I was too busy ranting last week to notice, but I failed to notice how good the OP of this series is, especially in terms of the visuals. I’d probably rank it the second-best OP this season, after Giant Killing. It’s full of nice ideas and animation.
In any case, for me this was the episode that sold me on this series. I’m not sure exactly what it is, but the characters have some kind of strange charm that even Sora no Oto did not have. I felt like this episode treated the characters seriously and like adults, giving them the time to shine without overdoing it. The acting also felt much better.
What I also liked was how this episode showed that the powers of the characters aren’t exactly special: in this episode we meet someone with the exact same powers as Kazura. On top of that, while the series may be episodic, there are a ton of threads that keep it together, most notably Yukina’s brother.
As for the combat: I was very pleased with how this episode handled it. One one hand you’d wonder what happened to the police, but the scenario of the fight itself was very nice, balancing the stealth, bomb disposal, child rescue and gunfights with each other. It all stayed nicely down to earth instead of going over the top, and I appreciate that.
This is a bit of a strange series though. On one hand it’s very down to earth, but on the other I’m also questioning why the bomb guy used such elaborate means to just contact Yukina. Didn’t he know where she was or something? And even then why would bombing a building guarantee her arrival?
Rating: * (Good)
I really enjoyed this episode, also, it seemed like the animation quality went back up…less still frames and distant shots this time. Maybe they saved last week’s budget for this week’s fight scenes?
But, like you, I do have to crank my suspension-of-disbelief way up on some of the plot stuff…it’s like, some parts are really tightly plotted, then they “drop an alligator” on the protagonists. But, I can overlook it if the main story/sub plots hang together well enough and the characters keep developing.
I’m really surprised that this show doesnt seem to be getting love from the fansubbers, and I’m really glad I decided to make the leap to RAW a while back so it wasn’t so disorienting. There are a lot of good shows this season not getting subbed or only getting subbed slowly. I’d go mad with impatience lol.
I think everything else this season is getting subbed at a decent enough pace except for this and Rainbow. But with Night Raid, it’s just ridiculous. The 3rd raw is already out and the 2nd one hasn’t even been subbed yet.
Yeah, and this show has a ton of potential, hopefully someone starts doing this show regularly.
Only wish it was more total eps for this kind of show. 🙂
No love for Night Raid? =(
I’m surprised that no sub groups have picked up this anime. Even Rainbow’s third episode was subbed and released pretty quickly after the small delay in subbing its’ second episode.
Let’s hope it’ll get subbed soon, otherwise, let’s look on the bright side; we can wait for it to pile up and watch each episode back-to-back =D!
On the side note, this reminds me of Jigoku Shoujo. Same character design maybe?
Pi: there doesn’t seem to be a relation. Night Raid’s characters were designed by some Production IG key animator:
http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/encyclopedia/people.php?id=47473
I don’t think the bomb guy’s intention was to contact Yukina. She was supposed to go to the river, not where the place that was bombed. The bomb guy also says that she shouldn’t have come and been involved. I believe that the main reason he set bombs everywhere was to gather information on everybody else.
Also, subs are out. Woo!
I agree with Bruce. The ‘teleporter’ most likely placed the bombs to analyze their power or somewhere along those lines.
This episode definitely made-up for the not-so-fantastic previous episode. I loved how each agent found a different way to get rid of the bomb. And I was fooled for a moment; I almost thought Yukina had telekinesis. This episode was really fun to watch and the music was enjoyable as well.
On the side note, I think it’s fun that they tried to create antagonists with some special abilities. I can’t wait to see someone with a special ability that is different from the main protagonists.
And thanks for the info, psgels =D