(12 episodes)
What’s it about ?
Ah, the standard romance show with a heroine surrounded by creepy and devilish-looking handsome boys. Except this isn’t a shoujo manga or visual novel adaptation but an original project. And a musical.
Characters
Ritsuka, our protagonist, is your ordinary, slightly naive high school girl. She lives alone with her writer/translator mother, as her older brother is busy being ordained in England. If that last bit wasn’t already eyebrow-raising, then there’s the whole deal with her Mom being very insistant she wear a fresh new talisman every week. Considering it saves her bacon twice this episode, that sounds like a reasonable precaution.
One day she’s suddenly summoned by the Student Council, a quartet of creepy boys of various strikes. There were rumours she had broken some school rule, but they refuse to be more precise. Since her talisman prevents them from doing anything too nefarious, she’s just dumbfounded at this group of jerks and their unfounded accusations.
As she comes back home that evening, she sees a bunch of hooded thugs ransacking the place, and her mother motioning her to stay away. Of course, by the time she comes back with the police, everything is back to normal (aside from her mother being mysteriously absent), and they don’t believe her. As a perfectly sensible precaution, she decides to stay the night at one of her friends. However, than plan is hijacked by…
Rem, jerk student council president, who “rescues” her from the thugs attacking her again and… wait, did he just incinerate two of them while she wasn’t looking ? Anyway, he escorts her back to his mansion, supposedly for her own safety. He claims the student council are investigating a circle of devil worshippers at school, and initially mistook her for one of them… but I have a hard time taking anything he says at face value.
Production Values
As mentioned above, this is a musical. It opens with a glorious villain song featuring an evil Greek chorus being ominous as crap, goes on with Ritsuka going to school like she’s a Disney princess under the cherry trees, and also has the student council being introduced as super-creepy in their library den. It’s thus slightly disappointing that there’s so much plot setup that we don’t see anymore of those musical numbers in the second half of the episode. Hopeful the next episodes will balance them better, as they’re gorgeous-looking and the clear highlight of the show, both musically and visually. (Though the rest of the show looks quite good too.)
Overall Impression
From previous reviews, you may have notice I have very little time for this genre, especially if the numerous prettyboys aren’t particularly distinctive. But this pulls of the stops to get me onboard with a series of glorious musical numbers that are so over-the-top they’re incredibly charming. Which is a feat, for a series about rapey boys.
I’m less sold about the actual plot and characters (although I have seen much worse heroines than Ritsuka), but if the show can keep the musical numbers as impressive as this opener, then, to my complete surprise, I’m in.
