Anime: Making clocks look cool for decades.
Animation: A-1 Pictures
Set in 1931, little is "clear" about the story, but it seems to center around a special group of people. Working for some sort of "agency," these people were brought together due to their unique qualities. The main character, for instance, seems to be a powerful telekinetic, yet he can only use his powers for 3'ish minutes at a time. Their motivation is unknown, but currently do special ops for "the agency."
Boom!
Well, technically they work for some sort of agency, who has assembled them to preform dangerous missions. And, prescribing to the laws of plot, that agency seems more evil than Hitler's mustache, but that's pretty much what you expect.
Characters and Images
Kazura - The main character. He is headstrong, yet very carefree. He has telekinetic powers, yet can only use them for 3 minutes at a time
Aoi - Respectful and conservative, Aoi possesses the ability to teleport short distances. He is very reserved about using this ability
Yukina - A young girl, she acts as the groups coordinator. She appears to possess telepathy, as well as an ability to "read" the dead.
Natsume - Yukina's protector, he has incredible vision, capable of seeing for miles. This, coupled with the fact that he may be able to see through walls, make him an excellent sniper.
Conclusion
If you needed a one sentence parallel, I'd say the series comes off with the sheen and tone of Darker than Black, with a more historical setting.Of course, Its hard to imagine that they'll reference world events and not build up to World War 2, but given its more supernatural elements, I can't say I know where the series is going. Distorting historical events and figures is nothing new, but to what end does Senkou no Night Raid tugging at these strings?
I third the Darker than Black notion. This is a mysterious anime that tugs at me because you aren't sure what the entire premise of the show is and what the endgame is. I dig the animation though and I look to some strong dialogue and a twisting story to bring me in. Senkou no Night Raid ranks 11th in my Spring 2010 list of anime I'm watching.
That'd be great. This show is right up my alley. I can't comment on DtB because my memory of that show is pretty vague but this one kinda reminds me of Ghost in the Shell: SAC except set in the 1930s and rather than being cyborgs the people are products of an experiment, but their abilities are the same.
I'm only watching it until they start to justify, gloss over or ignore what Japan did in Manchuria and China. Given Japan's record for revisionism of WWII, I fully expect to not be finishing this series.
Don't forget Korea they had occupied the country since 1910, in fact in January 1932 a Korean tried to assassinate Hirohito/Emperor Showa by throwing a gernade at him.
I'm curious of how they will deal with the events going on around that time period. The war crimes commited by Japan have been refered to as the Asian Holocaust before for a reason being that pretty much all of East Asia at the time was effected by the brutality of the Japanese army:
be it the mass killings, (ie. Nanking Massacre)
gruesome human experimentation practices, (ie. Unit 731)
use of chemical weapons, (ie. Battle of Wuhan)
mass famines by rediverting food grown by civilians to the Japanese war effort, (in Vietnam about 10% of the population starved to death in a preventable famine in 1944)
POW torture (the Japanese routinely tortured POWs usually later excuting them because the belief was the Yamato race [the majority of people in Japan, although there are still two indigenous minorities {Ainu and Ryukyu} who still face discrimination from some of the Yamato people])
Slavery was used by the Japanese army in two forms, the first being forced labour where civilians of the countries that had been invaded by Japan along with POWs being forced to work sometimes until death for the Japanese army and the second being civilian women put into sexual slavery in military brothels for the Japanese army and navy officers.
As mentioned already much of this was particularly around China, Manchuria and Korea but the people effected by the Japanese military stretches all the way out to Indonesia, Vietnam, Burma and everything in between along with POWs belonging to the Allied forces.
I wonder if they are going to touch on any of this and the esculation in tensions and hostilities throughtout the region during the lead up to WWII.
This was the show i was most looking forward too from the Spring Preview, It's sounding to be pretty cool.
Well adding in characters with paranormal abilities makes me think the historical context isn't probably going to be super relevant, which makes me wonder why pick such a controversial location and time period in the history of east Asia. The only problem I would have with it is if they refrence events that happened during that time period and either glorified it or just ignore the significance of how Japanese imperalism affected other countries.*
*mostly for the negative, although it could be argued a few beneficial things came from it. For instance much of the industrial development of Taiwan was due to the Japanese military building up the island nation as a main naval base to deploy from, that said the Japanese Empire still did awful things to the Taiwanese people during the time period where they were under Japanese control.
Yeah, that's the root of my morbid curiosity, though the show underneath it has some polish and fun (so far.)