Heion Sedai no Idaten-tachi comes from pretty far off my radar.  To be honest I’d forgotten it even existed – it didn’t make my season preview and the premiere is obviously very late.  I went into it not knowing what to expect and with pretty much zero expectations, but there are definitely a few elements with this series that make it notable.  First of all, when was the last time a mangaka – Coolkyoushinja in this case – had three adaptations premiere in the same season?  I’m not a huge fan of Kobayashi-san, but while I had Peach Boy Riverside as the more promising candidate than this show, I found Idaten to be much more interesting in hindsight (though that’s a pretty low bar).

Then we have the cast.  Talk about an old-school seiyuu house party – Paku Romi and Ogata Megumi playing boys (by appearance anyway), Hochan, Okamura Akemi as the leads.  Itou Shizuka, Chou, Miyamoto Mitsura, Ishida Akira, Ise Mariya, Inoue Kazuhiko…  To be honest the first thing that came to mind for me was a little=known series I loved, and think about sometimes,  Nekogami Yaoyorozu – a show about young (looking) Gods with a ridiculously big-time cast (which included Hochan and Chou-chan).  But Idetan is a lot darker and ecchier for sure.

In watching this double-length premiere, what stood out in addition to the cast was how Gainax-y it was.  After a flood of them a couple of years ago, I haven’t seen a series this overtly homage Gainax for a good while.  There are a couple Gainax vets on the staff, but more than anything it – like the cast – is notable for ridiculous amounts of experience.  A lot of it on very good series too, like Akatsuki no Yona.  Old school to the core, this series is, and it shows through in the end product.

I have mixed feelings about that end product, but on balance I was fairly entertained for 45 minutes and the sheer bombast and oddness of the premiere was certainly striking.  The idea here is that the Kami (Idetan) sealed themselves 800 years ago after the demons that threatened humanity were vanquished.  They left behind Rin to watch over things, and periodically new Idetan are “drawn out” by her after being called into existence by human desires.  The irony is they can’t (and don’t) act to save humans unless the species as a whole is threatened – which as of the premiere, it isn’t (thus, the title).  But thanks to some intelligent demons, that’s about to change.

The core cast is likeable enough.  Paku’s Hayato is a brash scrapper, Ogata’s Ysley (I can’t look at him without thinking of Gon from that Jin’s ad) is an intellectual and kind of a layabout, Horie’s Paula is a good-natured girl whose somewhat limited intellect reflects that (for some reason) part of her existence was created by bird thoughts.  And Okamura’s Rin is a psychotic sadist who loves torturing the others in the name of “training”, and is obsessed with the responsibility the elders saddled her with eight centuries earlier.  We also have a nation named Zoble that’s become the means for the demons to try and reassert their dominance, and a whole assemblage of weirdos connected with it.

There’s an interesting tonal contrast in the premiere with its zany slapstick, comic violence, and genuine brutality.  You get an old-school panty shot followed by a really disturbing and gratuitous rape scene, for example.  There are “modern” elements here that genuinely annoy me (as seems endemic with this mangaka) but Idaten’s weirdness in conjunction with the very genuine old-school look and (mostly) tone is undeniably sort of compelling.  I’ll stick around for at least one more episode just to see where that leads us, not to mention another chance to listen to these seiyuu strut their stuff.  In a season as barren as this one, The Idaten Deities Know Only Peace easily clears that hurdle.