Studio: Sunrise
Genre: Action/Sci-Fi
Ratings (of 5)
Story: ♥♥½
Animation: ♥♥♥
Characters: ♥♥½
OP/ED Themes: ♥♥♥
OVERALL: ♥♥♥
Thoughts:
Ibuki's had a rough time of it. First his mom died-- right after seeing someone who looks exactly like her –and then his best friend. Then in one day, another close friend and the little girl who lives next door pass on...all after seeing doppelgangers. Apparently in this world, everyone has not one but two doppelgangers-- three of each person. If two of them meet, they will both die, leaving the third as the Root.
Ibuki meets a girl named Kuro who explains this concept to him, although the way she does she makes it sound like there can only be one root and the demise of the other two has to happen, which is weird, because wouldn't that mean 2/3rds of the world would suffer the fates of Ibuki's mom and friends? Wouldn't it be, y'know, less unusual?
Anyway, Kuro gets Ibuki to buy her some ramen, but gets interrupted by a guy in a hood who beats her with a baseball bat. Being the buoyant type, Kuro jumps back up and kicks his butt; then they both disappear before the cops come...but not before Kuro tells Ibuki that she has to kill her brother.
In other words, thus far we don't know a lot about what's really going on...unless, of course, you've been reading the manga.
I should note at this point that since I don't have imaginAsian TV, I watched the Japanese version of the show, not the English-language dub. The voice acting was decent, but not especially notable. The soundtrack for the show is kind of weird...at one point there's this horn music in the background that feels incredibly vague; the whole scene, in fact, is vague. By the end of the episode I felt like it had probably been a melancholy scene, but during the scene itself I wasn't sure-- it could have been just a calm, peaceful scene. I feel like the music should have helped more there. But during Kuro's fight scene there was some really cool music.
Let's see...animation quality is definitely above-average, although I think that Sora wo Kakeru Shoujo's (which is also done by Sunrise) is a bit more fluid. All in all, an interesting sci-fi (or supernatural?) mystery so far; fans of Darker than Black or Witch Hunter Robin who are willing to deal with a younger, more moe feel may enjoy this one.
