An awful lot of the comments I’ve seen about Katsute Kami Datta Kemono-tachi e start out something like “Well, it’s better than Fairy Gone“.  My reaction to that is pretty much the same every time – that’s a pretty damn low bar.  But it’s not an indictment of this series that it’s compared to that one – they have some obvious thematic overlap, but it’s not as if it necessarily goes any deeper than that.  Having not read any of the manga, the only way to tell is to watch and decide for yourself.

To start with I’d say this – the first episode is certainly better than Fairy Gone, anyway.  That’s not to say To the Abandoned Sacred Beasts (this may be a rare instance where I like the English title better) made a great first impression – the premiere was kind of a mess – but it had enough interesting elements to bring me back for another episode.  It’s an odd amalgam of elements, starting with the fact that the conflict the first episode is built around is obviously based on the American civil war (with the North and South being flipped) for some reason, but seems to have no actual connection to it beyond the names and uniforms.

The premise here is as old as time, at least manga and anime time.  A bunch of supersoldiers (in this case, called “incarnates”) are created to fight a war, then abandoned (thus the title) when the war is over and they’re deemed too dangerous to exist in times of peace.  We’ve seen many variations on this theme in animanga and elsewhere (Star Trek: The Next Generation comes immediately to mind) and based on one episode at least, there doesn’t seem to be anything especially distinctive about this one.  But the execution is at least pretty good.

As best I can tell, the union North (massively outgunned in this bizarro version) is getting whipped by the confederate South, but unleashes a squad of genetically modified beastmen onto the battlefield.  Soon enough the tide of the war turns, so much in fact that the North is eventually able to force the South to accept a cease-fire.  The problem is that all the incarnates will apparently lose their human sides and the beast will take over – we see it happen to one of them – and the doctor in charge of the incarnates sees no way to stop it.  So she conspires with the vice-captain to wipe them all out, starting with the captain (unmistakably Konishi Katsuyuki), but the vice-captain turns on her and unleashes the squad on the postwar landscape, where they wreak havoc.

It would be impossible to make a real judgment on Katsute Kami Datta Kemono-tachi e, since this entire premiere was basically a really fast-paced prologue.  I didn’t especially feel anything for any of the characters and the familiarity of the plot drains a bit of impact from it.  But I’m sort of interested to see what happens from here – I can’t imagine the whole story is going to be Captain Hank hunting down and killing his former squadron one by one.  If it focuses on the injustices committed against the incarnates and how it reflects on society, To the Abandoned Sacred Beasts might just have some potential.  We’ll see.