Category: Supernatural The Animation

Great to see that the third episode already tells about the background of the two lead characters. I mean, a dead mother is nothing new here, but usually when anime do that, they wait until very long before they come with the story that explained what happened to them. Doing this in the third episode really allows the series to go beyond that and use it in later episodes to its advantage.

And again: this episode mostly progressed like a normal ghost story, only for the climax to really get interesting. It’s a sign of great build-up, and if the creators are able to do this consistently shows that they know what they’re doing. Even when most of the episode is a standard ghost story, when you watch the episode back you can see the hints here and there that are all building up towards that climax.

This episode also showed the mysterious father of Dean and Sam for the first time. As a background, it’s definitely interesting. At this point it’s clear that something happened to that guy while his wife died. This episode seemed to suggest that she died by a mere poltergeist, but there’s probably more to it than just that. Oh, and I also liked that fortune teller.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

Okay, so here I’m going to try and do the arduous task of trying to blog 22 episodes in a month and a half. Do expect some delays on some posts though, but I really want to try and blog this thing. It’s not perfect (the acting could have been better), but I still have a lot to like on this one. So far, it’s got terrific atmosphere, great build-up, gorgeous artwork and excellent climaxes.

We do seem to be dealing with an episodic series here, But the first two episodes have been quite well written. The stories have enough depth to them to make the episodic format work. I especially like how this series likes to present its story as fairly straightforward in the beginning, only to come up with a twist that gives a completely different meaning to the characters involved. Now this is how you should use build-up well!

For most of the first half I found this episode rather confusing. The two lead brothers kept talking about a lot of stuff that they seemed to have discovered off-screen. Especially when we suddenly got the information that they knew about the whereabouts of her husband all along, plus it was also rather strange that she was able to stay in the water for so long without… you know.. drowning. The twist that she had been dead for fifteen years though, it was an excellent one that really put things into perspective. On top of that, the creators also used their red herrings of the ghost couple quite well.

But yeah, the big flaw of this show so far is the stiff acting at times. It’s what you get when you have character-designs like this and try to animate them, without trying to make it look natural. The characters’ faces, whenever they move, move rather stiff and unnatural. At the same time though, the animation does make up for it during the climaxes, due to some really great shots and artwork.

This version I found of episode 2 had English voices on it, instead of the Japanese. Overall they did quite a decent job, with a few exceptions. Grealy’s wife for example was really hammy.
Rating: ** (Excellent)