What’s it about ?
A young man tried walking away from his village full of conspiracies and deadly man-controlled robots… but it all comes back to bite him in the ass.
Characters
Kyouhei, our protagonist. He used to be a controller for one of those big mind-controlled robots they call “Gods”… but after a traumatic event, he decided to quit it all and become an ordinary salaryman in the big city. Yeah, like that ever works. The elders let him go, but it’s made very clear they’re still in charge of his life, whatever he thinks.
Hibino, the woman’s Kyouhei’s had a crush for a long time. I’m sure that he going to the same high school and joining the same company is totally coincidental. Not like he ever works up the nerve to ask her out, though (despite numerous opportunities in this first episode). She’s from his village too, although she wasn’t aware of the whole conspiracy/robots thing. He goes to live with her and her father after his flat gets destroyed halfway through the episode (at their invitation), which is totally not awkward at all.
Utao, Kyouhei’s little sister, has taken over his former role as robot controller. She comes in out of the blue, presumably to protect Kyouhei from…
Aki, another member of the village with a God robot in tow, and a complete psychopath (if that flashback with a dozen corpses is anything to go by). He was kept under heavy lock until someone made the mistake of mentioning Kyouhei had skipped town, at which point he escaped and started stalking him (with the “randomly and gruesomely kill someone in an elevator minutes before Kyouhei steps in it” kind of stalking). He’s not actually belligerent against Kyouhei, ranting about how the village elders are the real monsters, and Utao probably overreacted when she bombed Kyouhei’s flat (and Aki inside) to kingdom come. (Not that I believed for a second that Aki’s bodybag handled the village’s MIB was any proof of his death…)
Oh, and there’s a cryptic prologue with a couple of kids fighting off… something… that I can’t make head or tails of. Presumably they’ll explain it properly at some point.
Production Values
Pretty good animation, and the abrupt mood change from “drunken office party” to “oh my god is that a corpse in the elevator” is well handled. I also like the way how the hovering robots sing whenever they move ; it’s a nice way of making them otherworldly.
Is this the first show this season with a decent OP in graphics as well as song ?
Overall Impression
Well, this first episode does a good job of raising my interest in a premise I didn’t quite care for initially. Mission accomplished, I guess. The plot has potential, but it doesn’t grab me as viscerally as, say, Deadman Wonderland did last season. We’ll see how it goes.
