Mouryou no Hako – 02

Short Synopsis: Kanako’s family and relatives rush over to check whether she’s okay.
Highlights: I really hope that rumour of 13 episodes is wrong.
Overall Enjoyment Value: 8/10
Okay, so it was pretty obvious that I was going to blog this series. As for the ones I’m not going to blog:
– Vampire Knight Guilty: no way.
– Ga-Rei Zero has been very good so far, but the schoolgirls who are all awesome at handling swords still give me a few doubts here and there.
– Skip Beat is awesome. If some of the shows I’m planning to blog turn out to be disappointing, I’m probably going to pick that one up.
– Macademi Wasshoi at least didn’t lose as much inspiration as the rest of the shounen-comedies did in their second episodes, but I still don’t see much future for those perverted teachers.
– Oh, and I think that this is also a good point to note that I’ve finally managed to use this season as an excuse to stop watching Soul Eater. I don’t want to continue wasting my time on it if there are so many better series this season. I really think that it would have been better as a 39-episode series, because it’s taking way too long. Instead of filling up its extra time with cute slice-of-life moments, the creators decided to go with pointless exposition and dragged-on fight scenes to fill up their extra time.

There’s a LOT to like about Mouryou no Hako, and it’s at least my favourite new series of the season. It’s one of these very rare series that only pop up about half a year, that try to beyond the usual genres (Real Drive was this in the previous half year). While it’s technically a mystery-horror, it doesn’t feel anything like the other mystery-horror series I’ve seen so far. It’s got a bit of Shoujo-ai here and a bit of humour there. It’s got a story that saves its cards and doesn’t play all of its trumps at the first episode, and STILL it had one of the best starts of the season.

The second episode was much less dramatic than the first, probably because the focus shifted from teenagers to adults. It starts out as a basic aftermath, but soon continues to progress the overall plot like crazy, introducing important relative after the other that seem to suggest that there’s more to Kanako’s suicide attempt than we might think. Especially since a famous actress ran all the way from her busy schedule.

Another thing is this series’ subtle characterization. This series uses a lot of subtle non-verbal communication to flesh out its characters, like the incompetent policeman that worked on the lead policeman’s nerves, or his fascination with that lead actress. The subtle hints that suggested that the actress is hiding something.

And then there are those heads in boxes. I finally read the premise of this series, and it turns out that it’s all one big murder mystery around a bizarre serial murderer, and here this series starts with a seemingly unrelated suicide attempt. What’s the link between these two, and why did the creators decide to open the series with this?

The characters also look great. This is what happens if you combine Madhouse, Clamp and the character-designer of Simoun. They all seem to fit. I’m not sure what went wrong with Clamp when they designed the characters from Code Geass, but this series shows that they can also go for a much more down-to-earth style. They’re very versatile indeed.

(oh, and *note to self: Mouryou no Hako + Horrible Raws = bad idea. It’s not the lower quality, but those overly sugary Japanese commercials that keep interrupting it DO NOT FIT the overall mode of this series AT ALL*).