we see the two of them playing with wooden blocks a bit, when an earthquake occurs. Naoto manages to protect Naoya from a falling vase. It’s the first time when Naoto realizes Naoya’s power, when their mother comes in, worried. She then picks up Naoya, who sends her thoughts to Naoto. “There’s nothing to worry about”.

Case 3: A former subordinate of the brothers’ father came to sell a large amount of land to them. He came with his wife and daughter. The daughter, who had heard the rumours about Naoto and Naoya, came to their room, and seemed to enjoy poking fun at them, and treating them like dirt with nobody else around. Naoya then got a bad feeling, and then he touched the former subordinate, getting in shock and revealing his evil plans. What follows is Naoto, protecting his family by hurting the culprits. Because of this, Naoto and Naoya’s power fully awakened. But their mother and father also began to look differently at them. It’s interesting. When you look at it one way, the two of them prevented them from being deceived, and losing a large amount of money. But at the same time, when Naoto keeps using his powers to hurt others in such an “unnatural” way, you could be scared at the same time. And that’s the case with their parents. For some reason, you’re less likely to forget fear than to forget pleasant events.

Case 4: Naoya touched a little girl, who always was carrying a doll with her, and got into shock. He had to be hospitalized for this. When Naoto tried to explain what happened to the doctor, he was just ridiculed. In the end, it seemed that the little girl was heavily being abused by her father. Naoto found the latter hurting the former’s body with a sharp sabre. She was covered in blood and wounds when Naoto found her, took her away and showed the public that her father was a molester. When Naoya heard this, he turned back to normal. When Naoto and Naoya think back about this, they notice that Naoto saw the doll, which the girl used to carry, with red eyes, while Naoya’s vision showed a doll with blue eyes.

Then, the grown up Naoto and Naoya arrive at the place their former house stood. Well, it’s gone. It’s turned into a field of grass. To make things better, when they ask a local, it seems that there’s never been a house on that patch in the first place. A silhouette of Shouko then appeared for a second. The episode ends with the girl from case 5, who runs into them. I’m so curious about how she ended up after her father was imprisoned.

Still, what does this mean? Why has their former house been erased. And more importantly, what happened to their parents? And what the heck is Shouko up to?

Another thing I love about Night head Genesis was the 15-year time-leap. The two brothers have changed so much in that time. The former short-tempered Naoto now has seemed to have learned to control his temper.

The first half of the episode was not very special. It just featured a very long recap of the previous episode, and basically the same thing in the next-episode preview of the previous episode. Naoya still wasn’t doing well, though it wasn’t as disturbing as in the previous episode. He sees the future of the girl, and Shouko explains that he’s having visions of the future. Then, at the beginning of the second half of the episode, we basically see the same vision Naoya had, though this time, in real-tie. Naota and Naoya meanwhile rush to the hotel, in order to save them.

That doesn’t mean, however, that the end of the episode wasn’t awesome. The victim gets dropped off a billboard at a high building, though Naota manages to save her with his power. That’s another thing he can do, apart from destroying things. This takes a huge toll of his brains, though. By seeing this, the woman gets more paranoid by the minute. She’s defeating “them”, though they keep coming back. Then she realizes that both Naota and Naoya aren’t one of “them”. Upon realizing this, her body relaxes. As she stands on a billboard, it makes her lose her balance, and she falls. Naota tries to save her, but he actually fails. She then falls, and dies.

Jiro breaks by seeing this. He claims that she was always running. She was always running from a certain “Ark”, but they kept coming after her. Naoya meanwhile is incredibly happy that the girl managed to get saved. Guards arrive, and the two brothers flee. Back in their car, Naoya is still happy. Naota, meanwhile wonders what “Ark” might be.

Shouko also still remains shrouded in mysteries. Especially her reasons for acting the way she does. What’s her original mission? Did she help Naoya because she conveniently found out that Naoya was tracking a couple of mass-murderers and wanted to safe the final girl as well, or did she plan for this to happen from the beginning?

In the end, Jiro’s reaction after seeing Reiko die was awesome. He’s always been a shy, uncertain guy. Now that his raison d’être is gone, I wonder what he’ll be doing afterwards. The fact that we also saw Reiko fall, and hit the ground was quite shocking as well. Most times when such a thing happens, you don’t see the character hitting the ground. All you see is some kind of high place, along with a big sound. Seeing a character actually hit the ground really proved to be a pleasant surprise.

For the ones who haven’t seen this episode yet, I’ll just give a small warning: Night Head Genesis is one disturbing anime! You could say that it’s the Higurashi of the Summer-season. People really are driven mad during some of the scenes. Especially the fact that we’re only at episode three of 24/26 shows that there’ll most probably be a lot scenes to follow, which will be even more disturbing than the things we’re shown here.

Heh, I’m beginning to like this show more and more. Remember the vision Naoya had about the woman in red? Where she was strangling that woman? Well, it appears that she’s a serial killer. That totally explains her behaviour from the previous episode. She and her companion were hungry and looked for something to eat. A bar in the middle of nowhere was perfect for this, in order to keep the amount of suspicion as low as possible. This plan, however, backfired once Naota and Naoya dropped by. Once she heard about Naoya’s ability, she wanted to leave as soon as possible. She grabbed her chance after Naota went out of control, though she carelessly pushed him aside, which was enough to trigger Naoya’s visions.

The thing is, that both Naoya as the woman are still being haunted by these visions. The heavier the images are, the bigger the size of the impact is they make on Naoya. Naoya gets plagued by the visions of the woman violently struggling five different women with purple clothes, while the woman keeps seeing eyes everywhere, in combination with the fact that her mind became unstable once she touched Naoya. I think that that’s a nasty side-effect of his powers.

Naoya does realize, however, her motives: she’s crazy. For some reason, she considers every woman in a purple dress as her enemy. And enemies in her eyes have to be killed immediately. It’s not yet clear how she came to think of this. Bad youth? Dumped by a guy for a girl in a purple dress? Blackmail? Her male companion also is an interesting case. He’s in love with the woman, and even though he knows what she’s doing, he’s so blinded by his love that he’ll help her in anything. It’s strange if you realize what a person is willing to do for his loved one.

Naota investigates a bit, and notices that only four victims have been found. The fifth one has yet to be discovered. However, the woman never made any effort in hiding her victims. It’s as if she wanted the victims to be found. If that’s the case, wouldn’t it be strange that this fifth body hasn’t been found by anybody? The preview for the next episode had the answer, surprisingly. *note to self: the previews of Night Head Genesis are not afraid to display spoilers. Skip them.* In any case, Naoya also has the ability to see in the future. The fifth woman he saw being killed has yet to be killed. That’s why her body hasn’t been found yet, as it it’s still alive at that time. Not aware of the things (ropes, in this case) to come in the future.

Meanwhile, we learn where Shouko has ran off to: space. It seems that from there, she’s able to see everything. I think that you can compare her power a lot with Naoya. Still, the differences remain. While Naoya needs to touch people in order to get information, she needs to be in space in order to make her powers work. Shouko also has the abilities to see events, while Naoya can see thoughts. It’s not yet clear whether Shouko can read people’s minds as well, but both of them have the ability of foresight. Shouko´s goals, however, aren’t clear yet. Also, does she work alone, or does she have superiors?

We also get a bit more info about Elder Misaki. It seems that Naota and Naoya never knew that he was the one who created the barrier. This explains why they haven’t tried to kill him. Though I wonder why Naoya wasn’t able to just… read his mind and find out that he created the barrier. Or the guy had some special skills which enabled him to forget any memory he has, including the fact that he was the one who created the barrier. We also see some shots of him at his death bed. It seems that the last thing he did was point at the sky (Shouko?).

This series’ art actually surprised me. During the first episode, even though the music was awesome, the art looked really low-budget. Though in the second episode, the art only showed flaws when Naota went out of control. And now with the third episode, the art looks even better. It’s strange. You would expect that the creators would try to make a good impression with the first episode, concerning the art style. They of course did, but the low-budgetty art-style could have turned some people off.

In any case, I liked this episode. So far, the first episode has definitely been the best one in Night Head Genesis, though it’s not very easy to make an episode better than that one. Still, I do love the themes of this anime. And for some reason, this anime reminds me of two other ones: Higurashi no Naku Koro ni and Jigoku Shoujo. Could that be some sort of sign?

I decided to wait till the second episode before determining to blog this or not. I just saw the second, and I’m really enthusiastic about this show. The first episode will come as soon as two other anime get their first episode subbed. I’m looking at you, Angelique and Flag!

I do admit, though that the previous episode was better than this one. In just one episode, it made me feel huge sympathy for two young boys, which does not happen that often. The fact that fifteen years passed also added up to this, as I’m a major fan of time-leaps. At least, if they’re carried out well. *coughJyuuOhSeicough* The music also didn’t play through the entire episode. This is a shame, as it’s one of the most-fitting soundtracks I’ve heard in a while, except for Noein, perhaps.

Still, that doesn’t mean that I didn’t love this episode. It’s very different from the previous episode, and it focuses on a man, who hates people with supernatural powers with passion. And this guy just happens to frequent the pub in which Naota and Naoya have landed in.

This guy, or Jin, is an interesting case. He used to have a extremely cruel mother, who used to harass him, and eventually ran away with a guy who claimed to be supernatural. Whether this guy really was paranormally gifted remains unknown, but Jin never got over this. The fact that he’s violent and impulsive, combined with this lead to a growing hate towards people who claim to be supernatural, and he isn’t scared to let the world know whenever he’s got the chance. He’s a pitiful guy, though the short-tempered Naota really has trouble not to pay attention to his ramblings. In the end, Jin remained the one with the most unstable personality. After all, he just believed what he saw and heard from people who were “pretending” to be supernatural, and let his anger take control. I wonder how he will end up after this incident. After all, he can’t say that supernaturals don’t exist anymore. I think his hate will either get larger or he’ll just pretend that nothing happened, and stop talking about supernatural things in the first place.

Naota also really has grown during these fifteen years. But at the same time, you can see that he still remains the same Naota. His temper still remains, though he doesn’t just go out of control when he’s angry anymore. The times at which he does lose control is when Jin is beating someone up. Naoya also seems to have set himself a goal to prevent Naota from getting too angry. Though his own powers remain horrifying, especially when the only things he sees are horrible, malicious and depressing thoughts.

In the end, the main purpose of this episode was to show the fact that normal humans are unable to accept paranormal humans, and they instantly get labeled as monsters. Most humans indeed are afraid when they see things they don’t know about. To see things that aren’t right in their world.

Two visitors in the pub appear to be either main characters, or major side-characters. Apparently, they also decided to stop by and eat something, and never had any intention of getting involved in the mess which followed afterwards. At the end of the episode, they go away as fast as possible, though the woman does make the mistake of letting Naoya touch her. This shows a picture of a woman, trying to strangle the two of them. According to Naoya, they died afterwards, though I think they either lived afterwards, or they´ve got some paranormal powers which makes them revive after being killed.

Shoko, the paranormal girl from the previous episode, meanwhile indeed has disappeared, in order to do something concerning the two brothers. She seems to be a major character in the anime, though her role still remains unclear. I also wonder what Miki will be doing afterwards. Her role cerainly isn´t over yet, though what is it?

Overall, I’m a huge fan of character-studies, and Night Head Genesis really promises to be awesome. It isn’t without flaws, though. The storytelling’s a bit unconfortable at times, and things depend on coincidences a bit too much. Not to mention that Naota getting angry gave me Higurashi-flashbacks. Still, this anime definately stands among the three good shows of this season.