JC Staff brings us Yumekui Merry, after one episode a blend of cats, nightmares and a cute girl in a cute hat. And at this point, I’m intrigued but not enthralled.
Our hero is Fujiwara Yumeji, a dead-ringer for Jin from Kannagi (or maybe Nagi Springfield). He seems like a normal and cheerful teenaged boy – 15, maybe? – except that he has nightmares about cats every night and has the ability to predict what other people will dream about with some accuracy. We don’t yet know where his family is but he’s apparently living with his osananajimi Tachibana. He belongs to the literature club and aspires to be a novelist, but so far that side of his life and the people associated with it are a cipher.
One day on the way home from school the aforementioned cute girl drops on his head. Her hat winds up on top of a cute gray kitten, and when Yumeki uncovers the cat his nightmare world invades his real one, complete with talking puss-in-boots and a scary scarecrow-figure who appears to be their leader. Elements of “Pandora Hearts” here for sure. That girl – foreshadowingly named Merry Nightmare – comes to Yumeji’s rescue just as the scarecrow is about to steal his body. We get some lines about the dream world and the real world – Merry wants to get back to the former and the scarecrow to the latter – and the weird limbo in between the scarecrow created. Merry and the baddie fight, she kicks his ass and she and Yumeji end up back in the real world. Merry promptly demands that Yumeji call the scarecrow guy back and passes out.
I would have to give this first episode an “incomplete”, since it showed us an awful lot of interesting things but not enough about any of them. It has a classic JC look, very solid OP and decent ED, and has teased out an interesting potential premise. None of the characters come off annoying so far, though Yuemji and Merry are the only ones with any real opportunity to show their natures so far. I’ll definitely keep watching this simply because I have little idea what to expect after that first ep, which very much acted like a 22-minute teaser trailer. It did have style, good action and a sense of fun, but I’ll need to see some more substance in the second episode.
