(26 episodes)
What’s it about ?
Clockpunk show set in the Meiji period. It also has the honour of being the first show ever animated by studio Bones after their split from Sunrise.
Characters
For no obvious reason, the series opens with a few German merchants/tourists on a boat nearing the coast of Japan, expositing at length on this being the Meiji Era and what this entails on a geopolitical level… only for the rest of the episode to completely ignore this context, and showing that this version of Japan is actually full-on clockpunk.
Hiwou, our protagonist, is the bratty and plucky kid who’s at the center of the youngsters’ social club in his rural village (including his younger siblings). The big thing with this village is that they’ve been producting tons of clockwork dolls, mostly for entertainment purposes.
Enter the Wind Gang, a bunch of paramilitary thugs who swiftly conquer the village by surprise, capturing all the adults… but not the kids, who were off exploring a cave at the time. There, they find a clockwork proto-mecha that allows them to escape.
… But maybe not for long, as some of the kids want to double back to try and save their parents. That sounds like a really stupid idea, considering how they barely managed to escape the first time around.
Production Values
You can always count on a Bones production to be reasonably polished, and this is no exception.
Overall Impression
Well, this was inoffensive enough, I guess. The problem is that the first episode didn’t manage to make me care about those kids, or even the fate of the village. It’s got some decently-paced action sequences that are all about the flash and carry little substance. Really, it’s just a bit too bland.
I’m not really interested in watching any more of this.
Source: [In Which I Review] Anime series from 2000 – Page 13
